s she spoke.

"I have dined. I should like some tea, please," said Lydgate, curtly,
still scowling and looking markedly at his legs stretched out before
him.

Will was too quick to need more. "I shall be off," he said, reaching
his hat.

"Tea is coming," said Rosamond; "pray don't go."

"Yes, Lydgate is bored," said Will, who had more comprehension of
Lydgate than Rosamond had, and was not offended by his manner, easily
imagining outdoor causes of annoyance.

"There is the more need for you to stay," said Rosamond, playfully, and
in her lightest accent; "he will not speak to me all the evening."

"Yes, Rosamond, I shall," said Lydgate, in his strong baritone. "I
have some serious business to speak to you about."

No introduction of the business could have been less like that which
Lydgate had intended; but her indifferent manner had been too provoking.

"There! you see," said Will. "I'm going to the meeting about the
Mechanics' Institute. Good-by;" and he went quickly out of the room.

Rosamond did not look at her husband, but presently rose and took her
place before the tea-tray. She was thinking that she had never seen him
so disagreeable. Lydgate turned his dark eyes on her and watched her
as she delicately handled the tea-service with her taper fingers, and
looked at the objects immediately before her with no curve in her face
disturbed, and yet with an ineffable protest in her air against all
people with unpleasant manners. For the moment he lost the sense of
his wound in a sudden speculation about this new form of feminine
impassibility revealing itself in the sylph-like frame which he had
once interpreted as the sign of a ready intelligent sensitiveness. His
mind glancing back to Laure while he looked at Rosamond, he said
inwardly, "Would _she_ kill me because I wearied her?" and then, "It is
the way with all women." But this power of generalizing which gives men
so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals, was
immediately thwarted by Lydgate's memory of wondering impressions from
the behavior of another woman--from Dorothea's looks and tones of
emotion about her husband when Lydgate began to attend him--from her
passionate cry to be taught what would best comfort that man for whose
sake it seemed as if she must quell every impulse in her except the
yearnings of faithfulness and compassion. These revived impressions
succeeded each other quickly and dreamily in Lydgate's mind while