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 towards him and opening it, gave a short scornful laugh and tossed up his chin, as if in wonderment at human folly.

“What are you laughing at so profanely?” said Rosamond, with bland neutrality.

“I wonder which would turn out to be the silliest—the engravings or the writing here,” said Lydgate, in his most convinced tone, while he turned over the pages quickly, seeming to see all through the book in no time, and showing his large white hands to much advantage, as Rosamond thought. “Do look at this bridegroom coming out of church: did you ever see such a ‘sugared invention’—as the Elizabethans used to say? Did any haberdasher ever look so smirking? Yet I will answer for it the story makes him one of the first gentlemen in the land.”

“You are so severe, I am frightened at you,” said Rosamond, keeping her amusement duly moderate. Poor young Plymdale had lingered with admiration over this very engraving, and his spirit was stirred.

“There are a great many celebrated people writing in the ‘Keepsake,’ at all events,” he said, in a tone at once piqued and timid. “This is the first time I have heard it called silly.”

“I think I shall turn round on you and accuse you of being a Goth,” said Rosamond, looking at Lydgate with a smile. “I suspect you know nothing about Lady Blessington and L. E. L.” Rosamond herself was not without relish for these writers, but she did not readily commit herself by admiration, and was alive to the slightest hint that anything was not, according to Lydgate, in the very highest taste.

“But Sir Walter Scott—I suppose Mr Lydgate knows him,” said young Plymdale, a little cheered by this advantage.

“Oh, I read no literature now,” said Lydgate, shutting the book, and pushing it away. “I read so much when I was a lad, that I suppose it will last me all my life. I used to know Scott’s poems by heart.”

“I should like to know when you left off,” said Rosamond, “because then I might be sure that I knew something which you did not know.”

“Mr Lydgate would say that was not worth knowing,” said Mr Ned, purposely caustic.

“On the contrary,” said Lydgate, showing no smart, but smiling with exasperating confidence at Rosamond. “It would be worth knowing by the fact that Miss Vincy could tell it me.”

Young Plymdale soon went to look at the whist-playing, thinking that Lydgate was one of the most conceited, unpleasant fellows it had ever been his ill-fortune to meet.

“How rash you are!” said Rosamond, inwardly delighted. “Do you see that you have given offence?”

“What—is it Mr Plymdale’s book? I am sorry. I didn’t think about it.”