end of the room; when she turned round and walked towards him it was evident that the tears had come, and that she was biting her under-lip and clasping her hands to keep herself from crying. Lydgate was wretched—shaken with anger and yet feeling that it would be unmanly to vent the anger just now.
“I am very sorry, Rosamond; I know this is painful.”
“I thought, at least, when I had borne to send the plate back and have that man taking an inventory of the furniture—I should have thought that would suffice.”
“I explained it to you at the time, dear. That was only a security and behind that security there is a debt. And that debt must be paid within the next few months, else we shall have our furniture sold. If young Plymdale will take our house and most of our furniture, we shall be able to pay that debt, and some others too, and we shall be quit of a place too expensive for us. We might take a smaller house: Trumbull, I know, has a very decent one to let at thirty pounds a-year, and this is ninety.” Lydgate uttered this speech in the curt hammering way with which we usually try to nail down a vague mind to imperative facts. Tears rolled silently down Rosamond’s cheeks; she just pressed her handkerchief against them, and stood looking at the large vase on the mantelpiece. It was a moment of more intense bitterness than she had ever felt before. At last, she said, without hurry and with careful emphasis—
“I never could have believed that you would like to act in that way.”
“Like it?” burst out Lydgate, rising from his chair, thrusting his hands in his pockets and stalking away from the hearth; “it’s not a question of liking. Of course, I don’t like it; it’s the only thing I can do.” He wheeled round there, and turned towards her.
“I should have thought there were many other means than that,” said Rosamond. “Let us have a sale and leave Middlemarch altogether.”
“To do what? What is the use of my leaving my work in Middlemarch to go where I have none? We should be just as penniless elsewhere as we are here,” said Lydgate still more angrily.
“If we are to be in that position it will be entirely your own doing, Tertius,” said Rosamond, turning round to speak with the fullest conviction. “You will not behave as you ought to do to your own family. You offended Captain Lydgate. Sir Godwin was very kind to me when we were at Quallingham, and I am sure if you showed proper regard to him and told him your affairs, he would do anything for you. But rather than that, you like giving up our house and furniture to Mr Ned Plymdale.”
There was something like fierceness in Lydgate’s eyes, as he answered with new violence, “Well then, if you will have it so, I do like it. I admit that I like it better than making a fool of myself by going to beg where it’s of no use. Understand then, that it is what I like to do.”
