"I did not mean to quarrel," said Rosamond, putting on her hat.

"Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarrelled. If one is not to get
into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?"

"Am I to repeat what you have said?" "Just as you please. I never
say what I am afraid of having repeated. But let us go down."

Mr. Lydgate was rather late this morning, but the visitors stayed long
enough to see him; for Mr. Featherstone asked Rosamond to sing to him,
and she herself was so kind as to propose a second favorite song
of his--"Flow on, thou shining river"--after she had sung "Home,
sweet home" (which she detested). This hard-headed old Overreach
approved of the sentimental song, as the suitable garnish for girls,
and also as fundamentally fine, sentiment being the right thing
for a song.

Mr. Featherstone was still applauding the last performance,
and assuring missy that her voice was as clear as a blackbird's,
when Mr. Lydgate's horse passed the window.

His dull expectation of the usual disagreeable routine with an aged
patient--who can hardly believe that medicine would not "set him up"
if the doctor were only clever enough--added to his general disbelief
in Middlemarch charms, made a doubly effective background to this
vision of Rosamond, whom old Featherstone made haste ostentatiously
to introduce as his niece, though he had never thought it worth
while to speak of Mary Garth in that light. Nothing escaped
Lydgate in Rosamond's graceful behavior: how delicately she waived
the notice which the old man's want of taste had thrust upon her