Casaubon.
That was the state of things with Lydgate and Rosamond on the New
Year's Day when they dined at her father's, she looking mildly
neutral towards him in remembrance of his ill-tempered behavior
at breakfast, and he carrying a much deeper effect from the inward
conflict in which that morning scene was only one of many epochs.
His flushed effort while talking to Mr. Farebrother--his effort after
the cynical pretence that all ways of getting money are essentially
the same, and that chance has an empire which reduces choice
to a fool's illusion--was but the symptom of a wavering resolve,
a benumbed response to the old stimuli of enthusiasm.
What was he to do? He saw even more keenly than Rosamond did
the dreariness of taking her into the small house in Bride Street,
where she would have scanty furniture around her and discontent within:
a life of privation and life with Rosamond were two images which
had become more and more irreconcilable ever since the threat
of privation had disclosed itself. But even if his resolves had
forced the two images into combination, the useful preliminaries
to that hard change were not visibly within reach. And though
he had not given the promise which his wife had asked for,
he did not go again to Trumbull. He even began to think
of taking a rapid journey to the North and seeing Sir Godwin.
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