Chapter: "For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
     Therefore in that I cannot know thy change:
     In many's looks the false heart's history
     Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange:
     But Heaven in thy creation did decree
     That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell:
     Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be
     Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell."
                                       --SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.


At the time when Mr. Vincy uttered that presentiment about Rosamond,
she herself had never had the idea that she should be driven to make
the sort of appeal which he foresaw.  She had not yet had any anxiety
about ways and means, although her domestic life had been expensive as
well as eventful.  Her baby had been born prematurely, and all the
embroidered robes and caps had to be laid by in darkness.  This
misfortune was attributed entirely to her having persisted in going out
on horseback one day when her husband had desired her not to do so; but
it must not be supposed that she had shown temper on the occasion, or
rudely told him that she would do as she liked.

What led her particularly to desire horse-exercise was a visit from
Captain Lydgate, the baronet's third son, who, I am sorry to say, was
detested by our Tertius of that name as a vapid fop "parting his hair
from brow to nape in a despicable fashion" (not followed by Tertius
himself), and showing an ignorant security that he knew the proper
thing to say on every topic.  Lydgate inwardly cursed his own folly
that he had drawn down this visit by consenting to go to his uncle's on
the wedding-tour, and he made himself rather disagreeable to Rosamond
by saying so in private.  For to Rosamond this visit was a source of
unprecedented but gracefully concealed exultation.  She was so
intensely conscious of having a cousin who was a baronet's son staying
in the house, that she imagined the knowledge of what was implied by
his presence to be diffused through all other minds; and when she
introduced Captain Lydgate to her guests, she had a placid sense that
his rank penetrated them as if it had been an odor.  The satisfaction
was enough for the time to melt away some disappointment in the
conditions of marriage with a medical man even of good birth: it seemed
now that her marriage was visibly as well as ideally floating her above
the Middlemarch level, and the future looked bright with letters and
visits to and from Quallingham, and vague advancement in consequence
for Tertius.  Especially as, probably at the Captain's suggestion, his
married sister, Mrs. Mengan, had come with her maid, and stayed two
nights on her way from town.  Hence it was clearly worth while for
Rosamond to take pains with her music and the careful selection of her
lace.

As to Captain Lydgate himself, his low brow, his aquiline nose bent on
one side, and his rather heavy utterance, might have been
disadvantageous in any young gentleman who had not a military bearing
and mustache to give him what is doted on by some flower-like blond
heads as "style."  He had, moreover, that sort of high-breeding which
consists in being free from the petty solicitudes of middle-class
gentility, and he was a great critic of feminine charms.  Rosamond
delighted in his admiration now even more than she had done at
Quallingham, and he found it easy to spend several hours of the day in
flirting with her.  The visit altogether was one of the pleasantest
larks he had ever had, not the less so perhaps because he suspected
that his queer cousin Tertius wished him away: though Lydgate, who
would rather (hyperbolically speaking) have died than have failed in
polite hospitality, suppressed his dislike, and only pretended
generally not to hear what the gallant officer said, consigning the
task of answering him to Rosamond.  For he was not at all a jealous
husband, and preferred leaving a feather-headed young gentleman alone
with his wife to bearing him company.

"I wish you would talk more to the Captain at dinner, Tertius," said
Rosamond, one evening when the important guest was gone to Loamford to
see some brother officers stationed there.  "You really look so absent
sometimes--you seem to be seeing through his head into something behind
it, instead of looking at him."

"My dear Rosy, you don't expect me to talk much to such a conceited ass
as that, I hope," said Lydgate, brusquely.  "If he got his head broken,
I might look at it with interest, not before."

"I cannot conceive why you should speak of your cousin so
contemptuously," said Rosamond, her fingers moving at her work while
she spoke with a mild gravity which had a touch of disdain in it.

"Ask Ladislaw if he doesn't think your Captain the greatest bore he
ever met with.  Ladislaw has almost forsaken the house since he came."

Rosamond thought she knew perfectly well why Mr. Ladislaw disliked the
Captain: he was jealous, and she liked his being jealous.

"It is impossible to say what will suit eccentric persons," she
answered, "but in my opinion Captain Lydgate is a thorough gentleman,
and I think you ought not, out of respect to Sir Godwin, to treat him
with neglect."

"No, dear; but we have had dinners for him.  And he comes in and goes
out as he likes.  He doesn't want me."

"Still, when he is in the room, you might show him more attention.  He
may not be a phoenix of cleverness in your sense; his profession is
different; but it would be all the better for you to talk a little on
his subjects.  _I_ think his conversation is quite agreeable.  And he
is anything but an unprincipled man."

