; it was as if they were both adrift on one piece
of wreck and looked away from each other.
    He thought, »I am a fool. Haven't I given up expecting anything? I have
married care, not help.« And that evening he said -
    »Rosamond, have you heard anything that distresses you?«
    »Yes,« she answered, laying down her work, which she had been carrying on
with a languid semi-consciousness, most unlike her usual self.
    »What have you heard?«
    »Everything, I suppose. Papa told me.«
    »That people think me disgraced?«
    »Yes,« said Rosamond, faintly, beginning to sew again automatically.
    There was silence. Lydgate thought, »If she has any trust in me - any notion
of what I am, she ought to speak now and say that she does not believe I have
deserved disgrace.«
    But Rosamond on her side went on moving her fingers languidly. Whatever was
to be said on the subject she expected to come from Tertius. What did she know?
And if he were innocent of any wrong, why did he not do something to clear
himself?
    This silence of hers brought a new rush of gall to that bitter mood in which
Lydgate had been saying to himself that nobody believed in him - even
Farebrother had not come forward. He had begun to question her with the intent
that their conversation should disperse the chill fog which had gathered between
them, but he felt his resolution checked by despairing resentment. Even this
trouble, like the rest, she seemed to regard as if it were hers alone. He was
always to her a being apart, doing what she objected to. He started from his
chair with an angry impulse, and thrusting his hands in his pockets, walked up
and down the room. There was an underlying consciousness all the while that he
should have to master this anger, and tell her everything, and convince her of
the facts. For he had almost learned the lesson that he must bend himself to her
nature, and that because she came short in her sympathy, he must give the more.
Soon he recurred to his intention of opening himself: the occasion must not be
lost. If he could bring her to feel with some solemnity that here was a slander
which must be met and not run away from, and that the whole trouble had come out
of his desperate want of money, it would be a moment for urging powerfully on
her that they should be one in the resolve to do with as little money as
