Rhoda, "I could get a little money to send you away. Will
you go? I am full of grief for what I have done. God forgive me."

"Pray, don't speak so; don't let us talk," said Dahlia.

Scorched as she felt both in soul and body, a touch or a word was a wound
to her. Yet she was the first to resume: "I think I shall be saved. I
can't quite feel I am lost. I have not been so wicked as that."

Rhoda gave a loving answer, and again Dahlia shrank from the miserable
comfort of words.

As they came upon the green fronting the iron gateway, Rhoda perceived
that the board proclaiming the sale of Queen Anne's Farm had been
removed, and now she understood her father's readiness to go up to Wrexby
Hall. "He would sell me to save the farm." She reproached herself for
the thought, but she could not be just; she had the image of her father
plodding relentlessly over the burnt heath to the Hall, as conceived by
her agonized sensations in the morning, too vividly to be just, though
still she knew that her own indecision was to blame.

Master Gammon met them in the garden.

Pointing aloft, over the gateway, "That's down," he remarked, and the
three green front teeth of his quiet grin were stamped on the
impressionable vision of the girls in such a way that they looked at one
another with a bare bitter smile. Once it would have been mirth.

"Tell father," Dahlia said, when they were at the back doorway, and her
eyes sparkled piteously, and she bit on her underlip. Rhoda tried to
detain her; but Dahlia repeated, "Tell father," and in strength and in
will had become more than a match for her sister.

CHAPTER XLV

Rhoda spoke to her father from the doorway, with her hand upon the lock
of the door.

At first he paid little attention to her, and, when he did so, began by
saying that he hoped she knew that she was bound to have the young
squire, and did not intend to be prankish and wilful; because the young
squire was eager to settle affairs, that he might be settled himself. "I
don't deny it's honour to us, and it's a comfort," said the farmer. "This
is the first morning I've thought easily in my chair for years. I'm sorry
about Robert, who's a twice unlucky 'un; but you aimed at something
higher, I suppose."

Rhoda was prompted to say a word in self-defence, but refrained, and
again she told Dahlia's story, wondering that her father showed no
excitement of any kind. On the contrary, there was the dimple of one of
his voicel