seven that
evening.

Rosamond had been prepared for Will's visit, and she received him with
a languid coldness which Lydgate accounted for by her nervous
exhaustion, of which he could not suppose that it had any relation to
Will. And when she sat in silence bending over a bit of work, he
innocently apologized for her in an indirect way by begging her to lean
backward and rest. Will was miserable in the necessity for playing the
part of a friend who was making his first appearance and greeting to
Rosamond, while his thoughts were busy about her feeling since that
scene of yesterday, which seemed still inexorably to enclose them both,
like the painful vision of a double madness. It happened that nothing
called Lydgate out of the room; but when Rosamond poured out the tea,
and Will came near to fetch it, she placed a tiny bit of folded paper
in his saucer. He saw it and secured it quickly, but as he went back
to his inn he had no eagerness to unfold the paper. What Rosamond had
written to him would probably deepen the painful impressions of the
evening. Still, he opened and read it by his bed-candle. There were
only these few words in her neatly flowing hand:--

"I have told Mrs. Casaubon. She is not under any mistake about you. I
told her because she came to see me and was very kind. You will have
nothing to reproach me with now. I shall not have made any difference
to you."

The effect of these words was not quite all gladness. As Will dwelt on
them with excited imagination, he felt his cheeks and ears burning at
the thought of what had occurred between Dorothea and Rosamond--at the
uncertainty how far Dorothea might still feel her dignity wounded in
having an explanation of his conduct offered to her. There might still
remain in her mind a changed association with him which made an
irremediable difference--a lasting flaw. With active fancy he wrought
himself into a state of doubt little more easy than that of the man who
has escaped from wreck by night and stands on unknown ground in the
darkness. Until that wretched yesterday--except the moment of
vexation long ago in the very same room and in the very same
presence--all their vision, all their thought of each other, had been
as in a world apart, where the sunshine fell on tall white lilies,
where no evil lurked, and no other soul entered. But now--would
Dorothea meet him in that world again?

CHAPTER LXXXIII.

"And now good-morrow to our