I will!" cried Robert, transported by the hopeful tenderness. The
servant girl of the house had just opened the front door, intent on
scrubbing, and he passed in. Rhoda walked on to Edward.

CHAPTER XXXVII

A profound belief in the efficacy of his eloquence, when he chose to
expend it, was one of the principal supports of Edward's sense of
mastery; a secret sense belonging to certain men in every station of
life, and which is the staff of many an otherwise impressible and
fluctuating intellect. With this gift, if he trifled, or slid downward in
any direction, he could right himself easily, as he satisfactorily
conceived. It is a gift that may now and then be the ruin of promising
youths, though as a rule they find it helpful enough. Edward had exerted
it upon his father, and upon Robert. Seeing Rhoda's approach, he thought
of it as a victorious swordsman thinks of his weapon, and aimed his
observation over her possible weak and strong points, studying her
curiously even when she was close up to him. With Robert, the
representative of force, to aid her, she could no longer be regarded in
the light of a despicable hindrance to his wishes. Though inclined
strongly to detest, he respected her. She had decision, and a worthy
bearing, and a marvellously blooming aspect, and a brain that worked
withal. When she spoke, desiring him to walk on by her side, he was
pleased by her voice, and recognition of the laws of propriety, and
thought it a thousand pities that she likewise should not become the wife
of a gentleman. By degrees, after tentative beginnings, he put his spell
upon her ears, for she was attentive, and walked with a demure forward
look upon the pavement; in reality taking small note of what things he
said, until he quoted, as against himself, sentences from Dahlia's
letters; and then she fixed her eyes on him, astonished that he should
thus heap condemnation on his own head. They were most pathetic scraps
quoted by him, showing the wrestle of love with a petrifying conviction
of its hopelessness, and with the stealing on of a malady of the blood.
They gave such a picture of Dahlia's reverent love for this man, her long
torture, her chastity of soul and simple innocence, and her gathering
delirium of anguish, as Rhoda had never taken at all distinctly to her
mind. She tried to look out on him from a mist of tears.

"How could you bear to read the letters?" she sobbed.

"Could any human being read them and no