erefore a relief when neighbors no longer considered
the house in quarantine, and when the chances of seeing Rosamond alone
were very much reduced.

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the
other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to
be done away with. Talk about the weather and other well-bred topics
is apt to seem a hollow device, and behavior can hardly become easy
unless it frankly recognizes a mutual fascination--which of course need
not mean anything deep or serious. This was the way in which Rosamond
and Lydgate slid gracefully into ease, and made their intercourse
lively again. Visitors came and went as usual, there was once more
music in the drawing-room, and all the extra hospitality of Mr. Vincy's
mayoralty returned. Lydgate, whenever he could, took his seat by
Rosamond's side, and lingered to hear her music, calling himself her
captive--meaning, all the while, not to be her captive. The
preposterousness of the notion that he could at once set up a
satisfactory establishment as a married man was a sufficient guarantee
against danger. This play at being a little in love was agreeable, and
did not interfere with graver pursuits. Flirtation, after all, was not
necessarily a singeing process. Rosamond, for her part, had never
enjoyed the days so much in her life before: she was sure of being
admired by some one worth captivating, and she did not distinguish
flirtation from love, either in herself or in another. She seemed to
be sailing with a fair wind just whither she would go, and her thoughts
were much occupied with a handsome house in Lowick Gate which she hoped
would by-and-by be vacant. She was quite determined, when she was
married, to rid herself adroitly of all the visitors who were not
agreeable to her at her father's; and she imagined the drawing-room in
her favorite house with various styles of furniture.

Certainly her thoughts were much occupied with Lydgate himself; he
seemed to her almost perfect: if he had known his notes so that his
enchantment under her music had been less like an emotional elephant's,
and if he had been able to discriminate better the refinements of her
taste in dress, she could hardly have mentioned a deficiency in him.
How different he was from young Plymdale or Mr. Caius Larcher! Those
young men had not a notion of French, and could speak on no subject
with striking knowledge, except perhaps the dyeing and