he was getting
more and more unbearable--not that there was any new special reason for
this peremptoriness. His indisposition to tell her anything in which
he was sure beforehand that she would not be interested was growing
into an unreflecting habit, and she was in ignorance of everything
connected with the thousand pounds except that the loan had come from
her uncle Bulstrode. Lydgate's odious humors and their neighbors'
apparent avoidance of them had an unaccountable date for her in their
relief from money difficulties. If the invitations had been accepted
she would have gone to invite her mamma and the rest, whom she had seen
nothing of for several days; and she now put on her bonnet to go and
inquire what had become of them all, suddenly feeling as if there were
a conspiracy to leave her in isolation with a husband disposed to
offend everybody. It was after the dinner hour, and she found her
father and mother seated together alone in the drawing-room. They
greeted her with sad looks, saying "Well, my dear!" and no more. She
had never seen her father look so downcast; and seating herself near
him she said--

"Is there anything the matter, papa?"

He did not answer, but Mrs. Vincy said, "Oh, my dear, have you heard
nothing? It won't be long before it reaches you."

"Is it anything about Tertius?" said Rosamond, turning pale. The idea
of trouble immediately connected itself with what had been
unaccountable to her in him.

"Oh, my dear, yes. To think of your marrying into this trouble. Debt
was bad enough, but this will be worse."

"Stay, stay, Lucy," said Mr. Vincy. "Have you heard nothing about your
uncle Bulstrode, Rosamond?"

"No, papa," said the poor thing, feeling as if trouble were not
anything she had before experienced, but some invisible power with an
iron grasp that made her soul faint within her.

Her father told her everything, saying at the end, "It's better for you
to know, my dear. I think Lydgate must leave the town. Things have
gone against him. I dare say he couldn't help it. I don't accuse him
of any harm," said Mr. Vincy. He had always before been disposed to
find the utmost fault with Lydgate.

The shock to Rosamond was terrible. It seemed to her that no lot could
be so cruelly hard as hers to have married a man who had become the
centre of infamous suspicions. In many cases it is inevitable that the
shame is felt to be the worst part of crime; and it would have require