"The fact is, you would wish me to be a little more like him, Rosy,"
said Lydgate, in a sort of resigned murmur, with a smile which was not
exactly tender, and certainly not merry.  Rosamond was silent and did
not smile again; but the lovely curves of her face looked good-tempered
enough without smiling.

Those words of Lydgate's were like a sad milestone marking how far he
had travelled from his old dreamland, in which Rosamond Vincy appeared
to be that perfect piece of womanhood who would reverence her husband's
mind after the fashion of an accomplished mermaid, using her comb and
looking-glass and singing her song for the relaxation of his adored
wisdom alone.  He had begun to distinguish between that imagined
adoration and the attraction towards a man's talent because it gives
him prestige, and is like an order in his button-hole or an Honorable
before his name.

It might have been supposed that Rosamond had travelled too, since she
had found the pointless conversation of Mr. Ned Plymdale perfectly
wearisome; but to most mortals there is a stupidity which is
unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable--else,
indeed, what would become of social bonds?  Captain Lydgate's stupidity
was delicately scented, carried itself with "style," talked with a good
accent, and was closely related to Sir Godwin.  Rosamond found it quite
agreeable and caught many of its phrases.

Therefore since Rosamond, as we know, was fond of horseback, there were
plenty of reasons why she should be tempted to resume her riding when
Captain Lydgate, who had ordered his man with two horses to follow him
and put up at the "Green Dragon," begged her to go out on the gray
which he warranted to be gentle and trained to carry a lady--indeed, he
had bought it for his sister, and was taking it to Quallingham.
Rosamond went out the first time without telling her husband, and came
back before his return; but the ride had been so thorough a success,
and she declared herself so much the better in consequence, that he was
informed of it with full reliance on his consent that she should go
riding again.

On the contrary Lydgate was more than hurt--he was utterly confounded
that she had risked herself on a strange horse without referring the
matter to his wish.  After the first almost thundering exclamations of
astonishment, which sufficiently warned Rosamond of what was coming, he
was silent for some moments.

"However, you have come back safely," he said, at last, in a decisive
tone.  "You will not go again, Rosy; that is understood.  If it were
the quietest, most familiar horse in the world, there would always be
the chance of accident.  And you know very well that I wished you to
give up riding the roan on that account."

"But there is the chance of accident indoors, Tertius."

"My darling, don't talk nonsense," said Lydgate, in an imploring tone;
"surely I am the person to judge for you.  I think it is enough that I
say you are not to go again."

Rosamond was arranging her hair before dinner, and the reflection of
her head in the glass showed no change in its loveliness except a
little turning aside of the long neck.  Lydgate had been moving about
with his hands in his pockets, and now paused near her, as if he
awaited some assurance.

"I wish you would fasten up my plaits, dear," said Rosamond, letting
her arms fall with a little sigh, so as to make a husband ashamed of
standing there like a brute.  Lydgate had often fastened the plaits
before, being among the deftest of men with his large finely formed
fingers.  He swept up the soft festoons of plaits and fastened in the
tall comb (to such uses do men come!); and what could he do then but
kiss the exquisite nape which was shown in all its delicate curves?
But when we do what we have done before, it is often with a difference.
Lydgate was still angry, and had not forgotten his point.

"I shall tell the Captain that he ought to have known better than offer
you his horse," he said, as he moved away.

"I beg you will not do anything of the kind, Tertius," said Rosamond,
looking at him with something more marked than usual in her speech.
"It will be treating me as if I were a child.  Promise that you will
leave the subject to me."

There did seem to be some truth in her objection.  Lydgate said, "Very
well," with a surly obedience, and thus the discussion ended with his
promising Rosamond, and not with her promising him.

In fact, she had been determined not to promise.  Rosamond had that
victorious obstinacy which never wastes its energy in impetuous
resistance.  What she liked to do was to her the right thing, and all
her cleverness was directed to getting the means of doing it.  She
meant to go out riding again on the gray, and she did go on the next
opportunity of her husband's absence, not intending that he should know
until it was late enough not to signify to her.  The temptation was
certainly great: she was very fond of the exercise, and the
gratification of riding on a fine horse, with Captain Lydgate, Sir
Godwin's son, on another fine horse by her side, and of being met in
this position by any one but her husband, was something as good as her
dreams before marriage: moreover she was riveting the connection with
the family at Quallingham, which must be a wise thing to do.

