Dorothea seldom left home without her husband, but she did occasionally drive into Middlemarch alone, on little errands of shopping or charity such as occur to every lady of any wealth when she lives within three miles of a town.  Two days after that scene in the Yew-tree Walk, she determined to use such an opportunity in order if possible to see Lydgate, and learn from him whether her husband had really felt any depressing change of symptoms which he was concealing from her, and whether he had insisted on knowing the utmost about himself.  She felt almost guilty in asking for knowledge about him from another, but the dread of being without it—­the dread of that ignorance which would make her unjust or hard—­overcame every scruple.  That there had been some crisis in her husband’s mind she was certain:  he had the very next day begun a new method of arranging his notes, and had associated her quite newly in carrying out his plan.  Poor Dorothea needed to lay up stores of patience.

It was about four o’clock when she drove to Lydgate’s house in Lowick Gate, wishing, in her immediate doubt of finding him at home, that she had written beforehand.  And he was not at home.

“Is Mrs. Lydgate at home?” said Dorothea, who had never, that she knew of, seen Rosamond, but now remembered the fact of the marriage.  Yes, Mrs. Lydgate was at home.

“I will go in and speak to her, if she will allow me.  Will you ask her if she can see me—­see Mrs. Casaubon, for a few minutes?”

When the servant had gone to deliver that message, Dorothea could hear sounds of music through an open window—­a few notes from a man’s voice and then a piano bursting into roulades.  But the roulades broke off suddenly, and then the servant came back saying that Mrs. Lydgate would be happy to see Mrs. Casaubon.

When the drawing-room door opened and Dorothea entered, there was a sort of contrast not infrequent in country life when the habits of the different ranks were less blent than now.  Let those who know, tell us exactly what stuff it was that Dorothea wore in those days of mild autumn—­that thin white woollen stuff soft to the touch and soft to the eye.  It always seemed to have been lately washed, and to smell of the sweet hedges—­was always in the shape of a pelisse with sleeves hanging all out of the fashion.  Yet if she had entered before a still audience as Imogene or Cato’s daughter, the dress might have seemed right enough:  the grace and dignity were in her limbs and neck; and about her simply parted hair and candid eyes the large round poke which was then in the fate of women, seemed no more odd as a head-dress than the gold trencher we call a halo.  By the present audience of two persons, no dramatic heroine could have been expected with more interest than Mrs. Casaubon.  To Rosamond she was one of those county divinities not mixing with Middlemarch mortality, whose slightest marks of manner or appearance were worthy of her study; moreover,