prompt:
Chapter: They numbered scarce eight summers when a name
        Rose on their souls and stirred such motions there
    As thrill the buds and shape their hidden frame
        At penetration of the quickening air:
    His name who told of loyal Evan Dhu,
        Of quaint Bradwardine, and Vich Ian Vor,
    Making the little world their childhood knew
        Large with a land of mountain lake and scaur,
    And larger yet with wonder love belief
        Toward Walter Scott who living far away
    Sent them this wealth of joy and noble grief.
        The book and they must part, but day by day,
            In lines that thwart like portly spiders ran
            They wrote the tale, from Tully Veolan.

The evening that Fred Vincy walked to Lowick parsonage (he had begun to
see that this was a world in which even a spirited young man must
sometimes walk for want of a horse to carry him) he set out at five
o'clock and called on Mrs. Garth by the way, wishing to assure himself
that she accepted their new relations willingly.

He found the family group, dogs and cats included, under the great
apple-tree in the orchard.  It was a festival with Mrs. Garth, for her
eldest son, Christy, her peculiar joy and pride, had come home for a
short holiday--Christy, who held it the most desirable thing in the
world to be a tutor, to study all literatures and be a regenerate
Porson, and who was an incorporate criticism on poor Fred, a sort of
object-lesson given to him by the educational mother.  Christy himself,
a square-browed, broad-shouldered masculine edition of his mother not
much higher than Fred's shoulder--which made it the harder that he
should be held superior--was always as simple as possible, and thought
no more of Fred's disinclination to scholarship than of a giraffe's,
wishing that he himself were more of the same height.  He was lying on
the ground now by his mother's chair, with his straw hat laid flat over
his eyes, while Jim on the other side was reading aloud from that
beloved writer who has made a chief part in the happiness of many young
lives.  The volume was "Ivanhoe," and Jim was in the great archery
scene at the tournament, but suffered much interruption from Ben, who
had fetched his own old bow and arrows, and was making himself
dreadfully disagreeable, Letty thought, by begging all present to
observe his random shots, which no one wished to do except Brownie, the
active-minded but probably shallow mongrel, while the grizzled
Newfoundland lying in the sun looked on with the dull-eyed neutrality
of extreme old age.  Letty herself, showing as to her mouth and
pinafore some slight signs that she had been assisting at the gathering
of the cherries which stood in a coral-heap on the tea-table, was now
seated on the grass, listening open-eyed to the reading.

But the centre of interest was changed for all by the arrival of Fred
Vincy.  When, seating himself on a garden-stool, he said that he was on
his way to Lowick Parsonage, Ben, who had thrown down his bow, and
snatched up a reluctant half-grown kitten instead, strode across Fred's
outstretched leg, and said "Take me!"

"Oh, and me too," said Letty.

"You can't keep up with Fred and me," said Ben.

"Yes, I can.  Mother, please say that I am to go," urged Letty, whose
life was much checkered by resistance to her depreciation as a girl.

"I shall stay with Christy," observed Jim; as much as to say that he
had the advantage of those simpletons; whereupon Letty put her hand up
to her head and looked with jealous indecision from the one to the
other.

"Let us all go and see Mary," said Christy, opening his arms.

"No, my dear child, we must not go in a swarm to the parsonage.  And
that old Glasgow suit of yours would never do.  Besides, your father
will come home.  We must let Fred go alone.  He can tell Mary that you
are here, and she will come back to-morrow."

Christy glanced at his own threadbare knees, and then at Fred's
beautiful white trousers.  Certainly Fred's tailoring suggested the
advantages of an English university, and he had a graceful way even of
looking warm and of pushing his hair back with his handkerchief.

"Children, run away," said Mrs. Garth; "it is too warm to hang about
your friends.  Take your brother and show him the rabbits."

The eldest understood, and led off the children immediately.  Fred felt
that Mrs. Garth wished to give him an opportunity of saying anything he
had to say, but he could only begin by observing--

"How glad you must be to have Christy here!"

"Yes; he has come sooner than I expected.  He got down from the coach
at nine o'clock, just after his father went out.  I am longing for
Caleb to come and hear what wonderful progress Christy is making.  He
has paid his expenses for the last year by giving lessons, carrying on
hard study at the same time.  He hopes soon to get a private tutorship
and go abroad."

"He is a great fellow," said Fred, to whom these cheerful truths had a
medicinal taste, "and no trouble to anybody." After a slight pause, he
added, "But I fear you will think that I am going to be a great deal of
trouble to Mr. Garth."

"Caleb likes taking trouble: he is one of those men who always do more
than any one would have thought of asking them to do," answered Mrs.
Garth.  She was knitting, and could either look at Fred or not, as she
chose--always an advantage when one is bent on loading speech with
salutary meaning; and though Mrs. Garth intended to be duly reserved,
she did wish to say something that Fred might be the better for.

"I know you think me very undeserving, Mrs. Garth, and with good
reason," said Fred, his spirit rising a little at the perception of
something like a disposition to lecture him.  "I happen to have behaved
just the worst to the people I can't help wishing for the most from.
But while two men like Mr. Garth and Mr. Farebrother have not given me
up, I don't see why I should give myself up."  Fred thought it might be
well to suggest these masculine examples to Mrs. Garth.

"Assuredly," said she, with gathering emphasis.  "A young man for whom
two such elders had devoted themselves would indeed be culpable if he
threw himself away and made their sacrifices vain."

Fred wondered a little at this strong language, but only said, "I hope
it will not be so with me, Mrs. Garth, since I have some encouragement
to believe that I may win Mary.  Mr. Garth has told you about that?
You were not surprised, I dare say?"  Fred ended, innocently referring
only to his own love as probably evident enough.

"Not surprised that Mary has given you encouragement?" returned Mrs.
Garth, who thought it would be well for Fred to be more alive to the
fact that Mary's friends could not possibly have wished this
beforehand, whatever the Vincys might suppose.  "Yes, I confess I was
surprised."

"She never did give me any--not the least in the world, when I talked
to her myself," said Fred, eager to vindicate Mary.  "But when I asked
Mr. Farebrother to speak for me, she allowed him to tell me there was a
hope."

The power of admonition which had begun to stir in Mrs. Garth had not
yet discharged itself.  It was a little too provoking even for _her_
self-control that this blooming youngster should flourish on the
disappointments of sadder and wiser people--making a meal of a
nightingale and never knowing it--and that all the while his family
should suppose that hers was in eager need of this sprig; and her
vexation had fermented the more actively because of its total
repression towards her husband.  Exemplary wives will sometimes find
scapegoats in this way.  She now said with energetic decision, "You
made a great mistake, Fred, in asking Mr. Farebrother to speak for you."

"Did I?" said Fred, reddening instantaneously.  He was alarmed, but at
a loss to know what Mrs. Garth meant, and added, in an apologetic tone,
"Mr. Farebrother has always been such a friend of ours; and Mary, I
knew, would listen to him gravely; and he took it on himself quite
readily."

"Yes, young people are usually blind to everything but their own
wishes, and seldom imagine how much those wishes cost others," said
Mrs. Garth. She did not mean to go beyond this salutary general
doctrine, and threw her indignation into a needless unwinding of her
worsted, knitting her brow at it with a grand air.

"I cannot conceive how it could be any pain to Mr. Farebrother," said
Fred, who nevertheless felt that surprising conceptions were beginning
to form themselves.

"Precisely; you cannot conceive," said Mrs. Garth, cutting her words as
neatly as possible.

For a moment Fred looked at the horizon with a dismayed anxiety, and
then turning with a quick movement said almost sharply--

"Do you mean to say, Mrs. Garth, that Mr. Farebrother is in love with
Mary?"

"And if it were so, Fred, I think you are the last person who ought to
be surprised," returned Mrs. Garth, laying her knitting down beside her
and folding her arms.  It was an unwonted sign of emotion in her that
she should put her work out of her hands.  In fact her feelings were
divided between the satisfaction of giving Fred his discipline and the
sense of having gone a little too far.  Fred took his hat and stick and
rose quickly.

"Then you think I am standing in his way, and in Mary's too?" he said,
in a tone which seemed to demand an answer.

Mrs. Garth could not speak immediately.  She had brought herself into
the unpleasant position of being called on to say what she really felt,
yet what she knew there were strong reasons for concealing.  And to her
the consciousness of having exceeded in words was peculiarly
mortifying.  Besides, Fred had given out unexpected electricity, and he
now added, "Mr. Garth seemed pleased that Mary should be attached to
me.  He could not have known anything of this."

Mrs. Garth felt a severe twinge at this mention of her husband, the
fear that Caleb might think her in the wrong not being easily
endurable.  She answered, wanting to check unintended consequences--

"I spoke from inference only.  I am not aware that Mary knows anything
of the matter."

But she hesitated to beg that he would keep entire silence on a subject
which she had herself unnecessarily mentioned, not being used to stoop
in that way; and while she was hesitating there was already a rush of
unintended consequences under the apple-tree where the tea-things
stood.  Ben, bouncing across the grass with Brownie at his heels, and
seeing the kitten dragging the knitting by a lengthening line of wool,
shouted and clapped his hands; Brownie barked, the kitten, desperate,
jumped on the tea-table and upset the milk, then jumped down again and
swept half the cherries with it; and Ben, snatching up the half-knitted
sock-top, fitted it over the kitten's head as a new source of madness,
while Letty arriving cried out to her mother against this cruelty--it
was a history as full of sensation as "This is the house that Jack
built." Mrs. Garth was obliged to interfere, the other young ones came
up and the tete-a-tete with Fred was ended.  He got away as soon as he
could, and Mrs. Garth could only imply some retractation of her
severity by saying "God bless you" when she shook hands with him.

