A nurse was installed in the sick-room, Sophia fluttered a little less and Rose and Henrietta ignored their emotion of the early morning; they also avoided each other. They were both occupied with the same problem, though Henrietta’s thoughts had taken definite shape; above her dreaming, her practical mind was dealing with concrete details, and Rose was merely speculating on the future, and the more she speculated, the surer she became of the necessity to interfere. Her plan of carrying Henrietta to other lands was frustrated for the present by Caroline’s illness and she dared not allow things to drift. There was a smouldering defiance in Henrietta’s manner: she was absorbed yet wary; she seemed to have a grudge against the aunt who had missed nothing at the dance, who had seen her exits and entrances with Francis Sales and interrupted their farewell glance, the wave of Henrietta’s gloved hand towards the tall figure standing in the porch of the Assembly Rooms to see her depart. There was a certain humour about the situation, and for Rose an impeding feeling of hypocrisy. Here she was, determined to put obstacles on the primrose path where she herself once had dallied. It looked like the envy of age for youth, it looked like inclining to virtue because the opposite was no longer possible for her, like tardy loyalty to Christabel; but she must not be hampered by appearances. Her chief fear was of hardening Henrietta’s temper, and she came to the conclusion that she must appeal to Francis Sales himself. It was an unpleasant task and, she dimly felt, she hardly knew why, a dangerous one; and meeting Henrietta that day at meals or in the hushed quiet of the passages, she felt herself a traitor to the girl. After all, what right had she to interfere? She had no right, and her double excuse was her knowledge of Francis Sales’ character and her certainty that Henrietta was chiefly moved by her dramatic instinct. And again Rose wished that the hair of Charles Batty’s head were thicker and that he could supply the counter-attraction needed; but she might at least be able to use him; there was no one else. That night, after an evening spent in soothing Sophia’s fears which had been roused by the unnatural gentleness of Caroline, and treating Henrietta to all the friendliness she would receive, Rose went out to post a letter to Francis Sales. She had asked him, with an irony she had no doubt he would miss, to meet her in the hollow where the gipsies had encamped and where so many of their interviews had taken place. It was within a few yards of that bank of primroses where he had asked her to marry him.