She fell into a chair, crying wildly, and muffling her sobs.  Rhoda’s eyelids grew moist, but wonder and the cold anguish of senseless sympathy held her still frost-bound.  All at once she heard the window open.  Some one spoke in the street below; some one uttered Dahlia’s name.  A deep bell swung a note of midnight.

“Go!” cried Dahlia.

The window was instantly shut.

The vibration of Dahlia’s voice went through Rhoda like the heavy shaking of the bell after it had struck, and the room seemed to spin and hum.  It was to her but another minute before her sister slid softly into the bed, and they were locked together.

CHAPTER VI

Boyne’s bank was of the order of those old and firmly fixed establishments which have taken root with the fortunes of the country—­ are honourable as England’s name, solid as her prosperity, and even as the flourishing green tree to shareholders:  a granite house.  Boyne himself had been disembodied for more than a century:  Burt and Hamble were still of the flesh; but a greater than Burt or Hamble was Blancove--the Sir William Blancove, Baronet, of city feasts and charities, who, besides being a wealthy merchant, possessed of a very acute head for banking, was a scholarly gentleman, worthy of riches.  His brother was Squire Blancove, of Wrexby; but between these two close relatives there existed no stronger feeling than what was expressed by open contempt of a mind dedicated to business on the one side, and quiet contempt of a life devoted to indolence on the other.  Nevertheless, Squire Blancove, though everybody knew how deeply he despised his junior for his city-gained title and commercial occupation, sent him his son Algernon, to get the youth into sound discipline, if possible.  This was after the elastic Algernon had, on the paternal intimation of his colonel, relinquished his cornetcy and military service.  Sir William received the hopeful young fellow much in the spirit with which he listened to the tales of his brother’s comments on his own line of conduct; that is to say, as homage to his intellectual superiority.  Mr. Algernon was installed in the Bank, and sat down for a long career of groaning at the desk, with more complacency than was expected from him.  Sir William forwarded excellent accounts to his brother of the behaviour of the heir to his estates.  It was his way of rebuking the squire, and in return for it the squire, though somewhat comforted, despised his clerkly son, and lived to learn how very unjustly he did so.  Adolescents, who have the taste for running into excesses, enjoy the breath of change as another form of excitement:  change is a sort of debauch to them.  They will delight infinitely in a simple country round of existence, in propriety and church-going, in the sensation of feeling innocent.  There is little that does not enrapture them, if you tie them down to nothing, and let them try all.