She was unpleasantly conscious that she had been on the verge of
speaking as "one of the foolish women speaketh"--telling first and
entreating silence after.  But she had not entreated silence, and to
prevent Caleb's blame she determined to blame herself and confess all
to him that very night.  It was curious what an awful tribunal the mild
Caleb's was to her, whenever he set it up.  But she meant to point out
to him that the revelation might do Fred Vincy a great deal of good.

No doubt it was having a strong effect on him as he walked to Lowick.
Fred's light hopeful nature had perhaps never had so much of a bruise
as from this suggestion that if he had been out of the way Mary might
have made a thoroughly good match.  Also he was piqued that he had been
what he called such a stupid lout as to ask that intervention from Mr.
Farebrother.  But it was not in a lover's nature--it was not in
Fred's, that the new anxiety raised about Mary's feeling should not
surmount every other.  Notwithstanding his trust in Mr. Farebrother's
generosity, notwithstanding what Mary had said to him, Fred could not
help feeling that he had a rival: it was a new consciousness, and he
objected to it extremely, not being in the least ready to give up Mary
for her good, being ready rather to fight for her with any man
whatsoever.  But the fighting with Mr. Farebrother must be of a
metaphorical kind, which was much more difficult to Fred than the
muscular.  Certainly this experience was a discipline for Fred hardly
less sharp than his disappointment about his uncle's will.  The iron
had not entered into his soul, but he had begun to imagine what the
sharp edge would be.  It did not once occur to Fred that Mrs. Garth
might be mistaken about Mr. Farebrother, but he suspected that she
might be wrong about Mary.  Mary had been staying at the parsonage
lately, and her mother might know very little of what had been passing
in her mind.

He did not feel easier when he found her looking cheerful with the
three ladies in the drawing-room. They were in animated discussion on
some subject which was dropped when he entered, and Mary was copying
the labels from a heap of shallow cabinet drawers, in a minute
handwriting which she was skilled in.  Mr. Farebrother was somewhere in
the village, and the three ladies knew nothing of Fred's peculiar
relation to Mary: it was impossible for either of them to propose that
they should walk round the garden, and Fred predicted to himself that
he should have to go away without saying a word to her in private.  He
told her first of Christy's arrival and then of his own engagement with
her father; and he was comforted by seeing that this latter news
touched her keenly.  She said hurriedly, "I am so glad," and then bent
over her writing to hinder any one from noticing her face.  But here
was a subject which Mrs. Farebrother could not let pass.

"You don't mean, my dear Miss Garth, that you are glad to hear of a
young man giving up the Church for which he was educated: you only mean
that things being so, you are glad that he should be under an excellent
man like your father."

"No, really, Mrs. Farebrother, I am glad of both, I fear," said Mary,
cleverly getting rid of one rebellious tear.  "I have a dreadfully
secular mind.  I never liked any clergyman except the Vicar of
Wakefield and Mr. Farebrother."

"Now why, my dear?" said Mrs. Farebrother, pausing on her large wooden
knitting-needles and looking at Mary.  "You have always a good reason
for your opinions, but this astonishes me.  Of course I put out of the
question those who preach new doctrine.  But why should you dislike
clergymen?"

"Oh dear," said Mary, her face breaking into merriment as she seemed to
consider a moment, "I don't like their neckcloths."

"Why, you don't like Camden's, then," said Miss Winifred, in some
anxiety.

"Yes, I do," said Mary.  "I don't like the other clergymen's
neckcloths, because it is they who wear them."

"How very puzzling!" said Miss Noble, feeling that her own intellect
was probably deficient.

"My dear, you are joking.  You would have better reasons than these for
slighting so respectable a class of men," said Mrs. Farebrother,
majestically.

"Miss Garth has such severe notions of what people should be that it is
difficult to satisfy her," said Fred.

"Well, I am glad at least that she makes an exception in favor of my
son," said the old lady.

Mary was wondering at Fred's piqued tone, when Mr. Farebrother came in
and had to hear the news about the engagement under Mr. Garth.  At the
end he said with quiet satisfaction, "_That_ is right;" and then bent
to look at Mary's labels and praise her handwriting.  Fred felt
horribly jealous--was glad, of course, that Mr. Farebrother was so
estimable, but wished that he had been ugly and fat as men at forty
sometimes are.  It was clear what the end would be, since Mary openly
placed Farebrother above everybody, and these women were all evidently
encouraging the affair.  He was feeling sure that he should have no
chance of speaking to Mary, when Mr. Farebrother said--

"Fred, help me to carry these drawers back into my study--you have
never seen my fine new study.  Pray come too, Miss Garth.  I want you
to see a stupendous spider I found this morning."

Mary at once saw the Vicar's intention.  He had never since the
memorable evening deviated from his old pastoral kindness towards her,
and her momentary wonder and doubt had quite gone to sleep.  Mary was
accustomed to think rather rigorously of what was probable, and if a
belief flattered her vanity she felt warned to dismiss it as
ridiculous, having early had much exercise in such dismissals.  It was
as she had foreseen: when Fred had been asked to admire the fittings of
the study, and she had been asked to admire the spider, Mr. Farebrother
said--

"Wait here a minute or two.  I am going to look out an engraving which
Fred is tall enough to hang for me.  I shall be back in a few minutes."
And then he went out.  Nevertheless, the first word Fred said to Mary
was--

"It is of no use, whatever I do, Mary.  You are sure to marry
Farebrother at last."  There was some rage in his tone.

"What do you mean, Fred?"  Mary exclaimed indignantly, blushing deeply,
and surprised out of all her readiness in reply.

"It is impossible that you should not see it all clearly enough--you
who see everything."

"I only see that you are behaving very ill, Fred, in speaking so of Mr.
Farebrother after he has pleaded your cause in every way.  How can you
have taken up such an idea?"

Fred was rather deep, in spite of his irritation.  If Mary had really
been unsuspicious, there was no good in telling her what Mrs. Garth had
said.

"It follows as a matter of course," he replied.  "When you are
continually seeing a man who beats me in everything, and whom you set
up above everybody, I can have no fair chance."

"You are very ungrateful, Fred," said Mary.  "I wish I had never told
Mr. Farebrother that I cared for you in the least."

"No, I am not ungrateful; I should be the happiest fellow in the world
if it were not for this.  I told your father everything, and he was
very kind; he treated me as if I were his son.  I could go at the work
with a will, writing and everything, if it were not for this."

"For this? for what?" said Mary, imagining now that something specific
must have been said or done.

"This dreadful certainty that I shall be bowled out by Farebrother."
Mary was appeased by her inclination to laugh.

"Fred," she said, peeping round to catch his eyes, which were sulkily
turned away from her, "you are too delightfully ridiculous.  If you
were not such a charming simpleton, what a temptation this would be to
play the wicked coquette, and let you suppose that somebody besides you
has made love to me."

"Do you really like me best, Mary?" said Fred, turning eyes full of
affection on her, and trying to take her hand.

"I don't like you at all at this moment," said Mary, retreating, and
putting her hands behind her.  "I only said that no mortal ever made
love to me besides you.  And that is no argument that a very wise man
ever will," she ended, merrily.

"I wish you would tell me that you could not possibly ever think of
him," said Fred.

"Never dare to mention this any more to me, Fred," said Mary, getting
serious again.  "I don't know whether it is more stupid or ungenerous
in you not to see that Mr. Farebrother has left us together on purpose
that we might speak freely.  I am disappointed that you should be so
blind to his delicate feeling."

There was no time to say any more before Mr. Farebrother came back with
the engraving; and Fred had to return to the drawing-room still with a
jealous dread in his heart, but yet with comforting arguments from
Mary's words and manner.  The result of the conversation was on the
whole more painful to Mary: inevitably her attention had taken a new
attitude, and she saw the possibility of new interpretations.  She was
in a position in which she seemed to herself to be slighting Mr.
Farebrother, and this, in relation to a man who is much honored, is
always dangerous to the firmness of a grateful woman.  To have a reason
for going home the next day was a relief, for Mary earnestly desired to
be always clear that she loved Fred best.  When a tender affection has
been storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we
could accept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives.
And we can set a watch over our affections and our constancy as we can
over other treasures.

"Fred has lost all his other expectations; he must keep this," Mary
said to herself, with a smile curling her lips.  It was impossible to
help fleeting visions of another kind--new dignities and an
acknowledged value of which she had often felt the absence.  But these
things with Fred outside them, Fred forsaken and looking sad for the
want of her, could never tempt her deliberate thought.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Fred is on his way to Lowick parsonage, where Mary Garth is staying with Miss Farebrother to help her set up the new house. On his way, he stops to see Mrs. Garth. She hints that it was wrong of him to ask Mr. Farebrother to talk to Mary for him, and Fred realizes that Mr. Farebrother must be in love with Mary, too. He's instantly jealous, of course, even though Mrs. Garth admits that Mary doesn't know anything about it. When he arrives at the Lowick parsonage, he finds Mary helping Miss Farebrother, Miss Noble, and Mrs. Farebrother to organize some cabinets. He tells her that he's going to work for her father, and she says she's glad. When Mr. Farebrother gets back, he comes up with an excuse to leave Mary and Fred alone together for a few minutes. Fred gets sulky with Mary because he thinks she's going to marry Mr. Farebrother, and Mary tells him not to be ridiculous.


prompt:
Chapter: "For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
     Therefore in that I cannot know thy change:
     In many's looks the false heart's history
     Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange:
     But Heaven in thy creation did decree
     That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell:
     Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be
     Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell."
                                       --SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.

At the time when Mr. Vincy uttered that presentiment about Rosamond,
she herself had never had the idea that she should be driven to make
the sort of appeal which he foresaw.  She had not yet had any anxiety
about ways and means, although her domestic life had been expensive as
well as eventful.  Her baby had been born prematurely, and all the
embroidered robes and caps had to be laid by in darkness.  This
misfortune was attributed entirely to her having persisted in going out
on horseback one day when her husband had desired her not to do so; but
it must not be supposed that she had shown temper on the occasion, or
rudely told him that she would do as she liked.

