“But Rhoda has always been more to father than I have,” Dahlia cried, now stretching forward with desperate courage to confront her uncle, distract his speech, and avert the saying of the horrible thing she dreaded.  “Rhoda was everything to him.  Mother perhaps took to me—­my mother!”

The line of her long underlie drawn sharp to check her tears, stopped her speaking.

“All very well about Rhoda,” said Anthony.  “She’s everything to me, too.”

“Every—­everybody loves her!” Dahlia took him up.

“Let ’em, so long as they don’t do no harm to her,” was Anthony’s remark.  There was an idea in this that he had said, and the light of it led off his fancy.  It was some time before he returned to the attack.

“Neighbours gossip a good deal.  O’ course you know that.”

“I never listen to them,” said Dahlia, who now felt bare at any instant for the stab she saw coming.

“No, not in London; but country’s different, and a man hearing of his child ‘it’s very odd!’ and ‘keepin’ away like that!’ and ’what’s become of her?’ and that sort of thing, he gets upset.”

Dahlia swallowed in her throat, as in perfect quietude of spirit, and pretended to see no meaning for herself in Anthony’s words.

But she said, inadvertently, “Dear father!” and it gave Anthony his opening.

“There it is.  No doubt you’re fond of him.  You’re fond o’ th’ old farmer, who’s your father.  Then, why not make a entry into the village, and show ’em?  I loves my father, says you.  I can or I can’t bring my husband, you seems to say; but I’m come to see my old father.  Will you go down to-morrow wi’ me?”

“Oh!” Dahlia recoiled and abandoned all defence in a moan:  “I can’t—­I can’t!”

“There,” said Anthony, “you can’t.  You confess you can’t; and there’s reason for what’s in your father’s mind.  And he hearin’ neighbours’ gossip, and it comes to him by a sort of extractin’—­’Where’s her husband?’ bein’ the question; and ‘She ain’t got one,’ the answer—­it’s nat’ral for him to leave the place.  I never can tell him how you went off, or who’s the man, lucky or not.  You went off sudden, on a morning, after kissin’ me at breakfast; and no more Dahly visible.  And he suspects—­he more’n suspects.  Farm’s up for sale.  Th’ old farmer thinks it’s unbrotherly of me not to go and buy, and I can’t make him see I don’t understand land:  it’s about like changeing sovereigns for lumps o’ clay, in my notions; and that ain’t my taste.  Long and the short is—­ people down there at Wrexby and all round say you ain’t married.  He ain’t got a answer for ’em; it’s cruel to hear, and crueller to think:  he’s got no answer, poor old farmer! and he’s obliged to go inter exile.  Farm’s up for sale.”

Anthony thumped with his foot conclusively.