But the gentle gray, unprepared for the crash of a tree that was being
felled on the edge of Halsell wood, took fright, and caused a worse
fright to Rosamond, leading finally to the loss of her baby.  Lydgate
could not show his anger towards her, but he was rather bearish to the
Captain, whose visit naturally soon came to an end.

In all future conversations on the subject, Rosamond was mildly certain
that the ride had made no difference, and that if she had stayed at
home the same symptoms would have come on and would have ended in the
same way, because she had felt something like them before.

Lydgate could only say, "Poor, poor darling!"--but he secretly wondered
over the terrible tenacity of this mild creature.  There was gathering
within him an amazed sense of his powerlessness over Rosamond.  His
superior knowledge and mental force, instead of being, as he had
imagined, a shrine to consult on all occasions, was simply set aside on
every practical question.  He had regarded Rosamond's cleverness as
precisely of the receptive kind which became a woman.  He was now
beginning to find out what that cleverness was--what was the shape into
which it had run as into a close network aloof and independent.  No one
quicker than Rosamond to see causes and effects which lay within the
track of her own tastes and interests: she had seen clearly Lydgate's
preeminence in Middlemarch society, and could go on imaginatively
tracing still more agreeable social effects when his talent should have
advanced him; but for her, his professional and scientific ambition had
no other relation to these desirable effects than if they had been the
fortunate discovery of an ill-smelling oil.  And that oil apart, with
which she had nothing to do, of course she believed in her own opinion
more than she did in his.  Lydgate was astounded to find in numberless
trifling matters, as well as in this last serious case of the riding,
that affection did not make her compliant.  He had no doubt that the
affection was there, and had no presentiment that he had done anything
to repel it.  For his own part he said to himself that he loved her as
tenderly as ever, and could make up his mind to her negations;
but--well!  Lydgate was much worried, and conscious of new elements in
his life as noxious to him as an inlet of mud to a creature that has
been used to breathe and bathe and dart after its illuminated prey in
the clearest of waters.

Rosamond was soon looking lovelier than ever at her worktable, enjoying
drives in her father's phaeton and thinking it likely that she might be
invited to Quallingham.  She knew that she was a much more exquisite
ornament to the drawing-room there than any daughter of the family, and
in reflecting that the gentlemen were aware of that, did not perhaps
sufficiently consider whether the ladies would be eager to see
themselves surpassed.

Lydgate, relieved from anxiety about her, relapsed into what she
inwardly called his moodiness--a name which to her covered his
thoughtful preoccupation with other subjects than herself, as well as
that uneasy look of the brow and distaste for all ordinary things as if
they were mixed with bitter herbs, which really made a sort of
weather-glass to his vexation and foreboding.  These latter states of
mind had one cause amongst others, which he had generously but
mistakenly avoided mentioning to Rosamond, lest it should affect her
health and spirits.  Between him and her indeed there was that total
missing of each other's mental track, which is too evidently possible
even between persons who are continually thinking of each other.  To
Lydgate it seemed that he had been spending month after month in
sacrificing more than half of his best intent and best power to his
tenderness for Rosamond; bearing her little claims and interruptions
without impatience, and, above all, bearing without betrayal of
bitterness to look through less and less of interfering illusion at the
blank unreflecting surface her mind presented to his ardor for the more
impersonal ends of his profession and his scientific study, an ardor
which he had fancied that the ideal wife must somehow worship as
sublime, though not in the least knowing why.  But his endurance was
mingled with a self-discontent which, if we know how to be candid, we
shall confess to make more than half our bitterness under grievances,
wife or husband included.  It always remains true that if we had been
greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.  Lydgate
was aware that his concessions to Rosamond were often little more than
the lapse of slackening resolution, the creeping paralysis apt to seize
an enthusiasm which is out of adjustment to a constant portion of our
lives.  And on Lydgate's enthusiasm there was constantly pressing not a
simple weight of sorrow, but the biting presence of a petty degrading
care, such as casts the blight of irony over all higher effort.

This was the care which he had hitherto abstained from mentioning to
Rosamond; and he believed, with some wonder, that it had never entered
her mind, though certainly no difficulty could be less mysterious.  It
was an inference with a conspicuous handle to it, and had been easily
drawn by indifferent observers, that Lydgate was in debt; and he could
not succeed in keeping out of his mind for long together that he was
every day getting deeper into that swamp, which tempts men towards it
with such a pretty covering of flowers and verdure.  It is wonderful
how soon a man gets up to his chin there--in a condition in which,
in spite of himself, he is forced to think chiefly of release, though he
had a scheme of the universe in his soul.