What led her particularly to desire horse-exercise was a visit from
Captain Lydgate, the baronet's third son, who, I am sorry to say, was
detested by our Tertius of that name as a vapid fop "parting his hair
from brow to nape in a despicable fashion" (not followed by Tertius
himself), and showing an ignorant security that he knew the proper
thing to say on every topic.  Lydgate inwardly cursed his own folly
that he had drawn down this visit by consenting to go to his uncle's on
the wedding-tour, and he made himself rather disagreeable to Rosamond
by saying so in private.  For to Rosamond this visit was a source of
unprecedented but gracefully concealed exultation.  She was so
intensely conscious of having a cousin who was a baronet's son staying
in the house, that she imagined the knowledge of what was implied by
his presence to be diffused through all other minds; and when she
introduced Captain Lydgate to her guests, she had a placid sense that
his rank penetrated them as if it had been an odor.  The satisfaction
was enough for the time to melt away some disappointment in the
conditions of marriage with a medical man even of good birth: it seemed
now that her marriage was visibly as well as ideally floating her above
the Middlemarch level, and the future looked bright with letters and
visits to and from Quallingham, and vague advancement in consequence
for Tertius.  Especially as, probably at the Captain's suggestion, his
married sister, Mrs. Mengan, had come with her maid, and stayed two
nights on her way from town.  Hence it was clearly worth while for
Rosamond to take pains with her music and the careful selection of her
lace.

As to Captain Lydgate himself, his low brow, his aquiline nose bent on
one side, and his rather heavy utterance, might have been
disadvantageous in any young gentleman who had not a military bearing
and mustache to give him what is doted on by some flower-like blond
heads as "style."  He had, moreover, that sort of high-breeding which
consists in being free from the petty solicitudes of middle-class
gentility, and he was a great critic of feminine charms.  Rosamond
delighted in his admiration now even more than she had done at
Quallingham, and he found it easy to spend several hours of the day in
flirting with her.  The visit altogether was one of the pleasantest
larks he had ever had, not the less so perhaps because he suspected
that his queer cousin Tertius wished him away: though Lydgate, who
would rather (hyperbolically speaking) have died than have failed in
polite hospitality, suppressed his dislike, and only pretended
generally not to hear what the gallant officer said, consigning the
task of answering him to Rosamond.  For he was not at all a jealous
husband, and preferred leaving a feather-headed young gentleman alone
with his wife to bearing him company.

"I wish you would talk more to the Captain at dinner, Tertius," said
Rosamond, one evening when the important guest was gone to Loamford to
see some brother officers stationed there.  "You really look so absent
sometimes--you seem to be seeing through his head into something behind
it, instead of looking at him."

"My dear Rosy, you don't expect me to talk much to such a conceited ass
as that, I hope," said Lydgate, brusquely.  "If he got his head broken,
I might look at it with interest, not before."

"I cannot conceive why you should speak of your cousin so
contemptuously," said Rosamond, her fingers moving at her work while
she spoke with a mild gravity which had a touch of disdain in it.

"Ask Ladislaw if he doesn't think your Captain the greatest bore he
ever met with.  Ladislaw has almost forsaken the house since he came."

Rosamond thought she knew perfectly well why Mr. Ladislaw disliked the
Captain: he was jealous, and she liked his being jealous.

"It is impossible to say what will suit eccentric persons," she
answered, "but in my opinion Captain Lydgate is a thorough gentleman,
and I think you ought not, out of respect to Sir Godwin, to treat him
with neglect."

"No, dear; but we have had dinners for him.  And he comes in and goes
out as he likes.  He doesn't want me."

"Still, when he is in the room, you might show him more attention.  He
may not be a phoenix of cleverness in your sense; his profession is
different; but it would be all the better for you to talk a little on
his subjects.  _I_ think his conversation is quite agreeable.  And he
is anything but an unprincipled man."

"The fact is, you would wish me to be a little more like him, Rosy,"
said Lydgate, in a sort of resigned murmur, with a smile which was not
exactly tender, and certainly not merry.  Rosamond was silent and did
not smile again; but the lovely curves of her face looked good-tempered
enough without smiling.

Those words of Lydgate's were like a sad milestone marking how far he
had travelled from his old dreamland, in which Rosamond Vincy appeared
to be that perfect piece of womanhood who would reverence her husband's
mind after the fashion of an accomplished mermaid, using her comb and
looking-glass and singing her song for the relaxation of his adored
wisdom alone.  He had begun to distinguish between that imagined
adoration and the attraction towards a man's talent because it gives
him prestige, and is like an order in his button-hole or an Honorable
before his name.

It might have been supposed that Rosamond had travelled too, since she
had found the pointless conversation of Mr. Ned Plymdale perfectly
wearisome; but to most mortals there is a stupidity which is
unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable--else,
indeed, what would become of social bonds?  Captain Lydgate's stupidity
was delicately scented, carried itself with "style," talked with a good
accent, and was closely related to Sir Godwin.  Rosamond found it quite
agreeable and caught many of its phrases.

Therefore since Rosamond, as we know, was fond of horseback, there were
plenty of reasons why she should be tempted to resume her riding when
Captain Lydgate, who had ordered his man with two horses to follow him
and put up at the "Green Dragon," begged her to go out on the gray
which he warranted to be gentle and trained to carry a lady--indeed, he
had bought it for his sister, and was taking it to Quallingham.
Rosamond went out the first time without telling her husband, and came
back before his return; but the ride had been so thorough a success,
and she declared herself so much the better in consequence, that he was
informed of it with full reliance on his consent that she should go
riding again.

On the contrary Lydgate was more than hurt--he was utterly confounded
that she had risked herself on a strange horse without referring the
matter to his wish.  After the first almost thundering exclamations of
astonishment, which sufficiently warned Rosamond of what was coming, he
was silent for some moments.

"However, you have come back safely," he said, at last, in a decisive
tone.  "You will not go again, Rosy; that is understood.  If it were
the quietest, most familiar horse in the world, there would always be
the chance of accident.  And you know very well that I wished you to
give up riding the roan on that account."

"But there is the chance of accident indoors, Tertius."

"My darling, don't talk nonsense," said Lydgate, in an imploring tone;
"surely I am the person to judge for you.  I think it is enough that I
say you are not to go again."

Rosamond was arranging her hair before dinner, and the reflection of
her head in the glass showed no change in its loveliness except a
little turning aside of the long neck.  Lydgate had been moving about
with his hands in his pockets, and now paused near her, as if he
awaited some assurance.

"I wish you would fasten up my plaits, dear," said Rosamond, letting
her arms fall with a little sigh, so as to make a husband ashamed of
standing there like a brute.  Lydgate had often fastened the plaits
before, being among the deftest of men with his large finely formed
fingers.  He swept up the soft festoons of plaits and fastened in the
tall comb (to such uses do men come!); and what could he do then but
kiss the exquisite nape which was shown in all its delicate curves?
But when we do what we have done before, it is often with a difference.
Lydgate was still angry, and had not forgotten his point.

"I shall tell the Captain that he ought to have known better than offer
you his horse," he said, as he moved away.

"I beg you will not do anything of the kind, Tertius," said Rosamond,
looking at him with something more marked than usual in her speech.
"It will be treating me as if I were a child.  Promise that you will
leave the subject to me."

There did seem to be some truth in her objection.  Lydgate said, "Very
well," with a surly obedience, and thus the discussion ended with his
promising Rosamond, and not with her promising him.

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.

Rosamond was soon looking lovelier than ever at her worktable, enjoying
drives in her father's phaeton and thinking it likely that she might be
invited to Quallingham.  She knew that she was a much more exquisite
ornament to the drawing-room there than any daughter of the family, and
in reflecting that the gentlemen were aware of that, did not perhaps
sufficiently consider whether the ladies would be eager to see
themselves surpassed.

Lydgate, relieved from anxiety about her, relapsed into what she
inwardly called his moodiness--a name which to her covered his
thoughtful preoccupation with other subjects than herself, as well as
that uneasy look of the brow and distaste for all ordinary things as if
they were mixed with bitter herbs, which really made a sort of
weather-glass to his vexation and foreboding.  These latter states of
mind had one cause amongst others, which he had generously but
mistakenly avoided mentioning to Rosamond, lest it should affect her
health and spirits.  Between him and her indeed there was that total
missing of each other's mental track, which is too evidently possible
even between persons who are continually thinking of each other.  To
Lydgate it seemed that he had been spending month after month in
sacrificing more than half of his best intent and best power to his
tenderness for Rosamond; bearing her little claims and interruptions
without impatience, and, above all, bearing without betrayal of
bitterness to look through less and less of interfering illusion at the
blank unreflecting surface her mind presented to his ardor for the more
impersonal ends of his profession and his scientific study, an ardor
which he had fancied that the ideal wife must somehow worship as
sublime, though not in the least knowing why.  But his endurance was
mingled with a self-discontent which, if we know how to be candid, we
shall confess to make more than half our bitterness under grievances,
wife or husband included.  It always remains true that if we had been
greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.  Lydgate
was aware that his concessions to Rosamond were often little more than
the lapse of slackening resolution, the creeping paralysis apt to seize
an enthusiasm which is out of adjustment to a constant portion of our
lives.  And on Lydgate's enthusiasm there was constantly pressing not a
simple weight of sorrow, but the biting presence of a petty degrading
care, such as casts the blight of irony over all higher effort.

