Recovery is often more trying than illness, and Rachel suffered greatly.  Indeed, she was not sure that she ought to have recovered at all, and perhaps the shock to her nerves and spirits was more serious than the effect of the sharp passing disorder, which had, however, so much weakened her that she succumbed entirely to the blow.  “Accountable for all,” the words still rang in her ears, and the all for which she was accountable continually magnified itself.  She had tied a dreadful knot, which Fanny, meek contemned Fanny had cut, but at the cost of grievous suffering and danger to her boys, and too late to prevent that death which continually haunted Rachel; those looks of convulsive agony came before her in all her waking and sleeping intervals.  Nothing put them aside, occupation in her weakness only bewildered and distracted her, and even though she was advancing daily towards convalescence, leaving her room, and being again restored to her sister, she still continued listless, dejected, cast down, and unable to turn her mind from this one dreary contemplation.  Of Fanny and her sons it was hardly possible to think, and one of the strange perturbations of the mind in illness caused her to dwell far less on them than on the minor misery of the fate of the title-deeds of the Burnaby Bargain, which she had put into Mauleverer’s hand.  She fancied their falling into the hands of some speculator, who, if he did not break the mother’s heart by putting up a gasometer, would certainly wring it by building hideous cottages, or desirable marine residences.  The value would be enhanced so as to be equal to more than half that of the Homestead, the poor would have been cheated of it, and what compensation could be made?  Give up all her own share?  Nay, she had nothing absolutely her own while her mother lived, only £5,000 was settled on her if she married, and she tortured herself with devising plans that she knew to be impracticable, of stripping herself, and going forth to suffer the poverty she merited.  Yes, but how would she have lived?  Not like the Williamses!  She had tried teaching like the one, and writing like the other, but had failed in both.  The Clever Woman had no marketable or available talent.  She knew very well that nothing would induce her mother and sister to let her despoil herself, but to have injured them would be even more intolerable; and more than all was the sickening uncertainty, whether any harm had been done, or what would be its extent.

Ignorant of such subjects at the best, her brain was devoid of force even to reason out her own conjectures, or to decide what must be impossible.  She felt compelled to keep all to herself; to alarm her mother was out of the question, when Mrs. Curtis was distressed and shaken enough already, and to have told Grace would only have brought her soothing promises of sharing the burthen—­exactly what she did not want—­and would have led to the fact being known to the family