Eighteen months ago Lydgate was poor, but had never known the eager
want of small sums, and felt rather a burning contempt for any one who
descended a step in order to gain them.  He was now experiencing
something worse than a simple deficit: he was assailed by the vulgar
hateful trials of a man who has bought and used a great many things
which might have been done without, and which he is unable to pay for,
though the demand for payment has become pressing.

How this came about may be easily seen without much arithmetic or
knowledge of prices.  When a man in setting up a house and preparing
for marriage finds that his furniture and other initial expenses come
to between four and five hundred pounds more than he has capital to pay
for; when at the end of a year it appears that his household expenses,
horses and et caeteras, amount to nearly a thousand, while the proceeds
of the practice reckoned from the old books to be worth eight hundred
per annum have sunk like a summer pond and make hardly five hundred,
chiefly in unpaid entries, the plain inference is that, whether he
minds it or not, he is in debt.  Those were less expensive times than
our own, and provincial life was comparatively modest; but the ease
with which a medical man who had lately bought a practice, who thought
that he was obliged to keep two horses, whose table was supplied
without stint, and who paid an insurance on his life and a high rent
for house and garden, might find his expenses doubling his receipts,
can be conceived by any one who does not think these details beneath
his consideration.  Rosamond, accustomed from her childhood to an extravagant
household, thought that good housekeeping consisted simply in ordering
the best of everything--nothing else "answered;" and Lydgate supposed
that "if things were done at all, they must be done properly"--he did
not see how they were to live otherwise.  If each head of household
expenditure had been mentioned to him beforehand, he would have
probably observed that "it could hardly come to much," and if any one
had suggested a saving on a particular article--for example, the
substitution of cheap fish for dear--it would have appeared to him
simply a penny-wise, mean notion.  Rosamond, even without such an
occasion as Captain Lydgate's visit, was fond of giving invitations,
and Lydgate, though he often thought the guests tiresome, did not
interfere.  This sociability seemed a necessary part of professional
prudence, and the entertainment must be suitable.  It is true Lydgate
was constantly visiting the homes of the poor and adjusting his
prescriptions of diet to their small means; but, dear me! has it not by
this time ceased to be remarkable--is it not rather that we expect in
men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by
side and never compare them with each other?  Expenditure--like
ugliness and errors--becomes a totally new thing when we attach our own
personality to it, and measure it by that wide difference which is
manifest (in our own sensations) between ourselves and others.  Lydgate
believed himself to be careless about his dress, and he despised a man
who calculated the effects of his costume; it seemed to him only a
matter of course that he had abundance of fresh garments--such things
were naturally ordered in sheaves.  It must be remembered that he had
never hitherto felt the check of importunate debt, and he walked by
habit, not by self-criticism.  But the check had come.

Its novelty made it the more irritating.  He was amazed, disgusted that
conditions so foreign to all his purposes, so hatefully disconnected
with the objects he cared to occupy himself with, should have lain in
ambush and clutched him when he was unaware.  And there was not only
the actual debt; there was the certainty that in his present position
he must go on deepening it.  Two furnishing tradesmen at Brassing,
whose bills had been incurred before his marriage, and whom
uncalculated current expenses had ever since prevented him from paying,
had repeatedly sent him unpleasant letters which had forced themselves
on his attention.  This could hardly have been more galling to any
disposition than to Lydgate's, with his intense pride--his dislike of
asking a favor or being under an obligation to any one.  He had scorned
even to form conjectures about Mr. Vincy's intentions on money matters,
and nothing but extremity could have induced him to apply to his
father-in-law, even if he had not been made aware in various indirect
ways since his marriage that Mr. Vincy's own affairs were not
flourishing, and that the expectation of help from him would be
resented.  Some men easily trust in the readiness of friends; it had
never in the former part of his life occurred to Lydgate that he should
need to do so: he had never thought what borrowing would be to him; but
now that the idea had entered his mind, he felt that he would rather
incur any other hardship.  In the mean time he had no money or
prospects of money; and his practice was not getting more lucrative.

No wonder that Lydgate had been unable to suppress all signs of inward
trouble during the last few months, and now that Rosamond was regaining
brilliant health, he meditated taking her entirely into confidence on
his difficulties.  New conversance with tradesmen's bills had forced
his reasoning into a new channel of comparison: he had begun to
consider from a new point of view what was necessary and unnecessary in
goods ordered, and to see that there must be some change of habits.
How could such a change be made without Rosamond's concurrence?  The
immediate occasion of opening the disagreeable fact to her was forced
upon him.

