“I should like to know when you left off,” said Rosamond, “because then I might be sure that I knew something which you did not know.”

“Mr. Lydgate would say that was not worth knowing,” said Mr. Ned, purposely caustic.

“On the contrary,” said Lydgate, showing no smart; but smiling with exasperating confidence at Rosamond.  “It would be worth knowing by the fact that Miss Vincy could tell it me.”

Young Plymdale soon went to look at the whist-playing, thinking that Lydgate was one of the most conceited, unpleasant fellows it had ever been his ill-fortune to meet.

“How rash you are!” said Rosamond, inwardly delighted.  “Do you see that you have given offence?”

“What! is it Mr. Plymdale’s book?  I am sorry.  I didn’t think about it.”

“I shall begin to admit what you said of yourself when you first came here—­that you are a bear, and want teaching by the birds.”

“Well, there is a bird who can teach me what she will.  Don’t I listen to her willingly?”

To Rosamond it seemed as if she and Lydgate were as good as engaged.  That they were some time to be engaged had long been an idea in her mind; and ideas, we know, tend to a more solid kind of existence, the necessary materials being at hand.  It is true, Lydgate had the counter-idea of remaining unengaged; but this was a mere negative, a shadow east by other resolves which themselves were capable of shrinking.  Circumstance was almost sure to be on the side of Rosamond’s idea, which had a shaping activity and looked through watchful blue eyes, whereas Lydgate’s lay blind and unconcerned as a jelly-fish which gets melted without knowing it.

That evening when he went home, he looked at his phials to see how a process of maceration was going on, with undisturbed interest; and he wrote out his daily notes with as much precision as usual.  The reveries from which it was difficult for him to detach himself were ideal constructions of something else than Rosamond’s virtues, and the primitive tissue was still his fair unknown.  Moreover, he was beginning to feel some zest for the growing though half-suppressed feud between him and the other medical men, which was likely to become more manifest, now that Bulstrode’s method of managing the new hospital was about to be declared; and there were various inspiriting signs that his non-acceptance by some of Peacock’s patients might be counterbalanced by the impression he had produced in other quarters.  Only a few days later, when he had happened to overtake Rosamond on the Lowick road and had got down from his horse to walk by her side until he had quite protected her from a passing drove, he had been stopped by a servant on horseback with a message calling him in to a house of some importance where Peacock had never attended; and it was the second instance of this kind.  The servant was Sir James Chettam’s, and the house was Lowick Manor.

CHAPTER XXVIII.