"Why should I tell you what you cannot alter? They are every-day
things:--perhaps they have been a little worse lately."
"Family annoyances. Don't fear speaking. I guess them."
"Papa has been more irritable lately. Fred makes him angry, and this
morning there was a fresh quarrel because Fred threatens to throw his
whole education away, and do something quite beneath him. And
besides--"
Rosamond hesitated, and her cheeks were gathering a slight flush.
Lydgate had never seen her in trouble since the morning of their
engagement, and he had never felt so passionately towards her as at
this moment. He kissed the hesitating lips gently, as if to encourage
them.
"I feel that papa is not quite pleased about our engagement," Rosamond
continued, almost in a whisper; "and he said last night that he should
certainly speak to you and say it must be given up."
"Will you give it up?" said Lydgate, with quick energy--almost angrily.
"I never give up anything that I choose to do," said Rosamond,
recovering her calmness at the touching of this chord.
"God bless you!" said Lydgate, kissing her again. This constancy of
purpose in the right place was adorable. He went on:--
"It is too late now for your father to say that our engagement must be
given up. You are of age, and I claim you as mine. If anything is
done to make you unhappy,--that is a reason for hastening our marriage."
An unmistakable delight shone forth from the blue eyes that met his,
and the radiance seemed to light up all his future with mild sunshine.
Ideal happiness (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."