Having no money, and having privately sought advice as to what security
could possibly be given by a man in his position, Lydgate had offered
the one good security in his power to the less peremptory creditor, who
was a silversmith and jeweller, and who consented to take on himself
the upholsterer's credit also, accepting interest for a given term.
The security necessary was a bill of sale on the furniture of his
house, which might make a creditor easy for a reasonable time about a
debt amounting to less than four hundred pounds; and the silversmith,
Mr. Dover, was willing to reduce it by taking back a portion of the
plate and any other article which was as good as new.  "Any other
article" was a phrase delicately implying jewellery, and more
particularly some purple amethysts costing thirty pounds, which Lydgate
had bought as a bridal present.

Opinions may be divided as to his wisdom in making this present: some
may think that it was a graceful attention to be expected from a man
like Lydgate, and that the fault of any troublesome consequences lay in
the pinched narrowness of provincial life at that time, which offered
no conveniences for professional people whose fortune was not
proportioned to their tastes; also, in Lydgate's ridiculous
fastidiousness about asking his friends for money.

However, it had seemed a question of no moment to him on that fine
morning when he went to give a final order for plate: in the presence
of other jewels enormously expensive, and as an addition to orders of
which the amount had not been exactly calculated, thirty pounds for
ornaments so exquisitely suited to Rosamond's neck and arms could
hardly appear excessive when there was no ready cash for it to exceed.
But at this crisis Lydgate's imagination could not help dwelling on the
possibility of letting the amethysts take their place again among Mr.
Dover's stock, though he shrank from the idea of proposing this to
Rosamond.  Having been roused to discern consequences which he had
never been in the habit of tracing, he was preparing to act on this
discernment with some of the rigor (by no means all) that he would have
applied in pursuing experiment.  He was nerving himself to this rigor
as he rode from Brassing, and meditated on the representations he must
make to Rosamond.

It was evening when he got home.  He was intensely miserable, this
strong man of nine-and-twenty and of many gifts.  He was not saying
angrily within himself that he had made a profound mistake; but the
mistake was at work in him like a recognized chronic disease, mingling
its uneasy importunities with every prospect, and enfeebling every
thought.  As he went along the passage to the drawing-room, he heard
the piano and singing.  Of course, Ladislaw was there.  It was some
weeks since Will had parted from Dorothea, yet he was still at the old
post in Middlemarch.  Lydgate had no objection in general to Ladislaw's
coming, but just now he was annoyed that he could not find his hearth
free.  When he opened the door the two singers went on towards the
key-note, raising their eyes and looking at him indeed, but not
regarding his entrance as an interruption.  To a man galled with his
harness as poor Lydgate was, it is not soothing to see two people
warbling at him, as he comes in with the sense that the painful day has
still pains in store.  His face, already paler than usual, took on a
scowl as he walked across the room and flung himself into a chair.

The singers feeling themselves excused by the fact that they had only
three bars to sing, now turned round.

"How are you, Lydgate?" said Will, coming forward to shake hands.

Lydgate took his hand, but did not think it necessary to speak.

"Have you dined, Tertius?  I expected you much earlier," said Rosamond,
who had already seen that her husband was in a "horrible humor." She
seated herself in her usual place as she spoke.

"I have dined.  I should like some tea, please," said Lydgate, curtly,
still scowling and looking markedly at his legs stretched out before
him.

Will was too quick to need more.  "I shall be off," he said, reaching
his hat.

"Tea is coming," said Rosamond; "pray don't go."

"Yes, Lydgate is bored," said Will, who had more comprehension of
Lydgate than Rosamond had, and was not offended by his manner, easily
imagining outdoor causes of annoyance.

"There is the more need for you to stay," said Rosamond, playfully, and
in her lightest accent; "he will not speak to me all the evening."

"Yes, Rosamond, I shall," said Lydgate, in his strong baritone.  "I
have some serious business to speak to you about."

No introduction of the business could have been less like that which
Lydgate had intended; but her indifferent manner had been too provoking.

"There! you see," said Will.  "I'm going to the meeting about the
Mechanics' Institute.  Good-by;" and he went quickly out of the room.

