Middlemarch

At dinner with the Vincys, the chaplaincy question comes up. Lydgate is new enough to say what he actually thinks: appointments are made too much a question of personal liking, and the fittest man for a post is not always the most agreeable. Dr. Sprague stares at his wine-glass. Lydgate then goes further — arguing about coroners, post-mortems, and the uselessness of legal training for questions that require medical knowledge — apparently forgetting that Mr. Chichely, who is sitting opposite him, is the coroner. Chichely calls him prick-eared afterward. Mr. Vincy suggests cheerfully that they join the ladies. In the drawing-room Lydgate monopolizes Rosamond in a tête-à-tête. She says the right thing with exquisite timing — she can catch every tone, "except the humorous." She never attempts to joke, and this, Eliot notes, is the most decisive mark of her cleverness. She tells him she is "really afraid" of him. He tells her he has found charms in Middlemarch far greater than he expected — means something much nearer to him than the rides toward Tipton. Rosamond blushes and turns to her netting. Then she plays the piano: admirably, with the precision of an echo, giving forth her teacher's large rendering of noble music. "A hidden soul seemed to be flowing forth from Rosamond's fingers." Lydgate is taken possession of and does not rise to pay compliments. Mr. Farebrother arrives, full of life, claiming Lydgate's promised visit about beetles, before swerving to the whist-table for the evening. Lydgate walks home thinking first about Farebrother and the chaplaincy question, and Fever, and only then — in second place — about Rosamond. He feels no agitation. He does not mean to marry for five years. He is certain that if falling in love had been at all in question, it would have been safe with this creature: she has just the kind of intelligence he desires in a woman — polished, refined, docile. He goes home and reads about Louis's new book on Fever until late: "whereas Fever had obscure conditions, and gave him that delightful labor of the imagination." He brings far more analytical vigor to pathology than to love, being amply informed about the latter by literature and the genial conversation of men. "Poor Lydgate! or shall I say, Poor Rosamond! Each lived in a world of which the other knew nothing." Rosamond has registered every look and word, estimating them as the opening incidents of a preconceived romance. The piquant fact about Lydgate — in her account of him — is his good birth.