“Dear! your eyelids are red.”

“Are they?” said Rosamond.  “I wonder why.”  It was not in her nature to pour forth wishes or grievances.  They only came forth gracefully on solicitation.

“As if you could hide it from me!”? said Lydgate, laying his hand tenderly on both of hers.  “Don’t I see a tiny drop on one of the lashes?  Things trouble you, and you don’t tell me.  That is unloving.”

“Why should I tell you what you cannot alter?  They are every-day things:—­perhaps they have been a little worse lately.”

“Family annoyances.  Don’t fear speaking.  I guess them.”

“Papa has been more irritable lately.  Fred makes him angry, and this morning there was a fresh quarrel because Fred threatens to throw his whole education away, and do something quite beneath him.  And besides—­”

Rosamond hesitated, and her cheeks were gathering a slight flush.  Lydgate had never seen her in trouble since the morning of their engagement, and he had never felt so passionately towards her as at this moment.  He kissed the hesitating lips gently, as if to encourage them.

“I feel that papa is not quite pleased about our engagement,” Rosamond continued, almost in a whisper; “and he said last night that he should certainly speak to you and say it must be given up.”

“Will you give it up?” said Lydgate, with quick energy—­almost angrily.

“I never give up anything that I choose to do,” said Rosamond, recovering her calmness at the touching of this chord.

“God bless you!” said Lydgate, kissing her again.  This constancy of purpose in the right place was adorable.  He went on:—­

“It is too late now for your father to say that our engagement must be given up.  You are of age, and I claim you as mine.  If anything is done to make you unhappy,—­that is a reason for hastening our marriage.”

An unmistakable delight shone forth from the blue eyes that met his, and the radiance seemed to light up all his future with mild sunshine.  Ideal happiness (of the kind known in the Arabian Nights, in which you are invited to step from the labor and discord of the street into a paradise where everything is given to you and nothing claimed) seemed to be an affair of a few weeks’ waiting, more or less.

“Why should we defer it?” he said, with ardent insistence.  “I have taken the house now:  everything else can soon be got ready—­ can it not?  You will not mind about new clothes.  Those can be bought afterwards.”

“What original notions you clever men have!” said Rosamond, dimpling with more thorough laughter than usual at this humorous incongruity.  “This is the first time I ever heard of wedding-clothes being bought after marriage.”

“But you don’t mean to say you would insist on my waiting months for the sake of clothes?” said Lydgate, half thinking that Rosamond was tormenting him prettily, and half fearing that she really shrank from speedy marriage.  “Remember, we are looking forward to a better sort of happiness even than this—­being continually together, independent of others, and ordering our lives as we will.  Come, dear, tell me how soon you can be altogether mine.”