“I thought he would come.”

“What has made you happy?”

“You will hear from uncle.”

“Shall I go and hear what those—­”

Robert checked himself, but it would have been better had he spoken out.  Rhoda’s face, from a light of interrogation, lowered its look to contempt.

She did not affect the feminine simplicity which can so prettily misunderstand and put by an implied accusation of that nature.  Doubtless her sharp instinct served her by telling her that her contempt would hurt him shrewdly now.  The foolishness of a man having much to say to a woman, and not knowing how or where the beginning of it might be, was perceptible about him.  A shout from her father at the open garden-gate, hurried on Rhoda to meet him.  Old Anthony was at Mr. Fleming’s elbow.

“You know it?  You have her letter, father?” said Rhoda, gaily, beneath the shadow of his forehead.

“And a Queen of the Egyptians is what you might have been,” said Anthony, with a speculating eye upon Rhoda’s dark bright face.

Rhoda put out her hand to him, but kept her gaze on her father.

William Fleeting relaxed the knot of his brows and lifted the letter.

“Listen all!  This is from a daughter to her father.”

And he read, oddly accentuating the first syllables of the sentences:—­

     Dear Father,—­

     “My husband will bring me to see you when I return to dear England. 
     I ought to have concealed nothing, I know.  Try to forgive me.  I
     hope you will.  I shall always think of you.  God bless you!

                              “I am,
                    “Ever with respect,
                         “Your dearly loving Daughter,

“Dahlia.”

“Dahlia Blank!” said the farmer, turning his look from face to face.

A deep fire of emotion was evidently agitating him, for the letter rustled in his hand, and his voice was uneven.  Of this, no sign was given by his inexpressive features.  The round brown eyes and the ruddy varnish on his cheeks were a mask upon grief, if not also upon joy.

“Dahlia—­what?  What’s her name?” he resumed.  “Here—­’my husband will bring me to see you’—­who’s her husband?  Has he got a name?  And a blank envelope to her uncle here, who’s kept her in comfort for so long!  And this is all she writes to me!  Will any one spell out the meaning of it?”

“Dahlia was in great haste, father,” said Rhoda.

“Oh, ay, you!—­you’re the one, I know,” returned the farmer.  “It’s sister and sister, with you.”

“But she was very, very hurried, father.  I have a letter from her, and I have only ‘Dahlia’ written at the end—­no other name.”

“And you suspect no harm of your sister.”

“Father, how can I imagine any kind of harm?”