“Herself,” said Will, not indisposed to provoke the charming Mrs Lydgate. “When one sees a perfect woman, one never thinks of her attributes—one is conscious of her presence.”
“I shall be jealous when Tertius goes to Lowick,” said Rosamond, dimpling, and speaking with aëry lightness. “He will come back and think nothing of me.”
“That does not seem to have been the effect on Lydgate hitherto. Mrs Casaubon is too unlike other women for them to be compared with her.”
“You are a devout worshipper, I perceive. You often see her, I suppose.”
“No,” said Will, almost pettishly. “Worship is usually a matter of theory rather than of practice. But I am practising it to excess just at this moment—I must really tear myself away.”
“Pray come again some evening: Mr Lydgate will like to hear the music, and I cannot enjoy it so well without him.”
When her husband was at home again, Rosamond said, standing in front of him and holding his coat-collar with both her hands, “Mr Ladislaw was here singing with me when Mrs Casaubon came in. He seemed vexed. Do you think he disliked her seeing him at our house? Surely your position is more than equal to his—whatever may be his relation to the Casaubons.”
“No, no; it must be something else if he were really vexed. Ladislaw is a sort of gypsy; he thinks nothing of leather and prunella.”
“Music apart, he is not always very agreeable. Do you like him?”
“Yes: I think he is a good fellow: rather miscellaneous and bric-à-brac, but likable.”
“Do you know, I think he adores Mrs Casaubon.”
“Poor devil!” said Lydgate smiling and pinching his wife’s ears.
Rosamond felt herself beginning to know a great deal of the world, especially in discovering—what when she was in her unmarried girlhood had been inconceivable to her except as a dim tragedy in bygone costumes—that women, even after marriage, might make conquests and enslave men. At that time young ladies in the country, even when educated at Mrs Lemon’s, read little French literature later than Racine, and public prints had not cast their present magnificent illumination over the scandals of life. Still, vanity, with a woman’s whole mind and day to work in, can construct abundantly on slight hints, especially on such a hint as the possibility of indefinite conquests. How delightful to make captives from the throne of marriage with a husband as crown-prince by your side—himself in fact a subject—while the captives look up for ever hopeless, losing their rest probably, and if their appetite too, so much the better! But Rosamond’s romance turned at present chiefly on her crown-prince, and it was enough to enjoy his assured subjection. When he said, “Poor devil!” she asked, with playful curiosity—
“Why so?”
