“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 the kitten, both growing staid, for company. It tired her to use her hands, she had never cared for reading and she lay there with little for consolation but her pride in stoically bearing pain. Often, and with many interruptions, she made Rose repeat the details of the accident. “I was riding well, wasn’t I?” she would ask. “Francis was pleased with me. He said so. It wasn’t my fault, was it? And then, when they were carrying me home did you hear what he said? Tell me what he said.” And Rose told her: “He said, ‘My God, she has got pluck!’ Oh, Christabel, don’t talk about it.” “I like to,” she replied, but the day came when she insisted on this subject for the last time. “Tell me what you thought when you saw me on the mare,” she said, and Rose, careless for once, answered immediately, “I thought she wasn’t fit for you to ride.” “Ah,” Christabel said slowly, “did you? Did you? But you didn’t say anything. That was—queer.” Rose said nothing. She was frozen dumb and there was no possible reply to such an implication; but she rose and drew on her gloves. She looked tall and straight in her habit, and formidable. “Are you going? But you must have tea with Francis. He’s expecting you.”