The horrible utterance her father’s lips had been guilty of flashed through her, filling her with mastering vindictiveness, now that she had a victim.

“Yes!  I’m to take a husband to remind me of what he said.”

Robert eyed her sharpened mouth admiringly; her defence of her sister had excited his esteem, wilfully though she rebutted his straightforward earnestness and he had a feeling also for the easy turns of her neck, and the confident poise of her figure.

“Ha! well!” he interjected, with his eyebrows queerly raised, so that she could make nothing of his look.  It seemed half maniacal, it was so ridged with bright eagerness.

“By heaven! the task of taming you—­that’s the blessing I’d beg for in my prayers!  Though you were as wild as a cat of the woods, by heaven!  I’d rather have the taming of you than go about with a leash of quiet”—­he checked himself—­“companions.”

Such was the sudden roll of his tongue, that she was lost in the astounding lead he had taken, and stared.

“You’re the beauty to my taste, and devil is what I want in a woman!  I can make something out of a girl with a temper like yours.  You don’t know me, Miss Rhoda.  I’m what you reckon a good young man.  Isn’t that it?”

Robert drew up with a very hard smile.

“I would to God I were!  Mind, I feel for you about your sister.  I like you the better for holding to her through thick and thin.  But my sheepishness has gone, and I tell you I’ll have you whether you will or no.  I can help you and you can help me.  I’ve lived here as if I had no more fire in me than old Gammon snoring on his pillow up aloft; and who kept me to it?  Did you see I never touched liquor?  What did you guess from that?—­that I was a mild sort of fellow?  So I am:  but I haven’t got that reputation in other parts.  Your father ’d like me to marry you, and I’m ready.  Who kept me to work, so that I might learn to farm, and be a man, and be able to take a wife?  I came here—­I’ll tell you how.  I was a useless dog.  I ran from home and served as a trooper.  An old aunt of mine left me a little money, which just woke me up and gave me a lift of what conscience I had, and I bought myself out.

“I chanced to see your father’s advertisement—­came, looked at you all, and liked you—­brought my traps and settled among you, and lived like a good young man.  I like peace and orderliness, I find.  I always thought I did, when I was dancing like mad to hell.  I know I do now, and you’re the girl to keep me to it.  I’ve learnt that much by degrees.  With any other, I should have been playing the fool, and going my old ways, long ago.  I should have wrecked her, and drunk to forget.  You’re my match.  By-and-by you’ll know, me yours!  You never gave me, or anybody else that I’ve seen, sly sidelooks.

“Come!  I’ll speak out now I’m at work.  I thought you at some girl’s games in the Summer.  You went out one day to meet a young gentleman.  Offence or no offence, I speak and you listen.  You did go out.  I was in love with you then, too.  I saw London had been doing its mischief.  I was down about it.  I felt that he would make nothing of you, but I chose to take the care of you, and you’ve hated me ever since.