Chapter: "'Tis strange to see the humors of these men,
     These great aspiring spirits, that should be wise:
       .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .
     For being the nature of great spirits to love
     To be where they may be most eminent;
     They, rating of themselves so farre above
     Us in conceit, with whom they do frequent,
     Imagine how we wonder and esteeme
     All that they do or say; which makes them strive
     To make our admiration more extreme,
     Which they suppose they cannot, 'less they give
     Notice of their extreme and highest thoughts.
                                --DANIEL: Tragedy of Philotas.


Mr. Vincy went home from the reading of the will with his point of view
considerably changed in relation to many subjects.  He was an
open-minded man, but given to indirect modes of expressing himself:
when he was disappointed in a market for his silk braids, he swore at
the groom; when his brother-in-law Bulstrode had vexed him, he made
cutting remarks on Methodism; and it was now apparent that he regarded
Fred's idleness with a sudden increase of severity, by his throwing an
embroidered cap out of the smoking-room on to the hall-floor.

"Well, sir," he observed, when that young gentleman was moving off to
bed, "I hope you've made up your mind now to go up next term and pass
your examination.  I've taken my resolution, so I advise you to lose no
time in taking yours."

Fred made no answer: he was too utterly depressed.  Twenty-four hours
ago he had thought that instead of needing to know what he should do,
he should by this time know that he needed to do nothing: that he
should hunt in pink, have a first-rate hunter, ride to cover on a fine
hack, and be generally respected for doing so; moreover, that he should
be able at once to pay Mr. Garth, and that Mary could no longer have
any reason for not marrying him.  And all this was to have come without
study or other inconvenience, purely by the favor of providence in the
shape of an old gentleman's caprice.  But now, at the end of the
twenty-four hours, all those firm expectations were upset.  It was
"rather hard lines" that while he was smarting under this
disappointment he should be treated as if he could have helped it.  But
he went away silently and his mother pleaded for him.

"Don't be hard on the poor boy, Vincy.  He'll turn out well yet, though
that wicked man has deceived him.  I feel as sure as I sit here, Fred
will turn out well--else why was he brought back from the brink of the
grave?  And I call it a robbery: it was like giving him the land, to
promise it; and what is promising, if making everybody believe is not
promising?  And you see he did leave him ten thousand pounds, and then
took it away again."

"Took it away again!" said Mr. Vincy, pettishly.  "I tell you the lad's
an unlucky lad, Lucy.  And you've always spoiled him."

"Well, Vincy, he was my first, and you made a fine fuss with him when
he came.  You were as proud as proud," said Mrs. Vincy, easily
recovering her cheerful smile.

"Who knows what babies will turn to?  I was fool enough, I dare say,"
said the husband--more mildly, however.

"But who has handsomer, better children than ours?  Fred is far beyond
other people's sons: you may hear it in his speech, that he has kept
college company.  And Rosamond--where is there a girl like her?  She
might stand beside any lady in the land, and only look the better for
it.  You see--Mr. Lydgate has kept the highest company and been
everywhere, and he fell in love with her at once.  Not but what I could
have wished Rosamond had not engaged herself.  She might have met
somebody on a visit who would have been a far better match; I mean at
her schoolfellow Miss Willoughby's. There are relations in that family
quite as high as Mr. Lydgate's."

"Damn relations!" said Mr. Vincy; "I've had enough of them.  I don't
want a son-in-law who has got nothing but his relations to recommend
him."

"Why, my dear," said Mrs. Vincy, "you seemed as pleased as could be
about it.  It's true, I wasn't at home; but Rosamond told me you hadn't
a word to say against the engagement.  And she has begun to buy in the
best linen and cambric for her underclothing."

"Not by my will," said Mr. Vincy.  "I shall have enough to do this
year, with an idle scamp of a son, without paying for wedding-clothes.
The times are as tight as can be; everybody is being ruined; and I
don't believe Lydgate has got a farthing.  I shan't give my consent to
their marrying.  Let 'em wait, as their elders have done before 'em."

"Rosamond will take it hard, Vincy, and you know you never could bear
to cross her."

"Yes, I could.  The sooner the engagement's off, the better.  I don't
believe he'll ever make an income, the way he goes on.  He makes
enemies; that's all I hear of his making."

"But he stands very high with Mr. Bulstrode, my dear.  The marriage
would please _him_, I should think."

