g away. Fred and Rosamond had little to
say to each other now that marriage had removed her from collision with
the unpleasantness of brothers, and especially now that he had taken
what she held the stupid and even reprehensible step of giving up the
Church to take to such a business as Mr. Garth's. Hence Fred talked by
preference of what he considered indifferent news, and "a propos of
that young Ladislaw" mentioned what he had heard at Lowick Parsonage.

Now Lydgate, like Mr. Farebrother, knew a great deal more than he told,
and when he had once been set thinking about the relation between Will
and Dorothea his conjectures had gone beyond the fact. He imagined
that there was a passionate attachment on both sides, and this struck
him as much too serious to gossip about. He remembered Will's
irritability when he had mentioned Mrs. Casaubon, and was the more
circumspect. On the whole his surmises, in addition to what he knew of
the fact, increased his friendliness and tolerance towards Ladislaw,
and made him understand the vacillation which kept him at Middlemarch
after he had said that he should go away. It was significant of the
separateness between Lydgate's mind and Rosamond's that he had no
impulse to speak to her on the subject; indeed, he did not quite trust
her reticence towards Will. And he was right there; though he had no
vision of the way in which her mind would act in urging her to speak.

When she repeated Fred's news to Lydgate, he said, "Take care you don't
drop the faintest hint to Ladislaw, Rosy. He is likely to fly out as
if you insulted him. Of course it is a painful affair."

Rosamond turned her neck and patted her hair, looking the image of
placid indifference. But the next time Will came when Lydgate was
away, she spoke archly about his not going to London as he had
threatened.

"I know all about it. I have a confidential little bird," said she,
showing very pretty airs of her head over the bit of work held high
between her active fingers. "There is a powerful magnet in this
neighborhood."

"To be sure there is. Nobody knows that better than you," said Will,
with light gallantry, but inwardly prepared to be angry.

"It is really the most charming romance: Mr. Casaubon jealous, and
foreseeing that there was no one else whom Mrs. Casaubon would so much
like to marry, and no one who would so much like to marry her as a
certain gentleman; and then laying a plan to spoil all by making