a baronet. Now
that she and the stranger had met, reality proved much more moving than
anticipation, and Rosamond could not doubt that this was the great
epoch of her life. She judged of her own symptoms as those of
awakening love, and she held it still more natural that Mr. Lydgate
should have fallen in love at first sight of her. These things
happened so often at balls, and why not by the morning light, when the
complexion showed all the better for it? Rosamond, though no older
than Mary, was rather used to being fallen in love with; but she, for
her part, had remained indifferent and fastidiously critical towards
both fresh sprig and faded bachelor. And here was Mr. Lydgate suddenly
corresponding to her ideal, being altogether foreign to Middlemarch,
carrying a certain air of distinction congruous with good family, and
possessing connections which offered vistas of that middle-class
heaven, rank; a man of talent, also, whom it would be especially
delightful to enslave: in fact, a man who had touched her nature quite
newly, and brought a vivid interest into her life which was better than
any fancied "might-be" such as she was in the habit of opposing to the
actual.

Thus, in riding home, both the brother and the sister were preoccupied
and inclined to be silent. Rosamond, whose basis for her structure had
the usual airy slightness, was of remarkably detailed and realistic
imagination when the foundation had been once presupposed; and before
they had ridden a mile she was far on in the costume and introductions
of her wedded life, having determined on her house in Middle-march, and
foreseen the visits she would pay to her husband's high-bred relatives
at a distance, whose finished manners she could appropriate as
thoroughly as she had done her school accomplishments, preparing
herself thus for vaguer elevations which might ultimately come. There
was nothing financial, still less sordid, in her previsions: she cared
about what were considered refinements, and not about the money that
was to pay for them.

Fred's mind, on the other hand, was busy with an anxiety which even his
ready hopefulness could not immediately quell. He saw no way of
eluding Featherstone's stupid demand without incurring consequences
which he liked less even than the task of fulfilling it. His father
was already out of humor with him, and would be still more so if he
were the occasion of any additional coolness between his own family and