“Rosamond will take it hard, Vincy, and you know you never could bear to cross her.”

“Yes, I could.  The sooner the engagement’s off, the better.  I don’t believe he’ll ever make an income, the way he goes on.  He makes enemies; that’s all I hear of his making.”

“But he stands very high with Mr. Bulstrode, my dear.  The marriage would please him, I should think.”

“Please the deuce!” said Mr. Vincy.  “Bulstrode won’t pay for their keep.  And if Lydgate thinks I’m going to give money for them to set up housekeeping, he’s mistaken, that’s all.  I expect I shall have to put down my horses soon.  You’d better tell Rosy what I say.”

This was a not infrequent procedure with Mr. Vincy—­to be rash in jovial assent, and on becoming subsequently conscious that he had been rash, to employ others in making the offensive retractation.  However, Mrs. Vincy, who never willingly opposed her husband, lost no time the next morning in letting Rosamond know what he had said.  Rosamond, examining some muslin-work, listened in silence, and at the end gave a certain turn of her graceful neck, of which only long experience could teach you that it meant perfect obstinacy.

“What do you say, my dear?” said her mother, with affectionate deference.

“Papa does not mean anything of the kind,” said Rosamond, quite calmly.  “He has always said that he wished me to marry the man I loved.  And I shall marry Mr. Lydgate.  It is seven weeks now since papa gave his consent.  And I hope we shall have Mrs. Bretton’s house.”

“Well, my dear, I shall leave you to manage your papa.  You always do manage everybody.  But if we ever do go and get damask, Sadler’s is the place—­far better than Hopkins’s.  Mrs. Bretton’s is very large, though:  I should love you to have such a house; but it will take a great deal of furniture—­carpeting and everything, besides plate and glass.  And you hear, your papa says he will give no money.  Do you think Mr. Lydgate expects it?”

“You cannot imagine that I should ask him, mamma.  Of course he understands his own affairs.”

“But he may have been looking for money, my dear, and we all thought of your having a pretty legacy as well as Fred;—­and now everything is so dreadful—­there’s no pleasure in thinking of anything, with that poor boy disappointed as he is.”

“That has nothing to do with my marriage, mamma.  Fred must leave off being idle.  I am going up-stairs to take this work to Miss Morgan:  she does the open hemming very well.  Mary Garth might do some work for me now, I should think.  Her sewing is exquisite; it is the nicest thing I know about Mary.  I should so like to have all my cambric frilling double-hemmed.  And it takes a long time.”