“Perhaps she promised to speak—­what has happened, whatever that may be,” he suggested.

“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 it; the direction was wide of her.

The aspect of the blank blind hand motioning to the wall away from her, smote an awe through her soul that kept her dumb, though his next words were like thrusts of a dagger in her side.

“My first girl—­she’s brought disgrace on this house.  She’s got a mother in heaven, and that mother’s got to blush for her.  My first girl’s gone to harlotry in London.”