understood: not, he believed, by Rosamond herself; she, he felt
sure, took everything as lightly as he intended it. She had an
exquisite tact and insight in relation to all points of manners; but
the people she lived among were blunderers and busybodies. However,
the mistake should go no farther. He resolved--and kept his
resolution--that he would not go to Mr. Vincy's except on business.

Rosamond became very unhappy. The uneasiness first stirred by her
aunt's questions grew and grew till at the end of ten days that she had
not seen Lydgate, it grew into terror at the blank that might possibly
come--into foreboding of that ready, fatal sponge which so cheaply
wipes out the hopes of mortals. The world would have a new dreariness
for her, as a wilderness that a magician's spells had turned for a
little while into a garden. She felt that she was beginning to know
the pang of disappointed love, and that no other man could be the
occasion of such delightful aerial building as she had been enjoying
for the last six months. Poor Rosamond lost her appetite and felt as
forlorn as Ariadne--as a charming stage Ariadne left behind with all
her boxes full of costumes and no hope of a coach.

There are many wonderful mixtures in the world which are all alike
called love, and claim the privileges of a sublime rage which is an
apology for everything (in literature and the drama). Happily Rosamond
did not think of committing any desperate act: she plaited her fair
hair as beautifully as usual, and kept herself proudly calm. Her most
cheerful supposition was that her aunt Bulstrode had interfered in some
way to hinder Lydgate's visits: everything was better than a
spontaneous indifference in him. Any one who imagines ten days too
short a time--not for falling into leanness, lightness, or other
measurable effects of passion, but--for the whole spiritual circuit of
alarmed conjecture and disappointment, is ignorant of what can go on in
the elegant leisure of a young lady's mind.

On the eleventh day, however, Lydgate when leaving Stone Court was
requested by Mrs. Vincy to let her husband know that there was a marked
change in Mr. Featherstone's health, and that she wished him to come to
Stone Court on that day. Now Lydgate might have called at the
warehouse, or might have written a message on a leaf of his pocket-book
and left it at the door. Yet these simple devices apparently did not
occur to him, from which we may conclud