"Not she; not she. She respects my wishes."

Robert did not ask what had happened.

Mr. Fleming remained by the door, and shut his mouth from a further
word till he heard Rhoda's returning footstep. He closed the door
again behind her, and went up to the square deal table, leaned his body
forward on the knuckles of his trembling fist, and said, "We're pretty
well broken up, as it is. I've lost my taste for life."

There he paused. Save by the shining of a wet forehead, his face
betrayed nothing of the anguish he suffered. He looked at neither of
them, but sent his gaze straight away under labouring brows to an arm of
the fireside chair, while his shoulders drooped on the wavering support
of his hard-shut hands. Rhoda's eyes, ox-like, as were her father's,
smote full upon Robert's, as in a pang of apprehension of what was about
to be uttered.

It was a quick blaze of light, wherein he saw that the girl's spirit was
not with him. He would have stopped the farmer at once, but he had not
the heart to do it, even had he felt in himself strength to attract an
intelligent response from that strange, grave, bovine fixity of look,
over which the human misery sat as a thing not yet taken into the dull
brain.

"My taste for life," the old man resumed, "that's gone. I didn't bargain
at set-out to go on fighting agen the world. It's too much for a man
o' my years. Here's the farm. Shall 't go to pieces?--I'm a farmer of
thirty year back--thirty year back, and more: I'm about no better'n a
farm labourer in our time, which is to-day. I don't cost much. I ask to
be fed, and to work for it, and to see my poor bit o' property safe,
as handed to me by my father. Not for myself, 't ain't; though perhaps
there's a bottom of pride there too, as in most things. Say it's for the
name. My father seems to demand of me out loud, 'What ha' ye done with
Queen Anne's Farm, William?' and there's a holler echo in my ears. Well;
God wasn't merciful to give me a son. He give me daughters."

Mr. Fleming bowed his head as to the very weapon of chastisement.

"Daughters!" He bent lower.

His hearers might have imagined his headless address to them to be also
without a distinct termination, for he seemed to have ended as abruptly
as he had begun; so long was the pause before, with a wearied lifting of
his body, he pursued, in a sterner voice:

"Don't let none interrupt me." His hand was raised as toward where Rhoda
stood, but he sent no look with