When there she threw herself on the bed
with her clothes on, and lay in apparent torpor, as she had done
once before on a memorable day of grief.
Lydgate came home earlier than he had expected, about half-past five,
and found her there. The perception that she was ill threw every
other thought into the background. When he felt her pulse,
her eyes rested on him with more persistence than they had done
for a long while, as if she felt some content that he was there.
He perceived the difference in a moment, and seating himself
by her put his arm gently under her, and bending over her said,
"My poor Rosamond! has something agitated you?" Clinging to him
she fell into hysterical sobbings and cries, and for the next hour
he did nothing but soothe and tend her. He imagined that Dorothea
had been to see her, and that all this effect on her nervous system,
which evidently involved some new turning towards himself,
was due to the excitement of the new impressions which that visit
had raised.
CHAPTER LXXIX.
"Now, I saw in my dream, that just as they had ended their
talk, they drew nigh to a very miry slough, that was in the
midst of the plain; and they, being heedless, did both fall
suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was
Despond."--BUNYAN.
When Rosamond was quiet, and Lydgate had left her, hoping that she
might soon sleep under the effect of an anodyne, he went into the
drawing-room to fetch a book which he had left there, meaning to spend
the evening in his work-room, and he saw on the table Dorothea's
letter addressed to him.
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