'You were right,' he said to Rose, 'she wasn't equal to that brute.'
He turned angrily. 'Why didn't you make me see?'

She made no answer then, or afterwards, to him, but over and over
again, with the awful reiteration of the conscience-smitten, she set
out her reasons for her silence. She might have told him that of these
he was the chief. If he had looked at her less persistently on her
visits to Sales Hall, if he had married another kind of woman, she
would not have been afraid to speak, but she had tried not to
extinguish what little flame of love still flickered in his heart for
Christabel and she had succeeded in almost extinguishing her life, in
reducing her to permanent helplessness.

This was Rose's first experience of how evil comes out of good. What
would happen to that love, Rose did not know. For a time it burned
more brightly, fanned by Christabel's heroism and Francis's remorse,
but heroism can become monotonous to the spectator and poignant
remorse cannot be endured for ever. Christabel's plight was pitiful,
but Rose was sorrier for Francis. He had, as it were, engaged her
compassion years ago, he had a prior claim, and as time went on, her
pity for Christabel changed at moments to annoyance. It was cruel, but
Rose had no fund of patience. She disliked illness as she did
deformity, and though Christabel never complained of her constant
pain, she developed the exactions of an invalid, and the suspicions.
In those blue eyes, bluer, and more than ever wary, Rose saw the
questions which were never asked.

In the bedroom which, with the boudoir, had been furnished and
decorated by the best shop in Radstowe, for a surprise, Christabel lay
on a couch near the window, with a nurse in attendance, the puppy and