10
To Rose, the time between the death of Caroline and the coming of
spring was like an invalid's convalescence. She felt a languor as
though she had been ill, and a kind of content as though she were
temporarily free from cares. She knew that Henrietta and Charles Batty
often met, but she did not wish to know how Charles had succeeded in
preventing her escape: she did not try to connect Christabel's illness
with Henrietta's return; she enjoyed unquestioningly her rich feeling
of possession in the presence of the girl, who was much on her
dignity, very well behaved, but undeniably aloof. She had not yet
forgiven her aunt for that episode in the gipsies' hollow, but it did
not matter. Rose could tell herself without any affectation of virtue
that she had hoped for no benefit for herself; looking back she saw
that even what might be called her sin had been committed chiefly for
Francis's sake, only she had not sinned enough.
But for the present she need not think of him. He had gone away, she
heard, and she could ride over the bridge without the fear of meeting
him and with the feeling that the place was more than ever hers. It
was gloriously empty of any claim but its own. To gallop across the
fields, to ride more slowly on some height with nothing between her
and great massy clouds of unbelievable whiteness, to feel herself
relieved of an immense responsibility, was like finding the new world
she had longed for.
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