This was the care which he had hitherto abstained from mentioning to
Rosamond; and he believed, with some wonder, that it had never entered
her mind, though certainly no difficulty could be less mysterious.  It
was an inference with a conspicuous handle to it, and had been easily
drawn by indifferent observers, that Lydgate was in debt; and he could
not succeed in keeping out of his mind for long together that he was
every day getting deeper into that swamp, which tempts men towards it
with such a pretty covering of flowers and verdure.  It is wonderful
how soon a man gets up to his chin there--in a condition in which,
in spite of himself, he is forced to think chiefly of release, though he
had a scheme of the universe in his soul.

Eighteen months ago Lydgate was poor, but had never known the eager
want of small sums, and felt rather a burning contempt for any one who
descended a step in order to gain them.  He was now experiencing
something worse than a simple deficit: he was assailed by the vulgar
hateful trials of a man who has bought and used a great many things
which might have been done without, and which he is unable to pay for,
though the demand for payment has become pressing.

How this came about may be easily seen without much arithmetic or
knowledge of prices.  When a man in setting up a house and preparing
for marriage finds that his furniture and other initial expenses come
to between four and five hundred pounds more than he has capital to pay
for; when at the end of a year it appears that his household expenses,
horses and et caeteras, amount to nearly a thousand, while the proceeds
of the practice reckoned from the old books to be worth eight hundred
per annum have sunk like a summer pond and make hardly five hundred,
chiefly in unpaid entries, the plain inference is that, whether he
minds it or not, he is in debt.  Those were less expensive times than
our own, and provincial life was comparatively modest; but the ease
with which a medical man who had lately bought a practice, who thought
that he was obliged to keep two horses, whose table was supplied
without stint, and who paid an insurance on his life and a high rent
for house and garden, might find his expenses doubling his receipts,
can be conceived by any one who does not think these details beneath
his consideration.  Rosamond, accustomed from her childhood to an extravagant
household, thought that good housekeeping consisted simply in ordering
the best of everything--nothing else "answered;" and Lydgate supposed
that "if things were done at all, they must be done properly"--he did
not see how they were to live otherwise.  If each head of household
expenditure had been mentioned to him beforehand, he would have
probably observed that "it could hardly come to much," and if any one
had suggested a saving on a particular article--for example, the
substitution of cheap fish for dear--it would have appeared to him
simply a penny-wise, mean notion.  Rosamond, even without such an
occasion as Captain Lydgate's visit, was fond of giving invitations,
and Lydgate, though he often thought the guests tiresome, did not
interfere.  This sociability seemed a necessary part of professional
prudence, and the entertainment must be suitable.  It is true Lydgate
was constantly visiting the homes of the poor and adjusting his
prescriptions of diet to their small means; but, dear me! has it not by
this time ceased to be remarkable--is it not rather that we expect in
men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by
side and never compare them with each other?  Expenditure--like
ugliness and errors--becomes a totally new thing when we attach our own
personality to it, and measure it by that wide difference which is
manifest (in our own sensations) between ourselves and others.  Lydgate
believed himself to be careless about his dress, and he despised a man
who calculated the effects of his costume; it seemed to him only a
matter of course that he had abundance of fresh garments--such things
were naturally ordered in sheaves.  It must be remembered that he had
never hitherto felt the check of importunate debt, and he walked by
habit, not by self-criticism.  But the check had come.

Its novelty made it the more irritating.  He was amazed, disgusted that
conditions so foreign to all his purposes, so hatefully disconnected
with the objects he cared to occupy himself with, should have lain in
ambush and clutched him when he was unaware.  And there was not only
the actual debt; there was the certainty that in his present position
he must go on deepening it.  Two furnishing tradesmen at Brassing,
whose bills had been incurred before his marriage, and whom
uncalculated current expenses had ever since prevented him from paying,
had repeatedly sent him unpleasant letters which had forced themselves
on his attention.  This could hardly have been more galling to any
disposition than to Lydgate's, with his intense pride--his dislike of
asking a favor or being under an obligation to any one.  He had scorned
even to form conjectures about Mr. Vincy's intentions on money matters,
and nothing but extremity could have induced him to apply to his
father-in-law, even if he had not been made aware in various indirect
ways since his marriage that Mr. Vincy's own affairs were not
flourishing, and that the expectation of help from him would be
resented.  Some men easily trust in the readiness of friends; it had
never in the former part of his life occurred to Lydgate that he should
need to do so: he had never thought what borrowing would be to him; but
now that the idea had entered his mind, he felt that he would rather
incur any other hardship.  In the mean time he had no money or
prospects of money; and his practice was not getting more lucrative.

No wonder that Lydgate had been unable to suppress all signs of inward
trouble during the last few months, and now that Rosamond was regaining
brilliant health, he meditated taking her entirely into confidence on
his difficulties.  New conversance with tradesmen's bills had forced
his reasoning into a new channel of comparison: he had begun to
consider from a new point of view what was necessary and unnecessary in
goods ordered, and to see that there must be some change of habits.
How could such a change be made without Rosamond's concurrence?  The
immediate occasion of opening the disagreeable fact to her was forced
upon him.

Having no money, and having privately sought advice as to what security
could possibly be given by a man in his position, Lydgate had offered
the one good security in his power to the less peremptory creditor, who
was a silversmith and jeweller, and who consented to take on himself
the upholsterer's credit also, accepting interest for a given term.
The security necessary was a bill of sale on the furniture of his
house, which might make a creditor easy for a reasonable time about a
debt amounting to less than four hundred pounds; and the silversmith,
Mr. Dover, was willing to reduce it by taking back a portion of the
plate and any other article which was as good as new.  "Any other
article" was a phrase delicately implying jewellery, and more
particularly some purple amethysts costing thirty pounds, which Lydgate
had bought as a bridal present.

Opinions may be divided as to his wisdom in making this present: some
may think that it was a graceful attention to be expected from a man
like Lydgate, and that the fault of any troublesome consequences lay in
the pinched narrowness of provincial life at that time, which offered
no conveniences for professional people whose fortune was not
proportioned to their tastes; also, in Lydgate's ridiculous
fastidiousness about asking his friends for money.

However, it had seemed a question of no moment to him on that fine
morning when he went to give a final order for plate: in the presence
of other jewels enormously expensive, and as an addition to orders of
which the amount had not been exactly calculated, thirty pounds for
ornaments so exquisitely suited to Rosamond's neck and arms could
hardly appear excessive when there was no ready cash for it to exceed.
But at this crisis Lydgate's imagination could not help dwelling on the
possibility of letting the amethysts take their place again among Mr.
Dover's stock, though he shrank from the idea of proposing this to
Rosamond.  Having been roused to discern consequences which he had
never been in the habit of tracing, he was preparing to act on this
discernment with some of the rigor (by no means all) that he would have
applied in pursuing experiment.  He was nerving himself to this rigor
as he rode from Brassing, and meditated on the representations he must
make to Rosamond.

It was evening when he got home.  He was intensely miserable, this
strong man of nine-and-twenty and of many gifts.  He was not saying
angrily within himself that he had made a profound mistake; but the
mistake was at work in him like a recognized chronic disease, mingling
its uneasy importunities with every prospect, and enfeebling every
thought.  As he went along the passage to the drawing-room, he heard
the piano and singing.  Of course, Ladislaw was there.  It was some
weeks since Will had parted from Dorothea, yet he was still at the old
post in Middlemarch.  Lydgate had no objection in general to Ladislaw's
coming, but just now he was annoyed that he could not find his hearth
free.  When he opened the door the two singers went on towards the
key-note, raising their eyes and looking at him indeed, but not
regarding his entrance as an interruption.  To a man galled with his
harness as poor Lydgate was, it is not soothing to see two people
warbling at him, as he comes in with the sense that the painful day has
still pains in store.  His face, already paler than usual, took on a
scowl as he walked across the room and flung himself into a chair.

The singers feeling themselves excused by the fact that they had only
three bars to sing, now turned round.

"How are you, Lydgate?" said Will, coming forward to shake hands.

Lydgate took his hand, but did not think it necessary to speak.

"Have you dined, Tertius?  I expected you much earlier," said Rosamond,
who had already seen that her husband was in a "horrible humor." She
seated herself in her usual place as she spoke.

"I have dined.  I should like some tea, please," said Lydgate, curtly,
still scowling and looking markedly at his legs stretched out before
him.

Will was too quick to need more.  "I shall be off," he said, reaching
his hat.

"Tea is coming," said Rosamond; "pray don't go."

"Yes, Lydgate is bored," said Will, who had more comprehension of
Lydgate than Rosamond had, and was not offended by his manner, easily
imagining outdoor causes of annoyance.

"There is the more need for you to stay," said Rosamond, playfully, and
in her lightest accent; "he will not speak to me all the evening."

"Yes, Rosamond, I shall," said Lydgate, in his strong baritone.  "I
have some serious business to speak to you about."

No introduction of the business could have been less like that which
Lydgate had intended; but her indifferent manner had been too provoking.

"There! you see," said Will.  "I'm going to the meeting about the
Mechanics' Institute.  Good-by;" and he went quickly out of the room.

Rosamond did not look at her husband, but presently rose and took her
place before the tea-tray. She was thinking that she had never seen him
so disagreeable.  Lydgate turned his dark eyes on her and watched her
as she delicately handled the tea-service with her taper fingers, and
looked at the objects immediately before her with no curve in her face
disturbed, and yet with an ineffable protest in her air against all
people with unpleasant manners.  For the moment he lost the sense of
his wound in a sudden speculation about this new form of feminine
impassibility revealing itself in the sylph-like frame which he had
once interpreted as the sign of a ready intelligent sensitiveness.  His
mind glancing back to Laure while he looked at Rosamond, he said
inwardly, "Would _she_ kill me because I wearied her?" and then, "It is
the way with all women." But this power of generalizing which gives men
so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals, was
immediately thwarted by Lydgate's memory of wondering impressions from
the behavior of another woman--from Dorothea's looks and tones of
emotion about her husband when Lydgate began to attend him--from her
passionate cry to be taught what would best comfort that man for whose
sake it seemed as if she must quell every impulse in her except the
yearnings of faithfulness and compassion.  These revived impressions
succeeded each other quickly and dreamily in Lydgate's mind while the
tea was being brewed.  He had shut his eyes in the last instant of
reverie while he heard Dorothea saying, "Advise me--think what I can
do--he has been all his life laboring and looking forward.  He minds
about nothing else--and I mind about nothing else."

