It was Scriptural severity of speech.  Robert glanced quick with intense commiseration at Rhoda.  He saw her hands travel upward till they fixed in at her temples with crossed fingers, making the pressure of an iron band for her head, while her lips parted, and her teeth, and cheeks, and eyeballs were all of one whiteness.  Her tragic, even, in and out breathing, where there was no fall of the breast, but the air was taken and given, as it were the square blade of a sharp-edged sword, was dreadful to see.  She had the look of a risen corpse, recalling some one of the bloody ends of life.

The farmer went on,—­

“Bury her!  Now you here know the worst.  There’s my second girl.  She’s got no stain on her; if people ’ll take her for what she is herself.  She’s idle.  But I believe the flesh on her bones she’d wear away for any one that touched her heart.  She’s a temper.  But she’s clean both in body and in spirit, as I believe, and say before my God.  I—­what I’d pray for is, to see this girl safe.  All I have shall go to her.  That is, to the man who will—­won’t be ashamed—­marry her, I mean!”

The tide of his harshness failed him here, and he began to pick his words, now feeble, now emphatic, but alike wanting in natural expression, for he had reached a point of emotion upon the limits of his nature, and he was now wilfully forcing for misery and humiliation right and left, in part to show what a black star Providence had been over him.

“She’ll be grateful.  I shall be gone.  What disgrace I bring to their union, as father of the other one also, will, I’m bound to hope, be buried with me in my grave; so that this girl’s husband shan’t have to complain that her character and her working for him ain’t enough to cover any harm he’s like to think o’ the connexion.  And he won’t be troubled by relationships after that.

“I used to think Pride a bad thing.  I thank God we’ve all got it in our blood—­the Flemings.  I thank God for that now, I do.  We don’t face again them as we offend.  Not, that is, with the hand out.  We go.  We’re seen no more.  And she’ll be seen no more.  On that, rely.

“I want my girl here not to keep me in the fear of death.  For I fear death while she’s not safe in somebody’s hands—­kind, if I can get him for her.  Somebody—­young or old!”

The farmer lifted his head for the first time, and stared vacantly at Robert.

“I’d marry her,” he said, “if I was knowing myself dying now or to-morrow morning, I’d marry her, rather than leave her alone—­I’d marry her to that old man, old Gammon.”

The farmer pointed to the ceiling.  His sombre seriousness cloaked and carried even that suggestive indication to the possible bridegroom’s age and habits, and all things associated with him, through the gates of ridicule; and there was no laughter, and no thought of it.