ppiness (of the kind known in the Arabian Nights, in which you
are invited to step from the labor and discord of the street into a
paradise where everything is given to you and nothing claimed) seemed
to be an affair of a few weeks' waiting, more or less.

"Why should we defer it?" he said, with ardent insistence. "I have
taken the house now: everything else can soon be got ready--can it
not? You will not mind about new clothes. Those can be bought
afterwards."

"What original notions you clever men have!" said Rosamond, dimpling
with more thorough laughter than usual at this humorous incongruity.
"This is the first time I ever heard of wedding-clothes being bought
after marriage."

"But you don't mean to say you would insist on my waiting months for
the sake of clothes?" said Lydgate, half thinking that Rosamond was
tormenting him prettily, and half fearing that she really shrank from
speedy marriage. "Remember, we are looking forward to a better sort of
happiness even than this--being continually together, independent of
others, and ordering our lives as we will. Come, dear, tell me how
soon you can be altogether mine."

There was a serious pleading in Lydgate's tone, as if he felt that she
would be injuring him by any fantastic delays. Rosamond became serious
too, and slightly meditative; in fact, she was going through many
intricacies of lace-edging and hosiery and petticoat-tucking, in order
to give an answer that would at least be approximative.

"Six weeks would be ample--say so, Rosamond," insisted Lydgate,
releasing her hands to put his arm gently round her.

One little hand immediately went to pat her hair, while she gave her
neck a meditative turn, and then said seriously--

"There would be the house-linen and the furniture to be prepared.
Still, mamma could see to those while we were away."

"Yes, to be sure. We must be away a week or so."

"Oh, more than that!" said Rosamond, earnestly. She was thinking of
her evening dresses for the visit to Sir Godwin Lydgate's, which she
had long been secretly hoping for as a delightful employment of at
least one quarter of the honeymoon, even if she deferred her
introduction to the uncle who was a doctor of divinity (also a pleasing
though sober kind of rank, when sustained by blood). She looked at her
lover with some wondering remonstrance as she spoke, and he readily
understood that she might wish to lengthen the sweet time of double
solitude.

"W