When two "bachelors" arrive in town in an English novel, what will happen?

George Eliot begins to open up "Middlemarch" about 100 pages into the first section, and the novel seems slowly to evolve out of its Austen-ian origins and toward a 19th- or even a 20th-century sensibility - from Austen to Zola in 100 pages. Initially, we had two sister, a feckless guardian uncle, and two rival suitors, one dashing and kind of dumb and the other highly intelligent for dry and soulless. Reader, she marries him: Dorothea marries Casaubon, to just about everyone's dismay, and Eliot sends them off for a few chapters, out of the novel and into a honeymoon in Europe. And then we see Middlemarch as a town begin to take shape before our eyes: we meet the mayor-elect (?) Vincy and his daughter, Rosemond?, universally considered the town beauty and the best student in Mrs. Lemon's school for young ladies where, among other skills, she has learned how to properly enter and exit a carriage. The men gossip and talk politics - some of which is totally lost on us today with footnotes (whigs v. whom? who knows or cares?), but we do get the sense of a conservative, constrained, insular community. Most important, two new men make an appearance: Ladislaw, Casaubon's cousin, a recent college grad who doesn't know what he wants to do with his life other than dabble in the arts and see Europe and sponge off his rich cousin - a familiar type in literature and in life - and Lydgate (an interesting decision to have these two potential antagonists have names beginning with the same letter - why would she do that?), the doctor newly arrived in town, with some advanced ideas. Both men are "bachelors" and young - so in the world of the English novel, they will both become entwined in one way or another with one of the Middlemarch maidens - or perhaps not a maiden. And perhaps the same one. Eliot is extremely smart, adorning every chapter, every page, with sly asides to the reader - not really typical of the genre of English novelistic storytelling - she constantly pulls us away from the plot to discuss with us aspects of social life, human interaction, and politics. Obviously politics and activism and social causes will become a dominant them, as Dorothea has made plain that her main cause is improving village housing (new cottages) and it's clear that her new husband doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself. How's that going to work out for her?