at an hour when Mr. Vincy was not at home, and leaving the message with Miss Vincy.  A man may, from various motives, decline to give his company, but perhaps not even a sage would be gratified that nobody missed him.  It would be a graceful, easy way of piecing on the new habits to the old, to have a few playful words with Rosamond about his resistance to dissipation, and his firm resolve to take long fasts even from sweet sounds.  It must be confessed, also, that momentary speculations as to all the possible grounds for Mrs. Bulstrode’s hints had managed to get woven like slight clinging hairs into the more substantial web of his thoughts.

Miss Vincy was alone, and blushed so deeply when Lydgate came in that he felt a corresponding embarrassment, and instead of any playfulness, he began at once to speak of his reason for calling, and to beg her, almost formally, to deliver the message to her father.  Rosamond, who at the first moment felt as if her happiness were returning, was keenly hurt by Lydgate’s manner; her blush had departed, and she assented coldly, without adding an unnecessary word, some trivial chain-work which she had in her hands enabling her to avoid looking at Lydgate higher than his chin.  In all failures, the beginning is certainly the half of the whole.  After sitting two long moments while he moved his whip and could say nothing, Lydgate rose to go, and Rosamond, made nervous by her struggle between mortification and the wish not to betray it, dropped her chain as if startled, and rose too, mechanically.  Lydgate instantaneously stooped to pick up the chain.  When he rose he was very near to a lovely little face set on a fair long neck which he had been used to see turning about under the most perfect management of self-contented grace.  But as he raised his eyes now he saw a certain helpless quivering which touched him quite newly, and made him look at Rosamond with a questioning flash.  At this moment she was as natural as she had ever been when she was five years old:  she felt that her tears had risen, and it was no use to try to do anything else than let them stay like water on a blue flower or let them fall over her cheeks, even as they would.

That moment of naturalness was the crystallizing feather-touch:  it shook flirtation into love.  Remember that the ambitious man who was looking at those Forget-me-nots under the water was very warm-hearted and rash.  He did not know where the chain went; an idea had thrilled through the recesses within him which had a miraculous effect in raising the power of passionate love lying buried there in no sealed sepulchre, but under the lightest, easily pierced mould.  His words were quite abrupt and awkward; but the tone made them sound like an ardent, appealing avowal.

“What is the matter? you are distressed.  Tell me, pray.”