In fact, she had been determined not to promise.  Rosamond had that victorious obstinacy which never wastes its energy in impetuous resistance.  What she liked to do was to her the right thing, and all her cleverness was directed to getting the means of doing it.  She meant to go out riding again on the gray, and she did go on the next opportunity of her husband’s absence, not intending that he should know until it was late enough not to signify to her.  The temptation was certainly great:  she was very fond of the exercise, and the gratification of riding on a fine horse, with Captain Lydgate, Sir Godwin’s son, on another fine horse by her side, and of being met in this position by any one but her husband, was something as good as her dreams before marriage:  moreover she was riveting the connection with the family at Quallingham, which must be a wise thing to do.

But the gentle gray, unprepared for the crash of a tree that was being felled on the edge of Halsell wood, took fright, and caused a worse fright to Rosamond, leading finally to the loss of her baby.  Lydgate could not show his anger towards her, but he was rather bearish to the Captain, whose visit naturally soon came to an end.

In all future conversations on the subject, Rosamond was mildly certain that the ride had made no difference, and that if she had stayed at home the same symptoms would have come on and would have ended in the same way, because she had felt something like them before.

Lydgate could only say, “Poor, poor darling!”—­but he secretly wondered over the terrible tenacity of this mild creature.  There was gathering within him an amazed sense of his powerlessness over Rosamond.  His superior knowledge and mental force, instead of being, as he had imagined, a shrine to consult on all occasions, was simply set aside on every practical question.  He had regarded Rosamond’s cleverness as precisely of the receptive kind which became a woman.  He was now beginning to find out what that cleverness was—­what was the shape into which it had run as into a close network aloof and independent.  No one quicker than Rosamond to see causes and effects which lay within the track of her own tastes and interests:  she had seen clearly Lydgate’s preeminence in Middlemarch society, and could go on imaginatively tracing still more agreeable social effects when his talent should have advanced him; but for her, his professional and scientific ambition had no other relation to these desirable effects than if they had been the fortunate discovery of an ill-smelling oil.  And that oil apart, with which she had nothing to do, of course she believed in her own opinion more than she did in his.  Lydgate was astounded to find in numberless trifling matters, as well as in this last serious case of the riding, that affection did not make her compliant.  He had no doubt that the affection was there, and had no presentiment that he had done anything to repel it.  For his own part he said to himself that he loved her as tenderly as ever, and could make up his mind to her negations; but—­well!  Lydgate was much worried, and conscious of new elements in his life as noxious to him as an inlet of mud to a creature that has been used to breathe and bathe and dart after its illuminated prey in the clearest of waters.