"Please the deuce!" said Mr. Vincy.  "Bulstrode won't pay for their
keep.  And if Lydgate thinks I'm going to give money for them to set up
housekeeping, he's mistaken, that's all.  I expect I shall have to put
down my horses soon.  You'd better tell Rosy what I say."

This was a not infrequent procedure with Mr. Vincy--to be rash in
jovial assent, and on becoming subsequently conscious that he had been
rash, to employ others in making the offensive retractation.  However,
Mrs. Vincy, who never willingly opposed her husband, lost no time the
next morning in letting Rosamond know what he had said.  Rosamond,
examining some muslin-work, listened in silence, and at the end gave a
certain turn of her graceful neck, of which only long experience could
teach you that it meant perfect obstinacy.

"What do you say, my dear?" said her mother, with affectionate
deference.

"Papa does not mean anything of the kind," said Rosamond, quite calmly.
"He has always said that he wished me to marry the man I loved.  And I
shall marry Mr. Lydgate.  It is seven weeks now since papa gave his
consent.  And I hope we shall have Mrs. Bretton's house."

"Well, my dear, I shall leave you to manage your papa.  You always do
manage everybody.  But if we ever do go and get damask, Sadler's is the
place--far better than Hopkins's. Mrs. Bretton's is very large, though:
I should love you to have such a house; but it will take a great deal
of furniture--carpeting and everything, besides plate and glass.  And
you hear, your papa says he will give no money.  Do you think Mr.
Lydgate expects it?"

"You cannot imagine that I should ask him, mamma.  Of course he
understands his own affairs."

"But he may have been looking for money, my dear, and we all thought of
your having a pretty legacy as well as Fred;--and now everything is so
dreadful--there's no pleasure in thinking of anything, with that poor
boy disappointed as he is."

"That has nothing to do with my marriage, mamma.  Fred must leave off
being idle.  I am going up-stairs to take this work to Miss Morgan: she
does the open hemming very well.  Mary Garth might do some work for me
now, I should think.  Her sewing is exquisite; it is the nicest thing I
know about Mary.  I should so like to have all my cambric frilling
double-hemmed. And it takes a long time."

Mrs. Vincy's belief that Rosamond could manage her papa was well
founded.  Apart from his dinners and his coursing, Mr. Vincy,
blustering as he was, had as little of his own way as if he had been a
prime minister: the force of circumstances was easily too much for him,
as it is for most pleasure-loving florid men; and the circumstance
called Rosamond was particularly forcible by means of that mild
persistence which, as we know, enables a white soft living substance to
make its way in spite of opposing rock.  Papa was not a rock: he had no
other fixity than that fixity of alternating impulses sometimes called
habit, and this was altogether unfavorable to his taking the only
decisive line of conduct in relation to his daughter's
engagement--namely, to inquire thoroughly into Lydgate's circumstances,
declare his own inability to furnish money, and forbid alike either a
speedy marriage or an engagement which must be too lengthy.  That seems
very simple and easy in the statement; but a disagreeable resolve
formed in the chill hours of the morning had as many conditions against
it as the early frost, and rarely persisted under the warming
influences of the day.  The indirect though emphatic expression of
opinion to which Mr. Vincy was prone suffered much restraint in this
case: Lydgate was a proud man towards whom innuendoes were obviously
unsafe, and throwing his hat on the floor was out of the question.  Mr.
Vincy was a little in awe of him, a little vain that he wanted to marry
Rosamond, a little indisposed to raise a question of money in which his
own position was not advantageous, a little afraid of being worsted in
dialogue with a man better educated and more highly bred than himself,
and a little afraid of doing what his daughter would not like.  The
part Mr. Vincy preferred playing was that of the generous host whom
nobody criticises.  In the earlier half of the day there was business
to hinder any formal communication of an adverse resolve; in the later
there was dinner, wine, whist, and general satisfaction.  And in the
mean while the hours were each leaving their little deposit and
gradually forming the final reason for inaction, namely, that action
was too late.  The accepted lover spent most of his evenings in Lowick
Gate, and a love-making not at all dependent on money-advances from
fathers-in-law, or prospective income from a profession, went on
flourishingly under Mr. Vincy's own eyes.  Young love-making--that
gossamer web!  Even the points it clings to--the things whence its
subtle interlacings are swung--are scarcely perceptible: momentary
touches of fingertips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs,
unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest
tremors.  The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable
joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness,
indefinite trust.  And Lydgate fell to spinning that web from his
inward self with wonderful rapidity, in spite of experience supposed to
be finished off with the drama of Laure--in spite too of medicine and
biology; for the inspection of macerated muscle or of eyes presented in
a dish (like Santa Lucia's), and other incidents of scientific inquiry,
are observed to be less incompatible with poetic love than a native
dulness or a lively addiction to the lowest prose.  As for Rosamond,
she was in the water-lily's expanding wonderment at its own fuller
life, and she too was spinning industriously at the mutual web.  All
this went on in the corner of the drawing-room where the piano stood,
and subtle as it was, the light made it a sort of rainbow visible to
many observers besides Mr. Farebrother.  The certainty that Miss Vincy
and Mr. Lydgate were engaged became general in Middlemarch without the
aid of formal announcement.