That voice of deep-souled womanhood had remained within him as the
enkindling conceptions of dead and sceptred genius had remained within
him (is there not a genius for feeling nobly which also reigns over
human spirits and their conclusions?); the tones were a music from
which he was falling away--he had really fallen into a momentary doze,
when Rosamond said in her silvery neutral way, "Here is your tea,
Tertius," setting it on the small table by his side, and then moved
back to her place without looking at him.  Lydgate was too hasty in
attributing insensibility to her; after her own fashion, she was
sensitive enough, and took lasting impressions.  Her impression now was
one of offence and repulsion.  But then, Rosamond had no scowls and had
never raised her voice: she was quite sure that no one could justly
find fault with her.

Perhaps Lydgate and she had never felt so far off each other before;
but there were strong reasons for not deferring his revelation, even if
he had not already begun it by that abrupt announcement; indeed some of
the angry desire to rouse her into more sensibility on his account
which had prompted him to speak prematurely, still mingled with his
pain in the prospect of her pain.  But he waited till the tray was
gone, the candles were lit, and the evening quiet might be counted on:
the interval had left time for repelled tenderness to return into the
old course.  He spoke kindly.

"Dear Rosy, lay down your work and come to sit by me," he said, gently,
pushing away the table, and stretching out his arm to draw a chair near
his own.

Rosamond obeyed.  As she came towards him in her drapery of transparent
faintly tinted muslin, her slim yet round figure never looked more
graceful; as she sat down by him and laid one hand on the elbow of his
chair, at last looking at him and meeting his eyes, her delicate neck
and cheek and purely cut lips never had more of that untarnished beauty
which touches as in spring-time and infancy and all sweet freshness.
It touched Lydgate now, and mingled the early moments of his love for
her with all the other memories which were stirred in this crisis of
deep trouble.  He laid his ample hand softly on hers, saying--

"Dear!" with the lingering utterance which affection gives to the word.
Rosamond too was still under the power of that same past, and her
husband was still in part the Lydgate whose approval had stirred
delight.  She put his hair lightly away from his forehead, then laid
her other hand on his, and was conscious of forgiving him.

"I am obliged to tell you what will hurt you, Rosy.  But there are
things which husband and wife must think of together.  I dare say it
has occurred to you already that I am short of money."

Lydgate paused; but Rosamond turned her neck and looked at a vase on
the mantel-piece.

"I was not able to pay for all the things we had to get before we were
married, and there have been expenses since which I have been obliged
to meet.  The consequence is, there is a large debt at Brassing--three
hundred and eighty pounds--which has been pressing on me a good while,
and in fact we are getting deeper every day, for people don't pay me
the faster because others want the money.  I took pains to keep it from
you while you were not well; but now we must think together about it,
and you must help me."

"What can--I--do, Tertius?" said Rosamond, turning her eyes on him
again.  That little speech of four words, like so many others in all
languages, is capable by varied vocal inflections of expressing all
states of mind from helpless dimness to exhaustive argumentative
perception, from the completest self-devoting fellowship to the most
neutral aloofness.  Rosamond's thin utterance threw into the words
"What can--I--do!" as much neutrality as they could hold.  They fell
like a mortal chill on Lydgate's roused tenderness.  He did not storm
in indignation--he felt too sad a sinking of the heart.  And when he
spoke again it was more in the tone of a man who forces himself to
fulfil a task.

"It is necessary for you to know, because I have to give security for a
time, and a man must come to make an inventory of the furniture."

Rosamond colored deeply.  "Have you not asked papa for money?" she
said, as soon as she could speak.

"No."

"Then I must ask him!" she said, releasing her hands from Lydgate's,
and rising to stand at two yards' distance from him.

"No, Rosy," said Lydgate, decisively.  "It is too late to do that.  The
inventory will be begun to-morrow. Remember it is a mere security: it
will make no difference: it is a temporary affair.  I insist upon it
that your father shall not know, unless I choose to tell him," added
Lydgate, with a more peremptory emphasis.

This certainly was unkind, but Rosamond had thrown him back on evil
expectation as to what she would do in the way of quiet steady
disobedience.  The unkindness seemed unpardonable to her: she was not
given to weeping and disliked it, but now her chin and lips began to
tremble and the tears welled up.  Perhaps it was not possible for
Lydgate, under the double stress of outward material difficulty and of
his own proud resistance to humiliating consequences, to imagine fully
what this sudden trial was to a young creature who had known nothing
but indulgence, and whose dreams had all been of new indulgence, more
exactly to her taste.  But he did wish to spare her as much as he
could, and her tears cut him to the heart.  He could not speak again
immediately; but Rosamond did not go on sobbing: she tried to conquer
her agitation and wiped away her tears, continuing to look before her
at the mantel-piece.

"Try not to grieve, darling," said Lydgate, turning his eyes up towards
her.  That she had chosen to move away from him in this moment of her
trouble made everything harder to say, but he must absolutely go on.
"We must brace ourselves to do what is necessary.  It is I who have
been in fault: I ought to have seen that I could not afford to live in
this way. But many things have told against me in my practice, and it
really just now has ebbed to a low point.  I may recover it, but in the
mean time we must pull up--we must change our way of living.  We shall
weather it.  When I have given this security I shall have time to look
about me; and you are so clever that if you turn your mind to managing
you will school me into carefulness.  I have been a thoughtless rascal
about squaring prices--but come, dear, sit down and forgive me."

Lydgate was bowing his neck under the yoke like a creature who had
talons, but who had Reason too, which often reduces us to meekness.
When he had spoken the last words in an imploring tone, Rosamond
returned to the chair by his side.  His self-blame gave her some hope
that he would attend to her opinion, and she said--

"Why can you not put off having the inventory made?  You can send the
men away to-morrow when they come."

"I shall not send them away," said Lydgate, the peremptoriness rising
again.  Was it of any use to explain?

"If we left Middlemarch? there would of course be a sale, and that
would do as well."

"But we are not going to leave Middlemarch."

"I am sure, Tertius, it would be much better to do so.  Why can we not
go to London?  Or near Durham, where your family is known?"

"We can go nowhere without money, Rosamond."

"Your friends would not wish you to be without money.  And surely these
odious tradesmen might be made to understand that, and to wait, if you
would make proper representations to them."

"This is idle Rosamond," said Lydgate, angrily.  "You must learn to
take my judgment on questions you don't understand.  I have made
necessary arrangements, and they must be carried out.  As to friends, I
have no expectations whatever from them, and shall not ask them for
anything."

Rosamond sat perfectly still.  The thought in her mind was that if she
had known how Lydgate would behave, she would never have married him.

"We have no time to waste now on unnecessary words, dear," said
Lydgate, trying to be gentle again.  "There are some details that I
want to consider with you.  Dover says he will take a good deal of the
plate back again, and any of the jewellery we like.  He really behaves
very well."

"Are we to go without spoons and forks then?" said Rosamond, whose very
lips seemed to get thinner with the thinness of her utterance.  She was
determined to make no further resistance or suggestions.

"Oh no, dear!" said Lydgate.  "But look here," he continued, drawing a
paper from his pocket and opening it; "here is Dover's account.  See, I
have marked a number of articles, which if we returned them would
reduce the amount by thirty pounds and more.  I have not marked any
of the jewellery."  Lydgate had really felt this point of the jewellery
very bitter to himself; but he had overcome the feeling by severe
argument.  He could not propose to Rosamond that she should return any
particular present of his, but he had told himself that he was bound to
put Dover's offer before her, and her inward prompting might make the
affair easy.

"It is useless for me to look, Tertius," said Rosamond, calmly; "you
will return what you please."  She would not turn her eyes on the
paper, and Lydgate, flushing up to the roots of his hair, drew it back
and let it fall on his knee.  Meanwhile Rosamond quietly went out of
the room, leaving Lydgate helpless and wondering.  Was she not coming
back?  It seemed that she had no more identified herself with him than
if they had been creatures of different species and opposing interests.
He tossed his head and thrust his hands deep into his pockets with a
sort of vengeance.  There was still science--there were still good
objects to work for.  He must give a tug still--all the stronger
because other satisfactions were going.

But the door opened and Rosamond re-entered. She carried the leather
box containing the amethysts, and a tiny ornamental basket which
contained other boxes, and laying them on the chair where she had been
sitting, she said, with perfect propriety in her air--

"This is all the jewellery you ever gave me.  You can return what you
like of it, and of the plate also.  You will not, of course, expect me
to stay at home to-morrow. I shall go to papa's."

To many women the look Lydgate cast at her would have been more
terrible than one of anger: it had in it a despairing acceptance of the
distance she was placing between them.

"And when shall you come back again?" he said, with a bitter edge on
his accent.

"Oh, in the evening.  Of course I shall not mention the subject to
mamma."  Rosamond was convinced that no woman could behave more
irreproachably than she was behaving; and she went to sit down at her
work-table. Lydgate sat meditating a minute or two, and the result was
that he said, with some of the old emotion in his tone--

"Now we have been united, Rosy, you should not leave me to myself in
the first trouble that has come."

"Certainly not," said Rosamond; "I shall do everything it becomes me to
do."

