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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 say-
ing, ‘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 scep-
tred 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