Aunt Bulstrode was again stirred to anxiety; but this time she
addressed herself to her brother, going to the warehouse expressly to
avoid Mrs. Vincy's volatility.  His replies were not satisfactory.

"Walter, you never mean to tell me that you have allowed all this to go
on without inquiry into Mr. Lydgate's prospects?" said Mrs. Bulstrode,
opening her eyes with wider gravity at her brother, who was in his
peevish warehouse humor.  "Think of this girl brought up in luxury--in
too worldly a way, I am sorry to say--what will she do on a small
income?"

"Oh, confound it, Harriet! What can I do when men come into the town
without any asking of mine?  Did you shut your house up against
Lydgate?  Bulstrode has pushed him forward more than anybody.  I never
made any fuss about the young fellow.  You should go and talk to your
husband about it, not me."

"Well, really, Walter, how can Mr. Bulstrode be to blame?  I am sure he
did not wish for the engagement."

"Oh, if Bulstrode had not taken him by the hand, I should never have
invited him."

"But you called him in to attend on Fred, and I am sure that was a
mercy," said Mrs. Bulstrode, losing her clew in the intricacies of the
subject.

"I don't know about mercy," said Mr. Vincy, testily.  "I know I am
worried more than I like with my family.  I was a good brother to you,
Harriet, before you married Bulstrode, and I must say he doesn't always
show that friendly spirit towards your family that might have been
expected of him."  Mr. Vincy was very little like a Jesuit, but no
accomplished Jesuit could have turned a question more adroitly.
Harriet had to defend her husband instead of blaming her brother, and
the conversation ended at a point as far from the beginning as some
recent sparring between the brothers-in-law at a vestry meeting.

Mrs. Bulstrode did not repeat her brother's complaints to her husband,
but in the evening she spoke to him of Lydgate and Rosamond.  He did
not share her warm interest, however; and only spoke with resignation
of the risks attendant on the beginning of medical practice and the
desirability of prudence.

"I am sure we are bound to pray for that thoughtless girl--brought up
as she has been," said Mrs. Bulstrode, wishing to rouse her husband's
feelings.

"Truly, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode, assentingly.  "Those who are not
of this world can do little else to arrest the errors of the
obstinately worldly.  That is what we must accustom ourselves to
recognize with regard to your brother's family.  I could have wished
that Mr. Lydgate had not entered into such a union; but my relations
with him are limited to that use of his gifts for God's purposes which
is taught us by the divine government under each dispensation."

Mrs. Bulstrode said no more, attributing some dissatisfaction which she
felt to her own want of spirituality.  She believed that her husband
was one of those men whose memoirs should be written when they died.

As to Lydgate himself, having been accepted, he was prepared to accept
all the consequences which he believed himself to foresee with perfect
clearness.  Of course he must be married in a year--perhaps even in
half a year.  This was not what he had intended; but other schemes
would not be hindered: they would simply adjust themselves anew.
Marriage, of course, must be prepared for in the usual way.  A house
must be taken instead of the rooms he at present occupied; and Lydgate,
having heard Rosamond speak with admiration of old Mrs. Bretton's house
(situated in Lowick Gate), took notice when it fell vacant after the
old lady's death, and immediately entered into treaty for it.