Rosamond did not look at her husband, but presently rose and took her
place before the tea-tray. She was thinking that she had never seen him
so disagreeable.  Lydgate turned his dark eyes on her and watched her
as she delicately handled the tea-service with her taper fingers, and
looked at the objects immediately before her with no curve in her face
disturbed, and yet with an ineffable protest in her air against all
people with unpleasant manners.  For the moment he lost the sense of
his wound in a sudden speculation about this new form of feminine
impassibility revealing itself in the sylph-like frame which he had
once interpreted as the sign of a ready intelligent sensitiveness.  His
mind glancing back to Laure while he looked at Rosamond, he said
inwardly, "Would _she_ kill me because I wearied her?" and then, "It is
the way with all women." But this power of generalizing which gives men
so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals, was
immediately thwarted by Lydgate's memory of wondering impressions from
the behavior of another woman--from Dorothea's looks and tones of
emotion about her husband when Lydgate began to attend him--from her
passionate cry to be taught what would best comfort that man for whose
sake it seemed as if she must quell every impulse in her except the
yearnings of faithfulness and compassion.  These revived impressions
succeeded each other quickly and dreamily in Lydgate's mind while the
tea was being brewed.  He had shut his eyes in the last instant of
reverie while he heard Dorothea saying, "Advise me--think what I can
do--he has been all his life laboring and looking forward.  He minds
about nothing else--and I mind about nothing else."

That voice of deep-souled womanhood had remained within him as the
enkindling conceptions of dead and sceptred genius had remained within
him (is there not a genius for feeling nobly which also reigns over
human spirits and their conclusions?); the tones were a music from
which he was falling away--he had really fallen into a momentary doze,
when Rosamond said in her silvery neutral way, "Here is your tea,
Tertius," setting it on the small table by his side, and then moved
back to her place without looking at him.  Lydgate was too hasty in
attributing insensibility to her; after her own fashion, she was
sensitive enough, and took lasting impressions.  Her impression now was
one of offence and repulsion.  But then, Rosamond had no scowls and had
never raised her voice: she was quite sure that no one could justly
find fault with her.

Perhaps Lydgate and she had never felt so far off each other before;
but there were strong reasons for not deferring his revelation, even if
he had not already begun it by that abrupt announcement; indeed some of
the angry desire to rouse her into more sensibility on his account
which had prompted him to speak prematurely, still mingled with his
pain in the prospect of her pain.  But he waited till the tray was
gone, the candles were lit, and the evening quiet might be counted on:
the interval had left time for repelled tenderness to return into the
old course.  He spoke kindly.

"Dear Rosy, lay down your work and come to sit by me," he said, gently,
pushing away the table, and stretching out his arm to draw a chair near
his own.

Rosamond obeyed.  As she came towards him in her drapery of transparent
faintly tinted muslin, her slim yet round figure never looked more
graceful; as she sat down by him and laid one hand on the elbow of his
chair, at last looking at him and meeting his eyes, her delicate neck
and cheek and purely cut lips never had more of that untarnished beauty
which touches as in spring-time and infancy and all sweet freshness.
It touched Lydgate now, and mingled the early moments of his love for
her with all the other memories which were stirred in this crisis of
deep trouble.  He laid his ample hand softly on hers, saying--

"Dear!" with the lingering utterance which affection gives to the word.
Rosamond too was still under the power of that same past, and her
husband was still in part the Lydgate whose approval had stirred
delight.  She put his hair lightly away from his forehead, then laid
her other hand on his, and was conscious of forgiving him.

"I am obliged to tell you what will hurt you, Rosy.  But there are
things which husband and wife must think of together.  I dare say it
has occurred to you already that I am short of money."

Lydgate paused; but Rosamond turned her neck and looked at a vase on
the mantel-piece.

"I was not able to pay for all the things we had to get before we were
married, and there have been expenses since which I have been obliged
to meet.  The consequence is, there is a large debt at Brassing--three
hundred and eighty pounds--which has been pressing on me a good while,
and in fact we are getting deeper every day, for people don't pay me
the faster because others want the money.  I took pains to keep it from
you while you were not well; but now we must think together about it,
and you must help me."

"What can--I--do, Tertius?" said Rosamond, turning her eyes on him
again.  That little speech of four words, like so many others in all
languages, is capable by varied vocal inflections of expressing all
states of mind from helpless dimness to exhaustive argumentative
perception, from the completest self-devoting fellowship to the most
neutral aloofness.  Rosamond's thin utterance threw into the words
"What can--I--do!" as much neutrality as they could hold.  They fell
like a mortal chill on Lydgate's roused tenderness.  He did not storm
in indignation--he felt too sad a sinking of the heart.  And when he
spoke again it was more in the tone of a man who forces himself to
fulfil a task.

"It is necessary for you to know, because I have to give security for a
time, and a man must come to make an inventory of the furniture."

Rosamond colored deeply.  "Have you not asked papa for money?" she
said, as soon as she could speak.

"No."

