ther! poor father! Dear, dear father!" she kept saying.

"Rhoda don't think it," Anthony assured her.

"No?" and Dahlia's bosom exulted up to higher pain.

"Rhoda declares you are married. To hear that gal fight for you--there's
ne'er a one in Wrexby dares so much as hint a word within a mile of her."

"My Rhoda! my sister!" Dahlia gasped, and the tears came pouring down her
face.

In vain Anthony lifted her tea-cup and the muffin-plate to her for
consolation. His hushings and soothings were louder than her weeping.
Incapable of resisting such a protest of innocence, he said, "And I don't
think it, neither."

She pressed his fingers, and begged him to pay the people of the shop: at
which sign of her being probably moneyless, Anthony could not help
mumbling, "Though I can't make out about your husband, and why he lets ye
be cropped--that he can't help, may be--but lets ye go about dressed like
a mill'ner gal, and not afford cabs. Is he very poor?"

She bowed her head.

"Poor?"

"He is very poor."

"Is he, or ain't he, a gentleman?"

Dahlia seemed torn by a new anguish.

"I see," said Anthony. "He goes and persuades you he is, and you've been
and found out he's nothin' o' the sort--eh? That'd be a way of accounting
for your queerness, more or less. Was it that fellow that Wicklow gal saw
ye with?"

Dahlia signified vehemently, "No."

"Then, I've guessed right; he turns out not to be a gentleman--eh, Dahly?
Go on noddin', if ye like. Never mind the shop people; we're
well-conducted, and that's all they care for. I say, Dahly, he ain't a
gentleman? You speak out or nod your head. You thought you'd caught a
gentleman and 'taint the case. Gentlemen ain't caught so easy. They all
of 'em goes to school, and that makes 'em knowin'. Come; he ain't a
gentleman?"

Dahlia's voice issued, from a terrible inward conflict, like a voice of
the tombs. "No," she said.

"Then, will you show him to me? Let me have a look at him."

Pushed from misery to misery, she struggled within herself again, and
again in the same hollow manner said, "Yes."

"You will?"

"Yes."

"Seein's believin'. If you'll show him to me, or me to him..."

"Oh! don't talk of it." Dahlia struck her fingers in a tight lock.

"I only want to set eye on him, my gal. Whereabouts does he live?"

"Down--down a great--very great way in the West."

Anthony stared.

She replied to the look: "In the West of London--a long way down."

"That's whe