Miss Vincy was alone, and blushed so deeply when Lydgate came in that
he felt a corresponding embarrassment, and instead of any playfulness,
he began at once to speak of his reason for calling, and to beg her,
almost formally, to deliver the message to her father. Rosamond, who
at the first moment felt as if her happiness were returning, was keenly
hurt by Lydgate's manner; her blush had departed, and she assented
coldly, without adding an unnecessary word, some trivial chain-work
which she had in her hands enabling her to avoid looking at Lydgate
higher than his chin. In all failures, the beginning is certainly the
half of the whole. After sitting two long moments while he moved his
whip and could say nothing, Lydgate rose to go, and Rosamond, made
nervous by her struggle between mortification and the wish not to
betray it, dropped her chain as if startled, and rose too,
mechanically. Lydgate instantaneously stooped to pick up the chain.
When he rose he was very near to a lovely little face set on a fair
long neck which he had been used to see turning about under the most
perfect management of self-contented grace. But as he raised his eyes
now he saw a certain helpless quivering which touched him quite newly,
and made him look at Rosamond with a questioning flash. At this moment
she was as natural as she had ever been when she was five years old:
she felt that her tears had risen, and it was no use to try to do
anything else than let them stay like water on a blue flower or let
them fall over her cheeks, even as they would.
That moment of naturalness was the crystallizing feather-touch: it
shook flirtation into love. Remember that the ambitious man who was
looking at those Forget-me-nots under the water was very warm-hearted
and rash. He did not know where the chain went; an idea had thrilled
through the recesses within him which had a miraculous effect in
raising the power of passionate love lying buried there in no sealed
sepulchre, but under the lightest, easily pierced mould. His words
were quite abrupt and awkward; but the tone made them sound like an
ardent, appealing avowal.
"What is the matter? you are distressed. Tell me, pray."
Rosamond had never been spoken to in such tones before. I am not sure
that she knew what the words were: but she looked at Lydgate and the
tears fell over her cheeks. There could have been no more complete
answer than that silence, and Lydgate, forgetting everything else,
completely mastered by the outrush of tenderness at the sudden belief
that this sweet young creature depended on him for her joy, actually
put his arms round her, folding her gently and protectingly--he was
used to being gentle with the weak and suffering--and kissed each of
the two large tears. This was a strange way of arriving at an
understanding, but it was a short way. Rosamond was not angry, but she
moved backward a little in timid happiness, and Lydgate could now sit
near her and speak less incompletely. Rosamond had to make her little
confession, and he poured out words of gratitude and tenderness with
impulsive lavishment. In half an hour he left the house an engaged
man, whose soul was not his own, but the woman's to whom he had bound
himself.