as
one, the direct consequence and the fruit of her other resolute steps.
Pride whispered, "You could compel your sister to do that which she
abhorred;" and Pity pleaded for her poor old uncle Anthony. She looked
back in imagination at that scene with him in London, amazed at her
frenzy of power, and again, from that contemplation, amazed at her
present nervelessness.

"I am not fit to be my own mistress," she said.

"Then, the sooner you decide the better," observed Robert, and the room
became hot and narrow to him.

"Very little time is given me," she murmured. The sound was like a
whimper; exasperating to one who had witnessed her remorseless energy.

"I dare say you won't find the hardship so great," said he.

"Because," she looked up quickly, "I went out one day to meet him? Do you
mean that, Robert? I went to hear news of my sister. I had received no
letters from her. And he wrote to say that he could tell me about her. My
uncle took me once to the Bank. I saw him there first. He spoke of
Wrexby, and of my sister. It is pleasant to inexperienced girls to hear
themselves praised. Since the day when you told me to turn back I have
always respected you."

Her eyelids lowered softly.

Could she have humbled herself more? But she had, at the same time,
touched his old wound: and his rival then was the wooer now, rich, and a
gentleman. And this room, Robert thought as he looked about it, was the
room in which she had refused him, when he first asked her to be his.

"I think," he said, "I've never begged your pardon for the last occasion
of our being alone here together. I've had my arm round you. Don't be
frightened. That's my marriage, and there was my wife. And there's an end
of my likings and my misconduct. Forgive me for calling it to mind."

"No, no, Robert," Rhoda lifted her hands, and, startled by the impulse,
dropped them, saying: "What forgiveness? Was I ever angry with you?"

A look of tenderness accompanied the words, and grew into a dusky crimson
rose under his eyes.

"When you went into the wood, I saw you going: I knew it was for some
good object," he said, and flushed equally.

But, by the recurrence to that scene, he had checked her sensitive
developing emotion. She hung a moment in languor, and that oriental
warmth of colour ebbed away from her cheeks.

"You are very kind," said she.

Then he perceived in dimmest fashion that possibly a chance had come to
ripeness, withered, and fallen,