 the best naturally being what
she best liked.
    Lydgate pausing and looking at her began to feel that half-maddening sense
of helplessness which comes over passionate people when their passion is met by
an innocent-looking silence whose meek victimised air seems to put them in the
wrong, and at last infects even the justest indignation with a doubt of its
justice. He needed to recover the full sense that he was in the right by
moderating his words.
    »Can you not see, Rosamond,« he began again, trying to be simply grave and
not bitter, »that nothing can be so fatal as a want of openness and confidence
between us? It has happened again and again that I have expressed a decided
wish, and you have seemed to assent, yet after that you have secretly disobeyed
my wish. In that way I can never know what I have to trust to. There would be
some hope for us if you would admit this. Am I such an unreasonable, furious
brute? Why should you not be open with me?«
    Still silence.
    »Will you only say that you have been mistaken, and that I may depend on
your not acting secretly in future?« said Lydgate, urgently, but with something
of request in his tone which Rosamond was quick to perceive. She spoke with
coolness.
    »I cannot possibly make admissions or promises in answer to such words as
you have used towards me. I have not been accustomed to language of that kind.
You have spoken of my secret meddling, and my interfering ignorance, and my
false assent. I have never expressed myself in that way to you, and I think that
you ought to apologise. You spoke of its being impossible to live with me.
Certainly you have not made my life pleasant to me of late. I think it was to be
expected that I should try to avert some of the hardships which our marriage has
brought on me.« Another tear fell as Rosamond ceased speaking, and she pressed
it away as quietly as the first.
    Lydgate flung himself into a chair, feeling checkmated. What place was there
in her mind for a remonstrance to lodge in? He laid down his hat, flung an arm
over the back of his chair, and looked down for some moments without speaking.
Rosamond had the double purchase over him of insensibility to the point of
justice in his reproach, and of sensibility to the undeniable hardships now
present in her married life. Although her duplicity in the affair of the house
had exceeded what he knew, and had really hindered the Plymdales from knowing of
it,