"It is not right that the thing should be left to servants, or that I
should have to speak to them about it.  And I shall be obliged to go
out--I don't know how early.  I understand your shrinking from the
humiliation of these money affairs.  But, my dear Rosamond, as a
question of pride, which I feel just as much as you can, it is surely
better to manage the thing ourselves, and let the servants see as
little of it as possible; and since you are my wife, there is no
hindering your share in my disgraces--if there were disgraces."

Rosamond did not answer immediately, but at last she said, "Very well,
I will stay at home."

"I shall not touch these jewels, Rosy.  Take them away again.  But I
will write out a list of plate that we may return, and that can be
packed up and sent at once."

"The servants will know _that_," said Rosamond, with the slightest
touch of sarcasm.

"Well, we must meet some disagreeables as necessities.  Where is the
ink, I wonder?" said Lydgate, rising, and throwing the account on the
larger table where he meant to write.

Rosamond went to reach the inkstand, and after setting it on the table
was going to turn away, when Lydgate, who was standing close by, put
his arm round her and drew her towards him, saying--

"Come, darling, let us make the best of things.  It will only be for a
time, I hope, that we shall have to be stingy and particular.  Kiss me."

His native warm-heartedness took a great deal of quenching, and it is a
part of manliness for a husband to feel keenly the fact that an
inexperienced girl has got into trouble by marrying him.  She received
his kiss and returned it faintly, and in this way an appearance of
accord was recovered for the time.  But Lydgate could not help looking
forward with dread to the inevitable future discussions about
expenditure and the necessity for a complete change in their way of
living.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Rosamond has had a miscarriage, and Lydgate's medical opinion is that it's because she went horseback riding while he was out, when he told her she shouldn't. She went because Lydgate's cousin, Captain Lydgate , was visiting them, Lydgate didn't much like his cousin, because the cousin is a dumb lug. But Rosamond is proud of the fact that her husband's relatives are aristocratic, and wanted to show him off by going horseback riding with him while Lydgate was at work. So she went in spite of her husband's warnings, but the horse got startled when a tree fell down, she fell, and eventually had her miscarriage. Lydgate could hardly be angry with her in that condition, so nothing is said on the subject between them. Lydgate has other things to concern him - they owe money all over town for the fancy furniture in their new house and the expensive food for the dinner parties they've given. He'd always thought that worrying about money was a vulgar thing to do, but now that he doesn't have enough to pay the bills he can understand it. He's decided to tell Rosamond all about it, and he's afraid of how she'll react. When he gets home and finds Will Ladislaw there, singing with Rosamond, he's not so happy. Will has already said goodbye to Dorothea, but hasn't left town yet. He's not remotely jealous of Will, but he had business to talk over with Rosamond. Will's no dummy, and can tell that Lydgate wants to be alone with Rosamond, so he takes off. Rosamond thinks Lydgate's being terribly unpleasant and rude. He tells her that they have to have all of their furniture and things inventoried for security against the debt they owe. She wants him to ask her father for money, but he refuses, and tells her not to go, either. She thinks he's behaving very badly, and wishes she had never married him. She's unswervingly polite about it, though, and aside from a few tears, hardly complains. But she's so cold and distant with him that it breaks his heart. She says that when the inventory people come the next day, she'll go to her parents' house. He urges her to stay at home to deal with it so that they won't have to tell the servants. She agrees, but acts like a martyr about it.


prompt:
Chapter: They said of old the Soul had human shape,
    But smaller, subtler than the fleshly self,
    So wandered forth for airing when it pleased.
    And see! beside her cherub-face there floats
    A pale-lipped form aerial whispering
    Its promptings in that little shell her ear."

News is often dispersed as thoughtlessly and effectively as that pollen
which the bees carry off (having no idea how powdery they are) when
they are buzzing in search of their particular nectar.  This fine
comparison has reference to Fred Vincy, who on that evening at Lowick
Parsonage heard a lively discussion among the ladies on the news which
their old servant had got from Tantripp concerning Mr. Casaubon's
strange mention of Mr. Ladislaw in a codicil to his will made not long
before his death.  Miss Winifred was astounded to find that her brother
had known the fact before, and observed that Camden was the most
wonderful man for knowing things and not telling them; whereupon Mary
Garth said that the codicil had perhaps got mixed up with the habits of
spiders, which Miss Winifred never would listen to.  Mrs. Farebrother
considered that the news had something to do with their having only
once seen Mr. Ladislaw at Lowick, and Miss Noble made many small
compassionate mewings.

Fred knew little and cared less about Ladislaw and the Casaubons, and
his mind never recurred to that discussion till one day calling on
Rosamond at his mother's request to deliver a message as he passed, he
happened to see Ladislaw going 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 her
forfeit her property if she did marry that gentleman--and then--and
then--and then--oh, I have no doubt the end will be thoroughly
romantic."

"Great God! what do you mean?" said Will, flushing over face and ears,
his features seeming to change as if he had had a violent shake.
"Don't joke; tell me what you mean."

"You don't really know?" said Rosamond, no longer playful, and desiring
nothing better than to tell in order that she might evoke effects.

"No!" he returned, impatiently.

"Don't know that Mr. Casaubon has left it in his will that if Mrs.
Casaubon marries you she is to forfeit all her property?"

"How do you know that it is true?" said Will, eagerly.

"My brother Fred heard it from the Farebrothers."  Will started up from
his chair and reached his hat.

"I dare say she likes you better than the property," said Rosamond,
looking at him from a distance.

"Pray don't say any more about it," said Will, in a hoarse undertone
extremely unlike his usual light voice.  "It is a foul insult to her
and to me."  Then he sat down absently, looking before him, but seeing
nothing.

"Now you are angry with _me_," said Rosamond.  "It is too bad to bear
_me_ malice.  You ought to be obliged to me for telling you."

"So I am," said Will, abruptly, speaking with that kind of double soul
which belongs to dreamers who answer questions.

"I expect to hear of the marriage," said Rosamond, playfully.

"Never!  You will never hear of the marriage!"

With those words uttered impetuously, Will rose, put out his hand to
Rosamond, still with the air of a somnambulist, and went away.

When he was gone, Rosamond left her chair and walked to the other end
of the room, leaning when she got there against a chiffonniere, and
looking out of the window wearily.  She was oppressed by ennui, and by
that dissatisfaction which in women's minds is continually turning into
a trivial jealousy, referring to no real claims, springing from no
deeper passion than the vague exactingness of egoism, and yet capable
of impelling action as well as speech.  "There really is nothing to
care for much," said poor Rosamond inwardly, thinking of the family at
Quallingham, who did not write to her; and that perhaps Tertius when he
came home would tease her about expenses.  She had already secretly
disobeyed him by asking her father to help them, and he had ended
decisively by saying, "I am more likely to want help myself."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The gossip about how Mr. Casaubon's will made it impossible for Dorothea to marry Will Ladislaw without giving up her property eventually makes its way to Rosamond. Lydgate warns her never to mention it to Will, but she ignores his advice as usual. She flirtingly mentions it to Will the next time they're alone. He's immediately angry and upset, especially because of her careless flirtatiousness. He grabs his hat and leaves. Rosamond feels vaguely jealous. She wants everyone to be in love with her, and doesn't like that she's not the center of Will's universe. It wasn't the first time she'd gone against her husband's wishes that day - she had gone to her father to ask for money that morning, and he'd said no way. She's also depressed that Lydgate's rich relatives haven't written to her.


prompt:
Chapter: Good phrases are surely, and ever were, very commendable.
                                          --Justice Shallow.

A few days afterwards--it was already the end of August--there was an
occasion which caused some excitement in Middlemarch: the public, if it
chose, was to have the advantage of buying, under the distinguished
auspices of Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, the furniture, books, and pictures
which anybody might see by the handbills to be the best in every kind,
belonging to Edwin Larcher, Esq. This was not one of the sales
indicating the depression of trade; on the contrary, it was due to Mr.
Larcher's great success in the carrying business, which warranted his
purchase of a mansion near Riverston already furnished in high style by
an illustrious Spa physician--furnished indeed with such large
framefuls of expensive flesh-painting in the dining-room, that Mrs.
Larcher was nervous until reassured by finding the subjects to be
Scriptural.  Hence the fine opportunity to purchasers which was well
pointed out in the handbills of Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, whose
acquaintance with the history of art enabled him to state that the hall
furniture, to be sold without reserve, comprised a piece of carving by
a contemporary of Gibbons.

At Middlemarch in those times a large sale was regarded as a kind of
festival.  There was a table spread with the best cold eatables, as at
a superior funeral; and facilities were offered for that
generous-drinking of cheerful glasses which might lead to generous and
cheerful bidding for undesirable articles.  Mr. Larcher's sale was the
more attractive in the fine weather because the house stood just at the
end of the town, with a garden and stables attached, in that pleasant
issue from Middlemarch called the London Road, which was also the road
to the New Hospital and to Mr. Bulstrode's retired residence, known as
the Shrubs.  In short, the auction was as good as a fair, and drew all
classes with leisure at command: to some, who risked making bids in
order simply to raise prices, it was almost equal to betting at the
races.  The second day, when the best furniture was to be sold,
"everybody" was there; even Mr. Thesiger, the rector of St. Peter's,
had looked in for a short time, wishing to buy the carved table, and
had rubbed elbows with Mr. Bambridge and Mr. Horrock.  There was a
wreath of Middlemarch ladies accommodated with seats round the large
table in the dining-room, where Mr. Borthrop Trumbull was mounted with
desk and hammer; but the rows chiefly of masculine faces behind were
often varied by incomings and outgoings both from the door and the
large bow-window opening on to the lawn.