He did this in an episodic way, very much as he gave orders to his
tailor for every requisite of perfect dress, without any notion of
being extravagant.  On the contrary, he would have despised any
ostentation of expense; his profession had familiarized him with all
grades of poverty, and he cared much for those who suffered hardships.
He would have behaved perfectly at a table where the sauce was served
in a jug with the handle off, and he would have remembered nothing
about a grand dinner except that a man was there who talked well.  But
it had never occurred to him that he should live in any other than what
he would have called an ordinary way, with green glasses for hock, and
excellent waiting at table.  In warming himself at French social
theories he had brought away no smell of scorching.  We may handle even
extreme opinions with impunity while our furniture, our dinner-giving,
and preference for armorial bearings in our own case, link us
indissolubly with the established order.  And Lydgate's tendency was
not towards extreme opinions: he would have liked no barefooted
doctrines, being particular about his boots: he was no radical in
relation to anything but medical reform and the prosecution of
discovery.  In the rest of practical life he walked by hereditary
habit; half from that personal pride and unreflecting egoism which I
have already called commonness, and half from that naivete which
belonged to preoccupation with favorite ideas.

Any inward debate Lydgate had as to the consequences of this engagement
which had stolen upon him, turned on the paucity of time rather than of
money.  Certainly, being in love and being expected continually by some
one who always turned out to be prettier than memory could represent
her to be, did interfere with the diligent use of spare hours which
might serve some "plodding fellow of a German" to make the great,
imminent discovery.  This was really an argument for not deferring the
marriage too long, as he implied to Mr. Farebrother, one day that the
Vicar came to his room with some pond-products which he wanted to
examine under a better microscope than his own, and, finding Lydgate's
tableful of apparatus and specimens in confusion, said sarcastically--

"Eros has degenerated; he began by introducing order and harmony, and
now he brings back chaos."

"Yes, at some stages," said Lydgate, lifting his brows and smiling,
while he began to arrange his microscope.  "But a better order will
begin after."

"Soon?" said the Vicar.

"I hope so, really.  This unsettled state of affairs uses up the time,
and when one has notions in science, every moment is an opportunity.  I
feel sure that marriage must be the best thing for a man who wants to
work steadily.  He has everything at home then--no teasing with
personal speculations--he can get calmness and freedom."

"You are an enviable dog," said the Vicar, "to have such a
prospect--Rosamond, calmness and freedom, all to your share.  Here am
I with nothing but my pipe and pond-animalcules. Now, are you ready?"

Lydgate did not mention to the Vicar another reason he had for wishing
to shorten the period of courtship.  It was rather irritating to him,
even with the wine of love in his veins, to be obliged to mingle so
often with the family party at the Vincys', and to enter so much into
Middlemarch gossip, protracted good cheer, whist-playing, and general
futility.  He had to be deferential when Mr. Vincy decided questions
with trenchant ignorance, especially as to those liquors which were the
best inward pickle, preserving you from the effects of bad air.  Mrs.
Vincy's openness and simplicity were quite unstreaked with suspicion as
to the subtle offence she might give to the taste of her intended
son-in-law; and altogether Lydgate had to confess to himself that he
was descending a little in relation to Rosamond's family.  But that
exquisite creature herself suffered in the same sort of way:--it was
at least one delightful thought that in marrying her, he could give her
a much-needed transplantation.

"Dear!" he said to her one evening, in his gentlest tone, as he sat
down by her and looked closely at her face--

But I must first say that he had found her alone in the drawing-room,
where the great old-fashioned window, almost as large as the side of
the room, was opened to the summer scents of the garden at the back of
the house.  Her father and mother were gone to a party, and the rest
were all out with the butterflies.

"Dear! your eyelids are red."

"Are they?" said Rosamond.  "I wonder why."  It was not in her nature
to pour forth wishes or grievances.  They only came forth gracefully on
solicitation.

"As if you could hide it from me!" said Lydgate, laying his hand
tenderly on both of hers.  "Don't I see a tiny drop on one of the
lashes?  Things trouble you, and you don't tell me.  That is unloving."

"Why should I tell you what you cannot alter?  They are every-day
things:--perhaps they have been a little worse lately."

"Family annoyances.  Don't fear speaking.  I guess them."

"Papa has been more irritable lately.  Fred makes him angry, and this
morning there was a fresh quarrel because Fred threatens to throw his
whole education away, and do something quite beneath him.  And
besides--"

Rosamond hesitated, and her cheeks were gathering a slight flush.
Lydgate had never seen her in trouble since the morning of their
engagement, and he had never felt so passionately towards her as at
this moment.  He kissed the hesitating lips gently, as if to encourage
them.

