They were obliged to look at each other in speaking, and somehow the
looking could not be carried through as the matter of course which it
really was. Lydgate began to feel this sort of consciousness unpleasant
and one day looked down, or anywhere, like an ill-worked puppet.
But this turned out badly: the next day, Rosamond looked down,
and the consequence was that when their eyes met again, both were
more conscious than before. There was no help for this in science,
and as Lydgate did not want to flirt, there seemed to be no help
for it in folly. It was therefore a relief when neighbors no longer
considered the house in quarantine, and when the chances of seeing
Rosamond alone were very much reduced.
But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels
that the other is feeling something, having once existed,
its effect is not to be done away with. Talk about the weather
and other well-bred topics is apt to seem a hollow device,
and behavior can hardly become easy unless it frankly recognizes
a mutual fascination--which of course need not mean anything deep
or serious. This was the way in which Rosamond and Lydgate slid
gracefully into ease, and made their intercourse lively again.
Visitors came and went as usual, there was once more music in
the drawing-room, and all the extra hospitality of Mr.
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