"Everybody" that day did not include Mr. Bulstrode, whose health could
not well endure crowds and draughts.  But Mrs. Bulstrode had
particularly wished to have a certain picture--a "Supper at Emmaus,"
attributed in the catalogue to Guido; and at the last moment before the
day of the sale Mr. Bulstrode had called at the office of the
"Pioneer," of which he was now one of the proprietors, to beg of Mr.
Ladislaw as a great favor that he would obligingly use his remarkable
knowledge of pictures on behalf of Mrs. Bulstrode, and judge of the
value of this particular painting--"if," added the scrupulously polite
banker, "attendance at the sale would not interfere with the
arrangements for your departure, which I know is imminent."

This proviso might have sounded rather satirically in Will's ear if he
had been in a mood to care about such satire.  It referred to an
understanding entered into many weeks before with the proprietors of
the paper, that he should be at liberty any day he pleased to hand over
the management to the subeditor whom he had been training; since he
wished finally to quit Middlemarch.  But indefinite visions of ambition
are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly
agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve
when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary.  In such
states of mind the most incredulous person has a private leaning
towards miracle: impossible to conceive how our wish could be
fulfilled, still--very wonderful things have happened!  Will did not
confess this weakness to himself, but he lingered.  What was the use of
going to London at that time of the year?  The Rugby men who would
remember him were not there; and so far as political writing was
concerned, he would rather for a few weeks go on with the "Pioneer."
At the present moment, however, when Mr. Bulstrode was speaking to him,
he had both a strengthened resolve to go and an equally strong resolve
not to go till he had once more seen Dorothea.  Hence he replied that
he had reasons for deferring his departure a little, and would be happy
to go to the sale.

Will was in a defiant mood, his consciousness being deeply stung with
the thought that the people who looked at him probably knew a fact
tantamount to an accusation against him as a fellow with low designs
which were to be frustrated by a disposal of property.  Like most
people who assert their freedom with regard to conventional
distinction, he was prepared to be sudden and quick at quarrel with any
one who might hint that he had personal reasons for that assertion--that
there was anything in his blood, his bearing, or his character to
which he gave the mask of an opinion.  When he was under an irritating
impression of this kind he would go about for days with a defiant look,
the color changing in his transparent skin as if he were on the qui
vive, watching for something which he had to dart upon.

This expression was peculiarly noticeable in him at the sale, and those
who had only seen him in his moods of gentle oddity or of bright
enjoyment would have been struck with a contrast.  He was not sorry to
have this occasion for appearing in public before the Middlemarch
tribes of Toller, Hackbutt, and the rest, who looked down on him as an
adventurer, and were in a state of brutal ignorance about Dante--who
sneered at his Polish blood, and were themselves of a breed very much
in need of crossing.  He stood in a conspicuous place not far from the
auctioneer, with a fore-finger in each side-pocket and his head thrown
backward, not caring to speak to anybody, though he had been cordially
welcomed as a connoiss_ure_ by Mr. Trumbull, who was enjoying the
utmost activity of his great faculties.

And surely among all men whose vocation requires them to exhibit their
powers of speech, the happiest is a prosperous provincial auctioneer
keenly alive to his own jokes and sensible of his encyclopedic
knowledge.  Some saturnine, sour-blooded persons might object to be
constantly insisting on the merits of all articles from boot-jacks to
"Berghems;" but Mr. Borthrop Trumbull had a kindly liquid in his veins;
he was an admirer by nature, and would have liked to have the universe
under his hammer, feeling that it would go at a higher figure for his
recommendation.

Meanwhile Mrs. Larcher's drawing-room furniture was enough for him.
When Will Ladislaw had come in, a second fender, said to have been
forgotten in its right place, suddenly claimed the auctioneer's
enthusiasm, which he distributed on the equitable principle of praising
those things most which were most in need of praise.  The fender was of
polished steel, with much lancet-shaped open-work and a sharp edge.

"Now, ladies," said he, "I shall appeal to you.  Here is a fender which
at any other sale would hardly be offered with out reserve, being, as I
may say, for quality of steel and quaintness of design, a kind of
thing"--here Mr. Trumbull dropped his voice and became slightly nasal,
trimming his outlines with his left finger--"that might not fall in
with ordinary tastes.  Allow me to tell you that by-and-by this style
of workmanship will be the only one in vogue--half-a-crown, you said?
thank you--going at half-a-crown, this characteristic fender; and I
have particular information that the antique style is very much sought
after in high quarters.  Three shillings--three-and-sixpence--hold it
well up, Joseph!  Look, ladies, at the chastity of the design--I have
no doubt myself that it was turned out in the last century!  Four
shillings, Mr. Mawmsey?--four shillings."

"It's not a thing I would put in _my_ drawing-room," said Mrs. Mawmsey,
audibly, for the warning of the rash husband.  "I wonder _at_ Mrs.
Larcher.  Every blessed child's head that fell against it would be cut
in two.  The edge is like a knife."

"Quite true," rejoined Mr. Trumbull, quickly, "and most uncommonly
useful to have a fender at hand that will cut, if you have a leather
shoe-tie or a bit of string that wants cutting and no knife at hand:
many a man has been left hanging because there was no knife to cut him
down.  Gentlemen, here's a fender that if you had the misfortune to
hang yourselves would cut you down in no time--with astonishing
celerity--four-and-sixpence--five--five-and-sixpence--an appropriate
thing for a spare bedroom where there was a four-poster and a guest a
little out of his mind--six shillings--thank you, Mr. Clintup--going
at six shillings--going--gone!"  The auctioneer's glance, which had
been searching round him with a preternatural susceptibility to all
signs of bidding, here dropped on the paper before him, and his voice
too dropped into a tone of indifferent despatch as he said, "Mr.
Clintup.  Be handy, Joseph."

"It was worth six shillings to have a fender you could always tell that
joke on," said Mr. Clintup, laughing low and apologetically to his next
neighbor.  He was a diffident though distinguished nurseryman, and
feared that the audience might regard his bid as a foolish one.

Meanwhile Joseph had brought a trayful of small articles.  "Now,
ladies," said Mr. Trumbull, taking up one of the articles, "this tray
contains a very recherchy lot--a collection of trifles for the
drawing-room table--and trifles make the sum _of_ human things--nothing
more important than trifles--(yes, Mr. Ladislaw, yes, by-and-by)--but
pass the tray round, Joseph--these bijoux must be examined, ladies.
This I have in my hand is an ingenious contrivance--a sort of
practical rebus, I may call it: here, you see, it looks like an elegant
heart-shaped box, portable--for the pocket; there, again, it becomes
like a splendid double flower--an ornament for the table; and now"--Mr.
Trumbull allowed the flower to fall alarmingly into strings of
heart-shaped leaves--"a book of riddles!  No less than five hundred
printed in a beautiful red.  Gentlemen, if I had less of a conscience,
I should not wish you to bid high for this lot--I have a longing for
it myself.  What can promote innocent mirth, and I may say virtue, more
than a good riddle?--it hinders profane language, and attaches a man to
the society of refined females.  This ingenious article itself, without
the elegant domino-box, card-basket, &c., ought alone to give a high
price to the lot.  Carried in the pocket it might make an individual
welcome in any society.  Four shillings, sir?--four shillings for this
remarkable collection of riddles with the et caeteras.  Here is a
sample: 'How must you spell honey to make it catch lady-birds?
Answer--money.'  You hear?--lady-birds--honey money.  This is an
amusement to sharpen the intellect; it has a sting--it has what we call
satire, and wit without indecency.  Four-and-sixpence--five shillings."

The bidding ran on with warming rivalry.  Mr. Bowyer was a bidder, and
this was too exasperating.  Bowyer couldn't afford it, and only wanted
to hinder every other man from making a figure.  The current carried
even Mr. Horrock with it, but this committal of himself to an opinion
fell from him with so little sacrifice of his neutral expression, that
the bid might not have been detected as his but for the friendly oaths
of Mr. Bambridge, who wanted to know what Horrock would do with blasted
stuff only fit for haberdashers given over to that state of perdition
which the horse-dealer so cordially recognized in the majority of
earthly existences.  The lot was finally knocked down at a guinea to
Mr. Spilkins, a young Slender of the neighborhood, who was reckless
with his pocket-money and felt his want of memory for riddles.

"Come, Trumbull, this is too bad--you've been putting some old maid's
rubbish into the sale," murmured Mr. Toller, getting close to the
auctioneer.  "I want to see how the prints go, and I must be off soon."

"_Im_mediately, Mr. Toller.  It was only an act of benevolence which
your noble heart would approve.  Joseph! quick with the prints--Lot
235.  Now, gentlemen, you who are connoiss_ures_, you are going to have
a treat.  Here is an engraving of the Duke of Wellington surrounded by
his staff on the Field of Waterloo; and notwithstanding recent events
which have, as it were, enveloped our great Hero in a cloud, I will be
bold to say--for a man in my line must not be blown about by political
winds--that a finer subject--of the modern order, belonging to our own
time and epoch--the understanding of man could hardly conceive: angels
might, perhaps, but not men, sirs, not men."

"Who painted it?" said Mr. Powderell, much impressed.

"It is a proof before the letter, Mr. Powderell--the painter is not
known," answered Trumbull, with a certain gaspingness in his last
words, after which he pursed up his lips and stared round him.

"I'll bid a pound!" said Mr. Powderell, in a tone of resolved emotion,
as of a man ready to put himself in the breach.  Whether from awe or
pity, nobody raised the price on him.

Next came two Dutch prints which Mr. Toller had been eager for, and
after he had secured them he went away.  Other prints, and afterwards
some paintings, were sold to leading Middlemarchers who had come with a
special desire for them, and there was a more active movement of the
audience in and out; some, who had bought what they wanted, going away,
others coming in either quite newly or from a temporary visit to the
refreshments which were spread under the marquee on the lawn.  It was
this marquee that Mr. Bambridge was bent on buying, and he appeared to
like looking inside it frequently, as a foretaste of its possession.
On the last occasion of his return from it he was observed to bring
with him a new companion, a stranger to Mr. Trumbull and every one
else, whose appearance, however, led to the supposition that he might
be a relative of the horse-dealer's--also "given to indulgence."  His
large whiskers, imposing swagger, and swing of the leg, made him a
striking figure; but his suit of black, rather shabby at the edges,
caused the prejudicial inference that he was not able to afford himself
as much indulgence as he liked.

