“Fred, pray defer your practising till to-morrow; you will make Mr. Lydgate ill,” said Rosamond.  “He has an ear.”

Fred laughed, and went on with his tune to the end.

Rosamond turned to Lydgate, smiling gently, and said, “You perceive, the bears will not always be taught.”

“Now then, Rosy!” said Fred, springing from the stool and twisting it upward for her, with a hearty expectation of enjoyment.  “Some good rousing tunes first.”

Rosamond played admirably.  Her master at Mrs. Lemon’s school (close to a county town with a memorable history that had its relics in church and castle) was one of those excellent musicians here and there to be found in our provinces, worthy to compare with many a noted Kapellmeister in a country which offers more plentiful conditions of musical celebrity.  Rosamond, with the executant’s instinct, had seized his manner of playing, and gave forth his large rendering of noble music with the precision of an echo.  It was almost startling, heard for the first time.  A hidden soul seemed to be flowing forth from Rosamond’s fingers; and so indeed it was, since souls live on in perpetual echoes, and to all fine expression there goes somewhere an originating activity, if it be only that of an interpreter.  Lydgate was taken possession of, and began to believe in her as something exceptional.  After all, he thought, one need not be surprised to find the rare conjunctions of nature under circumstances apparently unfavorable:  come where they may, they always depend on conditions that are not obvious.  He sat looking at her, and did not rise to pay her any compliments, leaving that to others, now that his admiration was deepened.

Her singing was less remarkable, but also well trained, and sweet to hear as a chime perfectly in tune.  It is true she sang “Meet me by moonlight,” and “I’ve been roaming”; for mortals must share the fashions of their time, and none but the ancients can be always classical.  But Rosamond could also sing “Black-eyed Susan” with effect, or Haydn’s canzonets, or “Voi, che sapete,” or “Batti, batti”—­she only wanted to know what her audience liked.

Her father looked round at the company, delighting in their admiration.  Her mother sat, like a Niobe before her troubles, with her youngest little girl on her lap, softly beating the child’s hand up and down in time to the music.  And Fred, notwithstanding his general scepticism about Rosy, listened to her music with perfect allegiance, wishing he could do the same thing on his flute.  It was the pleasantest family party that Lydgate had seen since he came to Middlemarch.  The Vincys had the readiness to enjoy, the rejection of all anxiety, and the belief in life as a merry lot, which made a house exceptional in most county towns at that time, when Evangelicalism had cast a certain suspicion as of plague-infection over the few amusements which survived in the provinces.  At the Vincys’ there was always whist, and