"Then I must ask him!" she said, releasing her hands from Lydgate's,
and rising to stand at two yards' distance from him.

"No, Rosy," said Lydgate, decisively.  "It is too late to do that.  The
inventory will be begun to-morrow. Remember it is a mere security: it
will make no difference: it is a temporary affair.  I insist upon it
that your father shall not know, unless I choose to tell him," added
Lydgate, with a more peremptory emphasis.

This certainly was unkind, but Rosamond had thrown him back on evil
expectation as to what she would do in the way of quiet steady
disobedience.  The unkindness seemed unpardonable to her: she was not
given to weeping and disliked it, but now her chin and lips began to
tremble and the tears welled up.  Perhaps it was not possible for
Lydgate, under the double stress of outward material difficulty and of
his own proud resistance to humiliating consequences, to imagine fully
what this sudden trial was to a young creature who had known nothing
but indulgence, and whose dreams had all been of new indulgence, more
exactly to her taste.  But he did wish to spare her as much as he
could, and her tears cut him to the heart.  He could not speak again
immediately; but Rosamond did not go on sobbing: she tried to conquer
her agitation and wiped away her tears, continuing to look before her
at the mantel-piece.

"Try not to grieve, darling," said Lydgate, turning his eyes up towards
her.  That she had chosen to move away from him in this moment of her
trouble made everything harder to say, but he must absolutely go on.
"We must brace ourselves to do what is necessary.  It is I who have
been in fault: I ought to have seen that I could not afford to live in
this way. But many things have told against me in my practice, and it
really just now has ebbed to a low point.  I may recover it, but in the
mean time we must pull up--we must change our way of living.  We shall
weather it.  When I have given this security I shall have time to look
about me; and you are so clever that if you turn your mind to managing
you will school me into carefulness.  I have been a thoughtless rascal
about squaring prices--but come, dear, sit down and forgive me."

Lydgate was bowing his neck under the yoke like a creature who had
talons, but who had Reason too, which often reduces us to meekness.
When he had spoken the last words in an imploring tone, Rosamond
returned to the chair by his side.  His self-blame gave her some hope
that he would attend to her opinion, and she said--

"Why can you not put off having the inventory made?  You can send the
men away to-morrow when they come."

"I shall not send them away," said Lydgate, the peremptoriness rising
again.  Was it of any use to explain?

"If we left Middlemarch? there would of course be a sale, and that
would do as well."

"But we are not going to leave Middlemarch."

"I am sure, Tertius, it would be much better to do so.  Why can we not
go to London?  Or near Durham, where your family is known?"

"We can go nowhere without money, Rosamond."

"Your friends would not wish you to be without money.  And surely these
odious tradesmen might be made to understand that, and to wait, if you
would make proper representations to them."

"This is idle Rosamond," said Lydgate, angrily.  "You must learn to
take my judgment on questions you don't understand.  I have made
necessary arrangements, and they must be carried out.  As to friends, I
have no expectations whatever from them, and shall not ask them for
anything."

Rosamond sat perfectly still.  The thought in her mind was that if she
had known how Lydgate would behave, she would never have married him.

"We have no time to waste now on unnecessary words, dear," said
Lydgate, trying to be gentle again.  "There are some details that I
want to consider with you.  Dover says he will take a good deal of the
plate back again, and any of the jewellery we like.  He really behaves
very well."

"Are we to go without spoons and forks then?" said Rosamond, whose very
lips seemed to get thinner with the thinness of her utterance.  She was
determined to make no further resistance or suggestions.

"Oh no, dear!" said Lydgate.  "But look here," he continued, drawing a
paper from his pocket and opening it; "here is Dover's account.  See, I
have marked a number of articles, which if we returned them would
reduce the amount by thirty pounds and more.  I have not marked any
of the jewellery."  Lydgate had really felt this point of the jewellery
very bitter to himself; but he had overcome the feeling by severe
argument.  He could not propose to Rosamond that she should return any
particular present of his, but he had told himself that he was bound to
put Dover's offer before her, and her inward prompting might make the
affair easy.

"It is useless for me to look, Tertius," said Rosamond, calmly; "you
will return what you please."  She would not turn her eyes on the
paper, and Lydgate, flushing up to the roots of his hair, drew it back
and let it fall on his knee.  Meanwhile Rosamond quietly went out of
the room, leaving Lydgate helpless and wondering.  Was she not coming
back?  It seemed that she had no more identified herself with him than
if they had been creatures of different species and opposing interests.
He tossed his head and thrust his hands deep into his pockets with a
sort of vengeance.  There was still science--there were still good
objects to work for.  He must give a tug still--all the stronger
because other satisfactions were going.