"Who is it you've picked up, Bam?" said Mr. Horrock, aside.

"Ask him yourself," returned Mr. Bambridge.  "He said he'd just turned
in from the road."

Mr. Horrock eyed the stranger, who was leaning back against his stick
with one hand, using his toothpick with the other, and looking about
him with a certain restlessness apparently under the silence imposed on
him by circumstances.

At length the "Supper at Emmaus" was brought forward, to Will's immense
relief, for he was getting so tired of the proceedings that he had
drawn back a little and leaned his shoulder against the wall just
behind the auctioneer.  He now came forward again, and his eye caught
the conspicuous stranger, who, rather to his surprise, was staring at
him markedly.  But Will was immediately appealed to by Mr. Trumbull.

"Yes, Mr. Ladislaw, yes; this interests you as a connoiss_ure_, I
think.  It is some pleasure," the auctioneer went on with a rising
fervor, "to have a picture like this to show to a company of ladies and
gentlemen--a picture worth any sum to an individual whose means were on
a level with his judgment.  It is a painting of the Italian school--by
the celebrated Guydo, the greatest painter in the world, the chief of
the Old Masters, as they are called--I take it, because they were up
to a thing or two beyond most of us--in possession of secrets now lost
to the bulk of mankind.  Let me tell you, gentlemen, I have seen a
great many pictures by the Old Masters, and they are not all up to this
mark--some of them are darker than you might like and not family
subjects.  But here is a Guydo--the frame alone is worth pounds--which
any lady might be proud to hang up--a suitable thing for what we call a
refectory in a charitable institution, if any gentleman of the
Corporation wished to show his munifi_cence_. Turn it a little, sir?
yes.  Joseph, turn it a little towards Mr. Ladislaw--Mr. Ladislaw,
having been abroad, understands the merit of these things, you observe."

All eyes were for a moment turned towards Will, who said, coolly, "Five
pounds."  The auctioneer burst out in deep remonstrance.

"Ah!  Mr. Ladislaw! the frame alone is worth that.  Ladies and
gentlemen, for the credit of the town!  Suppose it should be discovered
hereafter that a gem of art has been amongst us in this town, and
nobody in Middlemarch awake to it.  Five guineas--five seven-six--five
ten.  Still, ladies, still!  It is a gem, and 'Full many a gem,' as the
poet says, has been allowed to go at a nominal price because the public
knew no better, because it was offered in circles where there was--I
was going to say a low feeling, but no!--Six pounds--six guineas--a
Guydo of the first order going at six guineas--it is an insult to
religion, ladies; it touches us all as Christians, gentlemen, that a
subject like this should go at such a low figure--six pounds
ten--seven--"

The bidding was brisk, and Will continued to share in it, remembering
that Mrs. Bulstrode had a strong wish for the picture, and thinking
that he might stretch the price to twelve pounds.  But it was knocked
down to him at ten guineas, whereupon he pushed his way towards the
bow-window and went out.  He chose to go under the marquee to get a
glass of water, being hot and thirsty: it was empty of other visitors,
and he asked the woman in attendance to fetch him some fresh water; but
before she was well gone he was annoyed to see entering the florid
stranger who had stared at him.  It struck Will at this moment that the
man might be one of those political parasitic insects of the bloated
kind who had once or twice claimed acquaintance with him as having
heard him speak on the Reform question, and who might think of getting
a shilling by news.  In this light his person, already rather heating
to behold on a summer's day, appeared the more disagreeable; and Will,
half-seated on the elbow of a garden-chair, turned his eyes carefully
away from the comer.  But this signified little to our acquaintance Mr.
Raffles, who never hesitated to thrust himself on unwilling
observation, if it suited his purpose to do so.  He moved a step or two
till he was in front of Will, and said with full-mouthed haste, "Excuse
me, Mr. Ladislaw--was your mother's name Sarah Dunkirk?"

Will, starting to his feet, moved backward a step, frowning, and saying
with some fierceness, "Yes, sir, it was.  And what is that to you?"

It was in Will's nature that the first spark it threw out was a direct
answer of the question and a challenge of the consequences.  To have
said, "What is that to you?" in the first instance, would have seemed
like shuffling--as if he minded who knew anything about his origin!

Raffles on his side had not the same eagerness for a collision which
was implied in Ladislaw's threatening air.  The slim young fellow with
his girl's complexion looked like a tiger-cat ready to spring on him.
Under such circumstances Mr. Raffles's pleasure in annoying his company
was kept in abeyance.

"No offence, my good sir, no offence!  I only remember your mother--knew
her when she was a girl.  But it is your father that you feature,
sir.  I had the pleasure of seeing your father too.  Parents alive, Mr.
Ladislaw?"

"No!" thundered Will, in the same attitude as before.

"Should be glad to do you a service, Mr. Ladislaw--by Jove, I should!
Hope to meet again."

Hereupon Raffles, who had lifted his hat with the last words, turned
himself round with a swing of his leg and walked away.  Will looked
after him a moment, and could see that he did not re-enter the
auction-room, but appeared to be walking towards the road.  For an
instant he thought that he had been foolish not to let the man go on
talking;--but no! on the whole he preferred doing without knowledge
from that source.

Later in the evening, however, Raffles overtook him in the street, and
appearing either to have forgotten the roughness of his former
reception or to intend avenging it by a forgiving familiarity, greeted
him jovially and walked by his side, remarking at first on the
pleasantness of the town and neighborhood.  Will suspected that the man
had been drinking and was considering how to shake him off when Raffles
said--

"I've been abroad myself, Mr. Ladislaw--I've seen the world--used to
parley-vous a little.  It was at Boulogne I saw your father--a most
uncommon likeness you are of him, by Jove! mouth--nose--eyes--hair
turned off your brow just like his--a little in the foreign style.
John Bull doesn't do much of that.  But your father was very ill when I
saw him.  Lord, lord! hands you might see through.  You were a small
youngster then.  Did he get well?"

"No," said Will, curtly.

"Ah!  Well!  I've often wondered what became of your mother.  She ran
away from her friends when she was a young lass--a proud-spirited
lass, and pretty, by Jove!  I knew the reason why she ran away," said
Raffles, winking slowly as he looked sideways at Will.

"You know nothing dishonorable of her, sir," said Will, turning on him
rather savagely.  But Mr. Raffles just now was not sensitive to shades
of manner.

"Not a bit!" said he, tossing his head decisively "She was a little too
honorable to like her friends--that was it!"  Here Raffles again winked
slowly.  "Lord bless you, I knew all about 'em--a little in what you
may call the respectable thieving line--the high style of
receiving-house--none of your holes and corners--first-rate. Slap-up
shop, high profits and no mistake.  But Lord!  Sarah would have known
nothing about it--a dashing young lady she was--fine
boarding-school--fit for a lord's wife--only Archie Duncan threw it at
her out of spite, because she would have nothing to do with him.  And
so she ran away from the whole concern.  I travelled for 'em, sir, in a
gentlemanly way--at a high salary.  They didn't mind her running away
at first--godly folks, sir, very godly--and she was for the stage.  The
son was alive then, and the daughter was at a discount.  Hallo! here we
are at the Blue Bull.  What do you say, Mr. Ladislaw?--shall we turn in
and have a glass?"

"No, I must say good evening," said Will, dashing up a passage which
led into Lowick Gate, and almost running to get out of Raffles's reach.

He walked a long while on the Lowick road away from the town, glad of
the starlit darkness when it came.  He felt as if he had had dirt cast
on him amidst shouts of scorn.  There was this to confirm the fellow's
statement--that his mother never would tell him the reason why she had
run away from her family.

Well! what was he, Will Ladislaw, the worse, supposing the truth about
that family to be the ugliest?  His mother had braved hardship in order
to separate herself from it.  But if Dorothea's friends had known this
story--if the Chettams had known it--they would have had a fine color
to give their suspicions a welcome ground for thinking him unfit to
come near her.  However, let them suspect what they pleased, they would
find themselves in the wrong.  They would find out that the blood in
his veins was as free from the taint of meanness as theirs.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: It's the day of an auction. In Middlemarch, large estate auctions are like mini festivals. Mr. Larcher and his wife are moving from Middlemarch to a huge, furnished mansion in nearby Riverston, and are selling all their old stuff before they go. Will Ladislaw is at the sale, because Mr. Bulstrode asked him as a favor to go and advise Mrs. Bulstrode about which paintings would be worthwhile to bid on. Will is in a defiant mood at the auction. He's aware that most of the town probably knows about the codicil in Mr. Casaubon's will, and therefore thinks that he's out to marry for money. He only plans to stay until the painting Mrs. Bulstrode was interested in has sold. During the bidding he notices a stranger there, staring at him. Afterwards, the stranger approaches him, and asks him if his mother's name were Sarah Dunkirk. It was. Will looks angry enough at the question that the man decides not to pester him anymore. He simply says that he knew Will's mother when she was a girl, and asks if she and his father are still alive. They aren't. Will leaves Raffles and goes off on his own. Raffles catches up with him later, though, and starts telling him things about his mother's family - he knows why she ran away. He says that Sarah Dunkirk's family was "in the respectable thieving line," and that she had run away because she'd rather fend for herself than live off of money made in such a way. Will doesn't want to hear anymore, and leaves Raffles again. He doesn't care, but he wouldn't want Dorothea or the Chettams to know about this. Dorothea's friends already think poorly of him, and it would be worse if they knew his mother's family were thieves.