Lydgate was silent. He drew his hands from behind his head and pressed them against the hair which was hanging, as it was apt to do, in a mass on his forehead, while he rested his elbows on his knees. He was feeling bitter disappointment, as if he had opened a door out of a suffocating place and had found it walled up; but he also felt sure that Rosamond was pleased with the cause of his disappointment. He preferred not looking at her and not speaking, until he had got over the first spasm of vexation. After all, he said in his bitterness, what can a woman care about so much as house and furniture? a husband without them is an absurdity. When he looked up and pushed his hair aside, his dark eyes had a miserable blank non-expectance of sympathy in them, but he only said, coolly—
“Perhaps some one else may turn up. I told Trumbull to be on the look-out if he failed with Plymdale.”
Rosamond made no remark. She trusted to the chance that nothing more would pass between her husband and the auctioneer until some issue should have justified her interference; at any rate, she had hindered the event which she immediately dreaded. After a pause, she said—
“How much money is it that those disagreeable people want?”
“What disagreeable people?”
“Those who took the list—and the others. I mean, how much money would satisfy them so that you need not be troubled any more?”
Lydgate surveyed her for a moment, as if he were looking for symptoms, and then said, “Oh, if I could have got six hundred from Plymdale for furniture and as premium, I might have managed. I could have paid off Dover, and given enough on account to the others to make them wait patiently, if we contracted our expenses.”
“But I mean how much should you want if we stayed in this house?”
“More than I am likely to get anywhere,” said Lydgate, with rather a grating sarcasm in his tone. It angered him to perceive that Rosamond’s mind was wandering over impracticable wishes instead of facing possible efforts.
“Why should you not mention the sum?” said Rosamond, with a mild indication that she did not like his manners.