Page:Eliot - Middlemarch, vol. II, 1872.djvu/242

232 "Will you give it up?" said Lydgate, with quick energy—almost angrily.

"I never give up anything that I choose to do," said Rosamond, recovering her calmness at the touching of this chord.

"God bless you!" said Lydgate, kissing her again. This constancy of purpose in the right place was adorable. He went on:—

"It is too late now for your father to say that our engagement must be given up. You are of age, and I claim you as mine. If anything is done to make you unhappy,—that is a reason for hastening our marriage."

An unmistakable delight shone forth from the blue eyes that met his, and the radiance seemed to light up all his future with mild sunshine. Ideal happiness (of the kind known in the Arabian Nights, in which you are invited to step from the labour and discord of the street into a paradise where everything is given to you and nothing claimed) seemed to be an affair of a few weeks' waiting, more or less.

"Why should we defer it?" he said, with ardent insistence. "I have taken the house now: everything else can soon be got ready-can it not? You will not mind about new clothes. Those can be bought afterwards."