e. I
never helped him--not at all. I was no--no use!"

Anthony blinked his eyes, not knowing how it was that he had thus been
thrown out of his direct road. He began again, in his circumlocutory
delicacy: "Never mind; help or no help, what th' old farmer feels is--and
quite nat'ral. There's sensations as a father, and sensations as a man;
and what th' old farmer feels is--"

"But Rhoda has always been more to father than I have," Dahlia cried, now
stretching forward with desperate courage to confront her uncle, distract
his speech, and avert the saying of the horrible thing she dreaded.
"Rhoda was everything to him. Mother perhaps took to me--my mother!"

The line of her long underlie drawn sharp to check her tears, stopped her
speaking.

"All very well about Rhoda," said Anthony. "She's everything to me, too."

"Every--everybody loves her!" Dahlia took him up.

"Let 'em, so long as they don't do no harm to her," was Anthony's remark.
There was an idea in this that he had said, and the light of it led off
his fancy. It was some time before he returned to the attack.

"Neighbours gossip a good deal. O' course you know that."

"I never listen to them," said Dahlia, who now felt bare at any instant
for the stab she saw coming.

"No, not in London; but country's different, and a man hearing of his
child 'it's very odd!' and 'keepin' away like that!' and 'what's become
of her?' and that sort of thing, he gets upset."

Dahlia swallowed in her throat, as in perfect quietude of spirit, and
pretended to see no meaning for herself in Anthony's words.

But she said, inadvertently, "Dear father!" and it gave Anthony his
opening.

"There it is. No doubt you're fond of him. You're fond o' th' old farmer,
who's your father. Then, why not make a entry into the village, and show
'em? I loves my father, says you. I can or I can't bring my husband, you
seems to say; but I'm come to see my old father. Will you go down
to-morrow wi' me?"

"Oh!" Dahlia recoiled and abandoned all defence in a moan: "I can't--I
can't!"

"There," said Anthony, "you can't. You confess you can't; and there's
reason for what's in your father's mind. And he hearin' neighbours'
gossip, and it comes to him by a sort of extractin'--'Where's her
husband?' bein' the question; and 'She ain't got one,' the answer--it's
nat'ral for him to leave the place. I never can tell him how you went
off, or who's the man, lucky or not. You went off sudden, on a morni