or still she hated
the evil-doer. Her hatred of him was a passion. She crouched over the
stairs, listening to a low and long-toned voice monotonously telling
what seemed to be one sole thing over and over, without variation, in
the room where the men were. Words were indistinguishable. Thrice, after
calling to Dahlia and getting no response, she listened again, and awe
took her soul at last, for, abhorred as he was by her, his power was
felt: she comprehended something of that earnestness which made the
offender speak of his wrongful deeds, and his shame, and his remorse,
before his fellow-men, straight out and calmly, like one who has been
plunged up to the middle in the fires of the abyss, and is thereafter
insensible to meaner pains. The voice ended. She was then aware that
it had put a charm upon her ears. The other voices following it sounded
dull.

"Has he--can he have confessed in words all his wicked baseness?" she
thought, and in her soul the magnitude of his crime threw a gleam of
splendour on his courage, even at the bare thought that he might have
done this. Feeling that Dahlia was saved, and thenceforth at liberty to
despise him and torture him, Rhoda the more readily acknowledged that it
might be a true love for her sister animating him. From the height of a
possible vengeance it was perceptible.

She turned to her sister's door and knocked at it, calling to her,
"Safe, safe!" but there came no answer; and she was half glad, for she
had a fear that in the quick revulsion of her sister's feelings, mere
earthly love would act like heavenly charity, and Edward would find
himself forgiven only too instantly and heartily.

In the small musk-scented guest's parlour, Mrs. Boulby was giving
Mrs. Sumfit and poor old sleepy Anthony the account of the miraculous
discovery of Sedgett's wickedness, which had vindicated all one hoped
for from Above; as also the narration of the stabbing of her boy, and
the heroism and great-heartedness of Robert. Rhoda listened to her for
a space, and went to her sister's door again; but when she stood outside
the kitchen she found all voices silent within.

It was, in truth, not only very difficult for William Fleming to change
his view of the complexion of circumstances as rapidly as circumstances
themselves changed, but it was very bitter for him to look upon Edward,
and to see him in the place of Sedgett.

He had been struck dumb by the sudden revolution of affairs in his
hous