"I feel that papa is not quite pleased about our engagement," Rosamond
continued, almost in a whisper; "and he said last night that he should
certainly speak to you and say it must be given up."

"Will you give it up?" said Lydgate, with quick energy--almost angrily.

"I never give up anything that I choose to do," said Rosamond,
recovering her calmness at the touching of this chord.

"God bless you!" said Lydgate, kissing her again.  This constancy of
purpose in the right place was adorable.  He went on:--

"It is too late now for your father to say that our engagement must be
given up.  You are of age, and I claim you as mine.  If anything is
done to make you unhappy,--that is a reason for hastening our marriage."

An unmistakable delight shone forth from the blue eyes that met his,
and the radiance seemed to light up all his future with mild sunshine.
Ideal happiness (of the kind known in the Arabian Nights, in which you
are invited to step from the labor and discord of the street into a
paradise where everything is given to you and nothing claimed) seemed
to be an affair of a few weeks' waiting, more or less.

"Why should we defer it?" he said, with ardent insistence.  "I have
taken the house now: everything else can soon be got ready--can it
not?  You will not mind about new clothes.  Those can be bought
afterwards."

"What original notions you clever men have!" said Rosamond, dimpling
with more thorough laughter than usual at this humorous incongruity.
"This is the first time I ever heard of wedding-clothes being bought
after marriage."

"But you don't mean to say you would insist on my waiting months for
the sake of clothes?" said Lydgate, half thinking that Rosamond was
tormenting him prettily, and half fearing that she really shrank from
speedy marriage.  "Remember, we are looking forward to a better sort of
happiness even than this--being continually together, independent of
others, and ordering our lives as we will.  Come, dear, tell me how
soon you can be altogether mine."

There was a serious pleading in Lydgate's tone, as if he felt that she
would be injuring him by any fantastic delays.  Rosamond became serious
too, and slightly meditative; in fact, she was going through many
intricacies of lace-edging and hosiery and petticoat-tucking, in order
to give an answer that would at least be approximative.

"Six weeks would be ample--say so, Rosamond," insisted Lydgate,
releasing her hands to put his arm gently round her.

One little hand immediately went to pat her hair, while she gave her
neck a meditative turn, and then said seriously--

"There would be the house-linen and the furniture to be prepared.
Still, mamma could see to those while we were away."

"Yes, to be sure.  We must be away a week or so."

"Oh, more than that!" said Rosamond, earnestly.  She was thinking of
her evening dresses for the visit to Sir Godwin Lydgate's, which she
had long been secretly hoping for as a delightful employment of at
least one quarter of the honeymoon, even if she deferred her
introduction to the uncle who was a doctor of divinity (also a pleasing
though sober kind of rank, when sustained by blood). She looked at her
lover with some wondering remonstrance as she spoke, and he readily
understood that she might wish to lengthen the sweet time of double
solitude.

"Whatever you wish, my darling, when the day is fixed.  But let us take
a decided course, and put an end to any discomfort you may be
suffering.  Six weeks!--I am sure they would be ample."

"I could certainly hasten the work," said Rosamond.  "Will you, then,
mention it to papa?--I think it would be better to write to him." She
blushed and looked at him as the garden flowers look at us when we walk
forth happily among them in the transcendent evening light: is there
not a soul beyond utterance, half nymph, half child, in those delicate
petals which glow and breathe about the centres of deep color?

He touched her ear and a little bit of neck under it with his lips, and
they sat quite still for many minutes which flowed by them like a small
gurgling brook with the kisses of the sun upon it.  Rosamond thought
that no one could be more in love than she was; and Lydgate thought
that after all his wild mistakes and absurd credulity, he had found
perfect womanhood--felt as if already breathed upon by exquisite wedded
affection such as would be bestowed by an accomplished creature who
venerated his high musings and momentous labors and would never
interfere with them; who would create order in the home and accounts
with still magic, yet keep her fingers ready to touch the lute and
transform life into romance at any moment; who was instructed to the
true womanly limit and not a hair's-breadth beyond--docile, therefore,
and ready to carry out behests which came from that limit.  It was
plainer now than ever that his notion of remaining much longer a
bachelor had been a mistake: marriage would not be an obstruction but a
furtherance.  And happening the next day to accompany a patient to
Brassing, he saw a dinner-service there which struck him as so exactly
the right thing that he bought it at once.  It saved time to do these
things just when you thought of them, and Lydgate hated ugly crockery.
The dinner-service in question was expensive, but that might be in the
nature of dinner-services. Furnishing was necessarily expensive; but
then it had to be done only once.

