her father at the gate. He was
dressed in his brushed suit, going she knew whither, and when he asked if
she had seen her uncle, she gave for answer a plain negative, and longed
more keenly to be at work with her hands, and to smell the homely creamy
air under the dairy-shed.

CHAPTER XLIV

She watched her father as he went across the field and into the lane. Her
breathing was suppressed till he appeared in view at different points,
more and more distant, and then she sighed heavily, stopped her
breathing, and hoped her unshaped hope again. The last time he was in
sight, she found herself calling to him with a voice like that of a
burdened sleeper: her thought being, "How can you act so cruelly to
Robert!" He passed up Wrexby Heath, and over the black burnt patch where
the fire had caught the furzes on a dry Maynight, and sank on the side of
the Hall.

When we have looked upon a picture of still green life with a troubled
soul, and the blow falls on us, we accuse Nature of our own treachery to
her. Rhoda hurried from the dairy-door to shut herself up in her room and
darken the light surrounding her. She had turned the lock, and was about
systematically to pull down the blind, when the marvel of beholding
Dahlia stepping out of the garden made her for a moment less the creature
of her sickened senses. Dahlia was dressed for a walk, and she went very
fast. The same paralysis of motion afflicted Rhoda as when she was gazing
after her father; but her hand stretched out instinctively for her bonnet
when Dahlia had crossed the green and the mill-bridge, and was no more
visible. Rhoda drew her bonnet on, and caught her black silk mantle in
her hand, and without strength to throw it across her shoulders, dropped
before her bed, and uttered a strange prayer. "Let her die rather than go
back to disgrace, my God! my God!"

She tried to rise, and failed in the effort, and superstitiously renewed
her prayer. "Send death to her rather!"--and Rhoda's vision under her
shut eyes conjured up clouds and lightnings, and spheres in
conflagration.

There is nothing so indicative of fevered or of bad blood as the tendency
to counsel the Almighty how he shall deal with his creatures. The strain
of a long uncertainty, and the late feverish weeks had distempered the
fine blood of the girl, and her acts and words were becoming remoter
exponents of her character.

She bent her head in a blind doze that gave her strength to rise. As