n the subject. Will you oblige
me?"

"Certainly I will, Mrs. Lydgate, certainly. Confidence is sacred with
me on business or any other topic. I am then to consider the
commission withdrawn?" said Mr. Trumbull, adjusting the long ends of
his blue cravat with both hands, and looking at Rosamond deferentially.

"Yes, if you please. I find that Mr. Ned Plymdale has taken a house--the
one in St. Peter's Place next to Mr. Hackbutt's. Mr. Lydgate would be
annoyed that his orders should be fulfilled uselessly. And besides
that, there are other circumstances which render the proposal
unnecessary."

"Very good, Mrs. Lydgate, very good. I am at your commands, whenever
you require any service of me," said Mr. Trumbull, who felt pleasure in
conjecturing that some new resources had been opened. "Rely on me, I
beg. The affair shall go no further."

That evening Lydgate was a little comforted by observing that Rosamond
was more lively than she had usually been of late, and even seemed
interested in doing what would please him without being asked. He
thought, "If she will be happy and I can rub through, what does it all
signify? It is only a narrow swamp that we have to pass in a long
journey. If I can get my mind clear again, I shall do."

He was so much cheered that he began to search for an account of
experiments which he had long ago meant to look up, and had neglected
out of that creeping self-despair which comes in the train of petty
anxieties. He felt again some of the old delightful absorption in a
far-reaching inquiry, while Rosamond played the quiet music which was
as helpful to his meditation as the plash of an oar on the evening
lake. It was rather late; he had pushed away all the books, and was
looking at the fire with his hands clasped behind his head in
forgetfulness of everything except the construction of a new
controlling experiment, when Rosamond, who had left the piano and was
leaning back in her chair watching him, said--

"Mr. Ned Plymdale has taken a house already."

Lydgate, startled and jarred, looked up in silence for a moment, like a
man who has been disturbed in his sleep. Then flushing with an
unpleasant consciousness, he asked--

"How do you know?"

"I called at Mrs. Plymdale's this morning, and she told me that he had
taken the house in St. Peter's Place, next to Mr. Hackbutt's."

Lydgate was silent. He drew his hands from behind his head and pressed
them against the hair which