Rosalind was therefore compelled, as she climbed another stile under the placid and incurious gaze of the cows in the neighbouring field, to ask herself what exactly was her objection to Mr Margrave, for there could be no doubt of his ardour, and it was not fair to him to keep him in a state of uncertainty. To Caroline it was very simple: was Rosalind sure she loved him with all her heart? No, she was not. Very well then; she should certainly not marry Mr Margrave. The trouble was that Rosalind had never loved any man except poor Papa; she did not think she had any stronger aversion to Mr Margrave than anyone else, and his conversation was far more interesting than that of any of the young men her own age. It was very flattering to be told that with her at his side he could do great things, and that she would have as much time as she liked in which to write: they could divide their time as she pleased between his town house in Belgravia and a very pretty country house in Hampshire-she had not yet seen Blackwall Park for herself, but he had assured her that she would love it. Perhaps the force of his desire for her would overcome her reservations; and what, in any case, was the alternative? It was all very well to think of going out to work, but she knew she would hate being a governess or a schoolmistress, let alone a paid companion; she had had enough foretaste of that with her mother. The thought of being bound to some frivolous society woman to whom she had no connection beyond the monetary was intolerable to her; it would be like being sold into slavery, and besides, her wages would make no material difference; they would still have to leave the house in Bayswater and sell whatever was not already pledged to their creditors. Rosalind really feared that her mother would pine away, or worse, hasten her own demise, if confined to her brother's house in Yorkshire. She had had too much pride to ask Mr Margrave directly, but he had made it clear to her that her mother's future in London would be assured if they were to marry. Rosalind felt afterwards as if she had been negotiating terms with him, and did not like the feeling, for what, on his side, could he gain from marrying a penniless girl of twenty with, as it were, a dependent mother? That was what troubled her, if she was candid with herself: that, apart from his belief that marriage to her would bring him the inspiration he said he lacked, he so plainly desired to touch her, and lost no opportunity of doing so. There was something… he smelt of tobacco and spirits, but so had Papa… something else: she had no real sense of what "charnel" meant, but it was the word that came to her for-whatever it was that caused her to draw back from his embrace. Perhaps her imagination was overwrought; there was nothing visibly unclean about him; but the faint odour of decay had nonetheless continued to repel her.
But, on the other hand, could she really condemn her poor Mama to infinite misery because of an excess of fastidiousness on her part? So she framed the question as she set off through the last of the meadows separating her from the forest which now rose above her. For there was another thing she knew she ought to consider: that her expectations of love might be altogether unrealistic, and for a specific reason, which placed all mortal suitors at an absolute disadvantage.
It was a dream she had had not long after her eighteenth birthday; a dream unlike any other she could recall, in which she awoke to find an angel standing by her bedside. He-for so she thought of this seraphic being, though he seemed to her to combine in one body all of the perfections of male and female form-shone with a radiant light which filled the room, a light of such palpable sweetness that it brought to her mind "Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest"; yet he was also visibly a creature of flesh and blood, who smiled upon her with such warmth that she sat up, entranced by the great white wings in their perfect balance of strength and softness, the curves of bone and sinew outlined beneath depths of snowy plumage so beautiful she felt she could gaze upon it for ever. He stretched out his arms to her and she rose effortlessly into them, as if he had given her the gift of flight, yet she could feel the floor beneath her feet, and the angel's heart beating against her breast as he took her up into his arms and kissed her. She could not, then or afterwards, think of him in any orthodox sense: just as he seemed to her both male and female, and more than either, so he seemed both Christian in the celestial light and radiance of pure goodness that shone from him, and pagan in his sheer beauty and the warmth of his embrace. As she kissed him in return, he folded his great wings gently about her, and she felt the light fill her whole being with sweetness until she cried out in rapture; and with that cry woke herself, alone in her dark room, with the taste of milk and honey fading from her lips.
Try as she might, Rosalind had never been able to relive the dream. She had never told anyone of it, not even Caroline, nor written it down, often as she had been tempted, and she had learned, painfully, not to strive to summon the angel in memory, but to wait for the rare moment in which the recollection came to her unbidden in all its strength and sweetness. Such a moment came to her now, in the quiet meadow, so vividly that she wept at the beauty of it, and knew for certain that she could never marry Denton Margrave. How, indeed could she ever marry anyone, for what man could love her as she had loved and been loved by the angel? Yet even if she were destined to die a maid, as the song went, in deciding against Mr Margrave she must still confront the immediate question of how she and her mother were to live; and she found herself murmuring a prayer, to whom or what she knew not, to show her the way out of her difficulties.
By this time she had almost arrived at the stone wall which divided the meadow from the oak forest above her. She and Caroline had sometimes walked this way, but they had never seen any path through the trees, and there were patches of nettles clustered thickly beneath the foliage, so they had always retreated. But today, Rosalind noticed a small wicket gate just at the corner where the two walls met, and upon making her way across to it saw that there was indeed a narrow path leading away into the wood. She tried the latch; the gate opened at her touch; and she was very soon out of sight of the meadow, following the path as it wound its way upwards in the dim light that filtered through the leaves overhead.
The path seemed to have been cleared quite recently, for the clumps of nettles rose up on each side, leaving just enough room for her to pass between them without catching her dress. As she made her way between the tall, mossy trunks of the oaks, she became aware that it was very quiet in the wood. Even the distant calling of birds seemed muted, and Rosalind began to wonder whether she might not be wise to turn back. What if she were to meet… well, someone who ought not to be here? A rabbit or hare darting across the path set her heart beating very fast, but curiosity drew her on until the slope began to diminish, and then to level and fall away and quite suddenly the path swerved around the trunk of a huge tree and brought her out of the cool, damp, bracken-scented air of the forest onto a green, sunlit hillside. It was, indeed, almost like a park, for the grass was clipped short and even, quite unlike the tussocky fields she had crossed before. Away to the south she could see distant fields and cottages, and the slopes of other wooded hills, and even fancifully imagine a glimpse of the far-off sea. The clearing below her ran for several hundred yards downhill before the forest began again; here and there a large oak tree had been left to shade the prospect; and as she stepped out into the sunlight, her attention was caught and held by something a little way down the slope and to her right, which had been partly concealed by the nearest of these trees.