was hanging, as it was apt to do, in a mass
on his forehead, while he rested his elbows on his knees. He was
feeling bitter disappointment, as if he had opened a door out of a
suffocating place and had found it walled up; but he also felt sure
that Rosamond was pleased with the cause of his disappointment. He
preferred not looking at her and not speaking, until he had got over
the first spasm of vexation. After all, he said in his bitterness,
what can a woman care about so much as house and furniture? a husband
without them is an absurdity. When he looked up and pushed his hair
aside, his dark eyes had a miserable blank non-expectance of sympathy
in them, but he only said, coolly--

"Perhaps some one else may turn up. I told Trumbull to be on the
look-out if he failed with Plymdale."

Rosamond made no remark. She trusted to the chance that nothing more
would pass between her husband and the auctioneer until some issue
should have justified her interference; at any rate, she had hindered
the event which she immediately dreaded. After a pause, she said--

"How much money is it that those disagreeable people want?"

"What disagreeable people?"

"Those who took the list--and the others. I mean, how much money would
satisfy them so that you need not be troubled any more?"

Lydgate surveyed her for a moment, as if he were looking for symptoms,
and then said, "Oh, if I could have got six hundred from Plymdale for
furniture and as premium, I might have managed. I could have paid off
Dover, and given enough on account to the others to make them wait
patiently, if we contracted our expenses."

"But I mean how much should you want if we stayed in this house?"

"More than I am likely to get anywhere," said Lydgate, with rather a
grating sarcasm in his tone. It angered him to perceive that
Rosamond's mind was wandering over impracticable wishes instead of
facing possible efforts.

"Why should you not mention the sum?" said Rosamond, with a mild
indication that she did not like his manners.

"Well," said Lydgate in a guessing tone, "it would take at least a
thousand to set me at ease. But," he added, incisively, "I have to
consider what I shall do without it, not with it."

Rosamond said no more.

But the next day she carried out her plan of writing to Sir Godwin
Lydgate. Since the Captain's visit, she had received a letter from
him, and also one from Mrs. Mengan, his married sister, condoling with
her on t