"It must be lovely," said Mrs. Vincy, when Lydgate mentioned his
purchase with some descriptive touches.  "Just what Rosy ought to have.
I trust in heaven it won't be broken!"

"One must hire servants who will not break things," said Lydgate.
(Certainly, this was reasoning with an imperfect vision of sequences.
But at that period there was no sort of reasoning which was not more or
less sanctioned by men of science.)

Of course it was unnecessary to defer the mention of anything to mamma,
who did not readily take views that were not cheerful, and being a
happy wife herself, had hardly any feeling but pride in her daughter's
marriage.  But Rosamond had good reasons for suggesting to Lydgate that
papa should be appealed to in writing.  She prepared for the arrival of
the letter by walking with her papa to the warehouse the next morning,
and telling him on the way that Mr. Lydgate wished to be married soon.

"Nonsense, my dear!" said Mr. Vincy.  "What has he got to marry on?
You'd much better give up the engagement.  I've told you so pretty
plainly before this.  What have you had such an education for, if you
are to go and marry a poor man?  It's a cruel thing for a father to
see."

"Mr. Lydgate is not poor, papa.  He bought Mr. Peacock's practice,
which, they say, is worth eight or nine hundred a-year."

"Stuff and nonsense!  What's buying a practice?  He might as well buy
next year's swallows.  It'll all slip through his fingers."

"On the contrary, papa, he will increase the practice.  See how he has
been called in by the Chettams and Casaubons."

"I hope he knows I shan't give anything--with this disappointment about
Fred, and Parliament going to be dissolved, and machine-breaking
everywhere, and an election coming on--"

"Dear papa! what can that have to do with my marriage?"

"A pretty deal to do with it!  We may all be ruined for what I know--the
country's in that state!  Some say it's the end of the world, and
be hanged if I don't think it looks like it!  Anyhow, it's not a time
for me to be drawing money out of my business, and I should wish
Lydgate to know that."

"I am sure he expects nothing, papa.  And he has such very high
connections: he is sure to rise in one way or another.  He is engaged
in making scientific discoveries."

Mr. Vincy was silent.

"I cannot give up my only prospect of happiness, papa. Mr. Lydgate is a
gentleman.  I could never love any one who was not a perfect gentleman.
You would not like me to go into a consumption, as Arabella Hawley did.
And you know that I never change my mind."

Again papa was silent.

"Promise me, papa, that you will consent to what we wish.  We shall
never give each other up; and you know that you have always objected to
long courtships and late marriages."

There was a little more urgency of this kind, till Mr. Vincy said,
"Well, well, child, he must write to me first before I can answer
him,"--and Rosamond was certain that she had gained her point.

Mr. Vincy's answer consisted chiefly in a demand that Lydgate should
insure his life--a demand immediately conceded.  This was a
delightfully reassuring idea supposing that Lydgate died, but in the
mean time not a self-supporting idea.  However, it seemed to make
everything comfortable about Rosamond's marriage; and the necessary
purchases went on with much spirit.  Not without prudential
considerations, however.  A bride (who is going to visit at a
baronet's) must have a few first-rate pocket-handkerchiefs; but beyond
the absolutely necessary half-dozen, Rosamond contented herself without
the very highest style of embroidery and Valenciennes.  Lydgate also,
finding that his sum of eight hundred pounds had been considerably
reduced since he had come to Middlemarch, restrained his inclination
for some plate of an old pattern which was shown to him when he went
into Kibble's establishment at Brassing to buy forks and spoons.  He
was too proud to act as if he presupposed that Mr. Vincy would advance
money to provide furniture; and though, since it would not be
necessary to pay for everything at once, some bills would be left
standing over, he did not waste time in conjecturing how much his
father-in-law would give in the form of dowry, to make payment easy.
He was not going to do anything extravagant, but the requisite things
must be bought, and it would be bad economy to buy them of a poor
quality.  All these matters were by the bye.  Lydgate foresaw that
science and his profession were the objects he should alone pursue
enthusiastically; but he could not imagine himself pursuing them in
such a home as Wrench had--the doors all open, the oil-cloth worn, the
children in soiled pinafores, and lunch lingering in the form of bones,
black-handled knives, and willow-pattern. But Wrench had a wretched
lymphatic wife who made a mummy of herself indoors in a large shawl;
and he must have altogether begun with an ill-chosen domestic apparatus.

