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.