Page 847 - middlemarch

be counted on: the interval had left time for repelled tender-
ness to return into the old course. He spoke kindly.
‘Dear Rosy, lay down your work and come to sit by me,’
he said, gently, pushing away the table, and stretching out
his arm to draw a chair near his own.
Rosamond obeyed. As she came towards him in her
drapery of transparent faintly tinted muslin, her slim yet
round figure never looked more graceful; as she sat down
by him and laid one hand on the elbow of his chair, at last
looking at him and meeting his eyes, her delicate neck and
cheek and purely cut lips never had more of that untar-
nished beauty which touches as in spring-time and infancy
and all sweet freshness. It touched Lydgate now, and min-
gled the early moments of his love for her with all the other
memories which were stirred in this crisis of deep trouble.
He laid his ample hand softly on hers, saying—
‘Dear!’ with the lingering utterance which affection gives
to the word. Rosamond too was still under the power of that
same past, and her husband was still in part the Lydgate
whose approval had stirred delight. She put his hair lightly
away from his forehead, then laid her other hand on his,
and was conscious of forgiving him.
‘I am obliged to tell you what will hurt you, Rosy. But
there are things which husband and wife must think of to-
gether. I dare say it has occurred to you already that I am
short of money.’
Lydgate paused; but Rosamond turned her neck and
looked at a vase on the mantel-piece.
‘I was not able to pay for all the things we had to get be-

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