don't cast us off, my boy?"

"I'm a labourer on the farm," said Robert, and walked away.

"He's got reason to feel this more 'n the rest of us, poor lad! It's a
blow to him." With which the farmer struck his hand on Rhoda's shoulder.

"I wish he'd set his heart on a safer young woman."

Rhoda's shudder of revulsion was visible as she put her mouth up to kiss
her father's cheek.

CHAPTER VIII

That is Wrexby Hall, upon the hill between Fenhurst and Wrexby: the
white square mansion, with the lower drawing-room windows one full
bow of glass against the sunlight, and great single trees spotting the
distant green slopes. From Queen Anne's Farm you could read the hour by
the stretching of their shadows. Squire Blancove, who lived there, was
an irascible, gouty man, out of humour with his time, and beginning,
alas for him! to lose all true faith in his Port, though, to do him
justice, he wrestled hard with this great heresy. His friends perceived
the decay in his belief sooner than he did himself. He was sour in the
evening as in the morning. There was no chirp in him when the bottle
went round. He had never one hour of a humane mood to be reckoned on
now. The day, indeed, is sad when we see the skeleton of the mistress by
whom we suffer, but cannot abandon her. The squire drank, knowing that
the issue would be the terrific, curse-begetting twinge in his foot;
but, as he said, he was a man who stuck to his habits. It was over his
Port that he had quarrelled with his rector on the subject of hopeful
Algernon, and the system he adopted with that young man. This incident
has something to do with Rhoda's story, for it was the reason why Mrs.
Lovell went to Wrexby Church, the spirit of that lady leading her to
follow her own impulses, which were mostly in opposition. So, when
perchance she visited the Hall, she chose not to accompany the squire
and his subservient guests to Fenhurst, but made a point of going down
to the unoccupied Wrexby pew. She was a beauty, and therefore powerful;
otherwise her act of nonconformity would have produced bad blood between
her and the squire.

It was enough to have done so in any case; for now, instead of sitting
at home comfortably, and reading off the week's chronicle of sport while
he nursed his leg, the unfortunate gentleman had to be up and away to
Fenhurst every Sunday morning, or who would have known that the old
cause of his general abstention from Sabbath services lay in the