exerted
it upon his father, and upon Robert. Seeing Rhoda's approach, he thought
of it as a victorious swordsman thinks of his weapon, and aimed his
observation over her possible weak and strong points, studying
her curiously even when she was close up to him. With Robert, the
representative of force, to aid her, she could no longer be regarded
in the light of a despicable hindrance to his wishes. Though inclined
strongly to detest, he respected her. She had decision, and a worthy
bearing, and a marvellously blooming aspect, and a brain that worked
withal. When she spoke, desiring him to walk on by her side, he was
pleased by her voice, and recognition of the laws of propriety, and
thought it a thousand pities that she likewise should not become the
wife of a gentleman. By degrees, after tentative beginnings, he put his
spell upon her ears, for she was attentive, and walked with a demure
forward look upon the pavement; in reality taking small note of what
things he said, until he quoted, as against himself, sentences from
Dahlia's letters; and then she fixed her eyes on him, astonished that he
should thus heap condemnation on his own head. They were most pathetic
scraps quoted by him, showing the wrestle of love with a petrifying
conviction of its hopelessness, and with the stealing on of a malady of
the blood. They gave such a picture of Dahlia's reverent love for this
man, her long torture, her chastity of soul and simple innocence, and
her gathering delirium of anguish, as Rhoda had never taken at all
distinctly to her mind. She tried to look out on him from a mist of
tears.

"How could you bear to read the letters?" she sobbed.

"Could any human being read them and not break his heart for her?" said
he.

"How could you bear to read them and leave her to perish!"

His voice deepened to an impressive hollow: "I read them for the first
time yesterday morning, in France, and I am here!"

It was undeniably, in its effect on Rhoda, a fine piece of pleading
artifice. It partially excused or accounted for his behaviour, while
it filled her with emotions which she felt to be his likewise, and
therefore she could not remain as an unsympathetic stranger by his side.

With this, he flung all artifice away. He told her the whole story,
saving the one black episode of it--the one incomprehensible act of
a desperate baseness that, blindly to get free, he had deliberately
permitted, blinked at, and had so been guilty of. He