ssity, he
said, almost as good as holidays to a schoolboy. He hoped there was
his old place on the rug, and a great deal of music in store for him.
But he was quite uncertain as to the time. While Lydgate was reading
the letter to Rosamond, her face looked like a reviving flower--it grew
prettier and more blooming. There was nothing unendurable now: the
debts were paid, Mr. Ladislaw was coming, and Lydgate would be
persuaded to leave Middlemarch and settle in London, which was "so
different from a provincial town."

That was a bright bit of morning. But soon the sky became black over
poor Rosamond. The presence of a new gloom in her husband, about which
he was entirely reserved towards her--for he dreaded to expose his
lacerated feeling to her neutrality and misconception--soon received a
painfully strange explanation, alien to all her previous notions of
what could affect her happiness. In the new gayety of her spirits,
thinking that Lydgate had merely a worse fit of moodiness than usual,
causing him to leave her remarks unanswered, and evidently to keep out
of her way as much as possible, she chose, a few days after the
meeting, and without speaking to him on the subject, to send out notes
of invitation for a small evening party, feeling convinced that this
was a judicious step, since people seemed to have been keeping aloof
from them, and wanted restoring to the old habit of intercourse. When
the invitations had been accepted, she would tell Lydgate, and give him
a wise admonition as to how a medical man should behave to his
neighbors; for Rosamond had the gravest little airs possible about
other people's duties. But all the invitations were declined, and the
last answer came into Lydgate's hands.

"This is Chichely's scratch. What is he writing to you about?" said
Lydgate, wonderingly, as he handed the note to her. She was obliged to
let him see it, and, looking at her severely, he said--

"Why on earth have you been sending out invitations without telling me,
Rosamond? I beg, I insist that you will not invite any one to this
house. I suppose you have been inviting others, and they have refused
too." She said nothing.

"Do you hear me?" thundered Lydgate.

"Yes, certainly I hear you," said Rosamond, turning her head aside with
the movement of a graceful long-necked bird.

Lydgate tossed his head without any grace and walked out of the room,
feeling himself dangerous. Rosamond's thought was, that