When Illusions Shatter Completely — Middlemarch

After Dorothea leaves the Lydgate drawing-room, Rosamond and Will stand frozen while she feels more gratification than annoyance at what her petty magic has done. She touches his sleeve; he recoils with Don't touch me and unleashes fury at the cost to a woman: Dorothea will value no word of his at more than a dirty feather.

Will says he never had a preference for her any more than for breathing, would rather touch Dorothea's dead hand than any other woman's living, and that Rosamond has drawn down fatality on him. She collapses into tearless dismay; he feels no pity, foresees life enslaved by her helplessness, yet asks if he may see Lydgate and goes out unseen by Martha.

Rosamond faints, is helped upstairs, and lies in torpor; Lydgate finds her ill, soothes hysterical sobbing for an hour, and imagines Mrs. Casaubon's visit agitated her without knowing Will was there. Husband tends wife while the scene that broke Dorothea stays hidden from him.

Eliot stages collateral damage: Rosamond's vanity provokes Will's cruelty and Dorothea's flight, yet Lydgate receives only a fainting wife and more mystery. Dorothy should read LXXVIII as fatality drawn down by petty magic, and Will's honor spoken in rage that Rosamond will not understand.