There was a serious pleading in Lydgate's tone, as if he felt that she

would be injuring him by any fantastic delays. Rosamond became serious

too, and slightly meditative; in fact, she was going through many

intricacies of lace-edging and hosiery and petticoat-tucking, in order

to give an answer that would at least be approximative.

"Six weeks would be ample--say so, Rosamond," insisted Lydgate,

releasing her hands to put his arm gently round her.

One little hand immediately went to pat her hair, while she gave her

neck a meditative turn, and then said seriously--

"There would be the house-linen and the furniture to be prepared.

Still, mamma could see to those while we were away."

"Yes, to be sure. We must be away a week or so."

"Oh, more than that!" said Rosamond, earnestly. She was thinking of

her evening dresses for the visit to Sir Godwin Lydgate's, which she

had long been secretly hoping for as a delightful employment of at

least one quarter of the honeymoon, even if she deferred her

introduction to the uncle who was a doctor of divinity (also a pleasing

though sober kind of rank, when sustained by blood). She looked at her

lover with some wondering remonstrance as she spoke, and he readily

understood that she might wish to lengthen the sweet time of double

solitude.

"Whatever you wish, my darling, when the day is fixed. But let us take

a decided course, and put an end to any discomfort you may be

suffering. Six weeks!--I am sure they would be ample."

"I could certainly hasten the work," said Rosamond. "Will you, then,

mention it to papa?--I think it would be better to write to him." She

blushed and looked at him as the garden flowers look at us when we walk

forth happily among them in the transcendent evening light: is there

not a soul beyond utterance, half nymph, half child, in those delicate

petals which glow and breathe about the centres of deep color?

He touched her ear and a little bit of neck under it with his lips, and

they sat quite still for many minutes which flowed by them like a small

gurgling brook with the kisses of the sun upon it. Rosamond thought

that no one could be more in love than she was; and Lydgate thought

that after all his wild mistakes and absurd credulity, he had found

perfect womanhood--felt as if already breathed upon by exquisite wedded

affection such as would be bestowed by an accomplished creature who

venerated his high musings and momentous labors and would never

interfere with them; who would create order in the home and accounts

with still magic, yet keep her fingers ready to touch the lute and

transform life into romance at any moment; who was instructed to the

true womanly limit and not a hair's-breadth beyond--docile, therefore,

and ready to carry out behests which came from that limit. It was

plainer now than ever that his notion of remaining much longer a

bachelor had been a mistake: marriage would not be an obstruction but a

furtherance. And happening the next day to accompany a patient to

Brassing, he saw a dinner-service there which struck him as so exactly

the right thing that he bought it at once. It saved time to do these

things just when you thought of them, and Lydgate hated ugly crockery.

The dinner-service in question was expensive, but that might be in the

nature of dinner-services. Furnishing was necessarily expensive; but

then it had to be done only once.




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