But the door opened and Rosamond re-entered. She carried the leather
box containing the amethysts, and a tiny ornamental basket which
contained other boxes, and laying them on the chair where she had been
sitting, she said, with perfect propriety in her air--

"This is all the jewellery you ever gave me.  You can return what you
like of it, and of the plate also.  You will not, of course, expect me
to stay at home to-morrow. I shall go to papa's."

To many women the look Lydgate cast at her would have been more
terrible than one of anger: it had in it a despairing acceptance of the
distance she was placing between them.

"And when shall you come back again?" he said, with a bitter edge on
his accent.

"Oh, in the evening.  Of course I shall not mention the subject to
mamma."  Rosamond was convinced that no woman could behave more
irreproachably than she was behaving; and she went to sit down at her
work-table. Lydgate sat meditating a minute or two, and the result was
that he said, with some of the old emotion in his tone--

"Now we have been united, Rosy, you should not leave me to myself in
the first trouble that has come."

"Certainly not," said Rosamond; "I shall do everything it becomes me to
do."

"It is not right that the thing should be left to servants, or that I
should have to speak to them about it.  And I shall be obliged to go
out--I don't know how early.  I understand your shrinking from the
humiliation of these money affairs.  But, my dear Rosamond, as a
question of pride, which I feel just as much as you can, it is surely
better to manage the thing ourselves, and let the servants see as
little of it as possible; and since you are my wife, there is no
hindering your share in my disgraces--if there were disgraces."

Rosamond did not answer immediately, but at last she said, "Very well,
I will stay at home."

"I shall not touch these jewels, Rosy.  Take them away again.  But I
will write out a list of plate that we may return, and that can be
packed up and sent at once."

"The servants will know _that_," said Rosamond, with the slightest
touch of sarcasm.

"Well, we must meet some disagreeables as necessities.  Where is the
ink, I wonder?" said Lydgate, rising, and throwing the account on the
larger table where he meant to write.

Rosamond went to reach the inkstand, and after setting it on the table
was going to turn away, when Lydgate, who was standing close by, put
his arm round her and drew her towards him, saying--

"Come, darling, let us make the best of things.  It will only be for a
time, I hope, that we shall have to be stingy and particular.  Kiss me."

His native warm-heartedness took a great deal of quenching, and it is a
part of manliness for a husband to feel keenly the fact that an
inexperienced girl has got into trouble by marrying him.  She received
his kiss and returned it faintly, and in this way an appearance of
accord was recovered for the time.  But Lydgate could not help looking
forward with dread to the inevitable future discussions about
expenditure and the necessity for a complete change in their way of
living.

 Rosamond has had a miscarriage, and Lydgate's medical opinion is that it's because she went horseback riding while he was out, when he told her she shouldn't. She went because Lydgate's cousin, Captain Lydgate , was visiting them, Lydgate didn't much like his cousin, because the cousin is a dumb lug. But Rosamond is proud of the fact that her husband's relatives are aristocratic, and wanted to show him off by going horseback riding with him while Lydgate was at work. So she went in spite of her husband's warnings, but the horse got startled when a tree fell down, she fell, and eventually had her miscarriage. Lydgate could hardly be angry with her in that condition, so nothing is said on the subject between them. Lydgate has other things to concern him - they owe money all over town for the fancy furniture in their new house and the expensive food for the dinner parties they've given. He'd always thought that worrying about money was a vulgar thing to do, but now that he doesn't have enough to pay the bills he can understand it. He's decided to tell Rosamond all about it, and he's afraid of how she'll react. When he gets home and finds Will Ladislaw there, singing with Rosamond, he's not so happy. Will has already said goodbye to Dorothea, but hasn't left town yet. He's not remotely jealous of Will, but he had business to talk over with Rosamond. Will's no dummy, and can tell that Lydgate wants to be alone with Rosamond, so he takes off. Rosamond thinks Lydgate's being terribly unpleasant and rude. He tells her that they have to have all of their furniture and things inventoried for security against the debt they owe. She wants him to ask her father for money, but he refuses, and tells her not to go, either. She thinks he's behaving very badly, and wishes she had never married him. She's unswervingly polite about it, though, and aside from a few tears, hardly complains. But she's so cold and distant with him that it breaks his heart. She says that when the inventory people come the next day, she'll go to her parents' house. He urges her to stay at home to deal with it so that they won't have to tell the servants. She agrees, but acts like a martyr about it.