Rosamond, however, was on her side much occupied with conjectures,
though her quick imitative perception warned her against betraying them
too crudely.

"I shall like so much to know your family," she said one day, when the
wedding journey was being discussed.  "We might perhaps take a
direction that would allow us to see them as we returned.  Which of
your uncles do you like best?"

"Oh,--my uncle Godwin, I think.  He is a good-natured old fellow."

"You were constantly at his house at Quallingham, when you were a boy,
were you not?  I should so like to see the old spot and everything you
were used to.  Does he know you are going to be married?"

"No," said Lydgate, carelessly, turning in his chair and rubbing his
hair up.

"Do send him word of it, you naughty undutiful nephew.  He will perhaps
ask you to take me to Quallingham; and then you could show me about the
grounds, and I could imagine you there when you were a boy.  Remember,
you see me in my home, just as it has been since I was a child.  It is
not fair that I should be so ignorant of yours.  But perhaps you would
be a little ashamed of me.  I forgot that."

Lydgate smiled at her tenderly, and really accepted the suggestion that
the proud pleasure of showing so charming a bride was worth some
trouble.  And now he came to think of it, he would like to see the old
spots with Rosamond.

"I will write to him, then.  But my cousins are bores."

It seemed magnificent to Rosamond to be able to speak so slightingly of
a baronet's family, and she felt much contentment in the prospect of
being able to estimate them contemptuously on her own account.

But mamma was near spoiling all, a day or two later, by saying--

"I hope your uncle Sir Godwin will not look down on Rosy, Mr. Lydgate.
I should think he would do something handsome.  A thousand or two can
be nothing to a baronet."

"Mamma!" said Rosamond, blushing deeply; and Lydgate pitied her so much
that he remained silent and went to the other end of the room to
examine a print curiously, as if he had been absent-minded. Mamma had a
little filial lecture afterwards, and was docile as usual.  But
Rosamond reflected that if any of those high-bred cousins who were
bores, should be induced to visit Middlemarch, they would see many
things in her own family which might shock them.  Hence it seemed
desirable that Lydgate should by-and-by get some first-rate position
elsewhere than in Middlemarch; and this could hardly be difficult in
the case of a man who had a titled uncle and could make discoveries.
Lydgate, you perceive, had talked fervidly to Rosamond of his hopes as
to the highest uses of his life, and had found it delightful to be
listened to by a creature who would bring him the sweet furtherance of
satisfying affection--beauty--repose--such help as our thoughts get
from the summer sky and the flower-fringed meadows.

Lydgate relied much on the psychological difference between what for
the sake of variety I will call goose and gander: especially on the
innate submissiveness of the goose as beautifully corresponding to the
strength of the gander.

 Fred is depressed. Twenty-four hours ago, he thought that he would be rich and able to pay back Mr. Garth and marry Mary Garth without having to work for it. His father now wants him to commit to becoming a clergyman, but Fred still doesn't think he's cut out for it. Mr. Vincy is grumpy enough about Fred that he says he wants to Rosamond to put off her engagement to Lydgate until Lydgate has a better income. But Rosamond knows how to manage her father. She has a stubborn streak, and he knows it. Mrs. Bulstrode doesn't like the engagement, either - she's worried that her niece Rosamond won't be able to live happily without a huge house, fancy furniture, and expensive clothes. And she's probably right. Lydgate himself thinks that it's perfectly natural to rent a nice house and buy "good" furniture. He's not trying to be extravagant, but he just doesn't know any other way to live. When Lydgate learns that Mr. Vincy was encouraging Rosamond to break up with him, he persuades her to get married even sooner. She asks him to write to her father, and then Rosamond tells her father in person, herself. Her father's stubbornness is nothing to hers, and so he agrees to a quick marriage. Meanwhile, Rosamond still wants to meet Mr. Lydgate's fancy aristocratic relatives. She beats around the bush a little, and finally charms him into agreeing to swing by the family estate to meet his uncle and cousins on their way back from their honeymoon.

