g but comply. She did not say yes, but she rose and
let Lydgate put a light shawl over her shoulders, while he said, "I am
going out immediately." Then something crossed her mind which prompted
her to say, "Pray tell Martha not to bring any one else into the
drawing-room." And Lydgate assented, thinking that he fully understood
this wish. He led her down to the drawing-room door, and then turned
away, observing to himself that he was rather a blundering husband to
be dependent for his wife's trust in him on the influence of another
woman.

Rosamond, wrapping her soft shawl around her as she walked towards
Dorothea, was inwardly wrapping her soul in cold reserve. Had Mrs.
Casaubon come to say anything to her about Will? If so, it was a
liberty that Rosamond resented; and she prepared herself to meet every
word with polite impassibility. Will had bruised her pride too sorely
for her to feel any compunction towards him and Dorothea: her own
injury seemed much the greater. Dorothea was not only the "preferred"
woman, but had also a formidable advantage in being Lydgate's
benefactor; and to poor Rosamond's pained confused vision it seemed
that this Mrs. Casaubon--this woman who predominated in all things
concerning her--must have come now with the sense of having the
advantage, and with animosity prompting her to use it. Indeed, not
Rosamond only, but any one else, knowing the outer facts of the case,
and not the simple inspiration on which Dorothea acted, might well have
wondered why she came.

Looking like the lovely ghost of herself, her graceful slimness wrapped
in her soft white shawl, the rounded infantine mouth and cheek
inevitably suggesting mildness and innocence, Rosamond paused at three
yards' distance from her visitor and bowed. But Dorothea, who had
taken off her gloves, from an impulse which she could never resist when
she wanted a sense of freedom, came forward, and with her face full of
a sad yet sweet openness, put out her hand. Rosamond could not avoid
meeting her glance, could not avoid putting her small hand into
Dorothea's, which clasped it with gentle motherliness; and immediately
a doubt of her own prepossessions began to stir within her. Rosamond's
eye was quick for faces; she saw that Mrs. Casaubon's face looked pale
and changed since yesterday, yet gentle, and like the firm softness of
her hand. But Dorothea had counted a little too much on her own
strength: the clearness and intensity