“I did not say she was as beautiful as you are,” said Mr. Ned, venturing to look from the portrait to its rival.

“I suspect you of being an adroit flatterer,” said Rosamond, feeling sure that she should have to reject this young gentleman a second time.

But now Lydgate came in; the book was closed before he reached Rosamond’s corner, and as he took his seat with easy confidence on the other side of her, young Plymdale’s jaw fell like a barometer towards the cheerless side of change.  Rosamond enjoyed not only Lydgate’s presence but its effect:  she liked to excite jealousy.

“What a late comer you are!” she said, as they shook hands.  “Mamma had given you up a little while ago.  How do you find Fred?”

“As usual; going on well, but slowly.  I want him to go away—­ to Stone Court, for example.  But your mamma seems to have some objection.”

“Poor fellow!” said Rosamond, prettily.  “You will see Fred so changed,” she added, turning to the other suitor; “we have looked to Mr. Lydgate as our guardian angel during this illness.”

Mr. Ned smiled nervously, while Lydgate, drawing the “Keepsake” towards him and opening it, gave a short scornful laugh and tossed up his chill, as if in wonderment at human folly.

“What are you laughing at so profanely?” said Rosamond, with bland neutrality.

“I wonder which would turn out to be the silliest—­the engravings or the writing here,” said Lydgate, in his most convinced tone, while he turned over the pages quickly, seeming to see all through the book in no time, and showing his large white hands to much advantage, as Rosamond thought.  “Do look at this bridegroom coming out of church:  did you ever see such a `sugared invention’—­as the Elizabethans used to say?  Did any haberdasher ever look so smirking?  Yet I will answer for it the story makes him one of the first gentlemen in the land.”

“You are so severe, I am frightened at you,” said Rosamond, keeping her amusement duly moderate.  Poor young Plymdale had lingered with admiration over this very engraving, and his spirit was stirred.

“There are a great many celebrated people writing in the `Keepsake,’ at all events,” he said, in a tone at once piqued and timid.  “This is the first time I have heard it called silly.”

“I think I shall turn round on you and accuse you of being a Goth,” said Rosamond, looking at Lydgate with a smile.  “I suspect you know nothing about Lady Blessington and L. E. L.”  Rosamond herself was not without relish for these writers, but she did not readily commit herself by admiration, and was alive to the slightest hint that anything was not, according to Lydgate, in the very highest taste.

“But Sir Walter Scott—­I suppose Mr. Lydgate knows him,” said young Plymdale, a little cheered by this advantage.

“Oh, I read no literature now,” said Lydgate, shutting the book, and pushing it away.  “I read so much when I was a lad, that I suppose it will last me all my life.  I used to know Scott’s poems by heart.”