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—­