“Say I’m not married!” said Dahlia, and a bad colour flushed her countenance.  “They say—­I’m not married.  I am—­I am.  It’s false.  It’s cruel of father to listen to them—­wicked people! base—­base people!  I am married, uncle.  Tell father so, and don’t let him sell the farm.  Tell him, I said I was married.  I am.  I’m respected.  I have only a little trouble, and I’m sure others have too.  We all have.  Tell father not to leave.  It breaks my heart.  Oh! uncle, tell him that from me.”

Dahlia gathered her shawl close, and set an irresolute hand upon her bonnet strings, that moved as if it had forgotten its purpose.  She could say no more.  She could only watch her uncle’s face, to mark the effect of what she had said.

Anthony nodded at vacancy.  His eyebrows were up, and did not descend from their elevation.  “You see, your father wants assurances; he wants facts.  They’re easy to give, if give ’em you can.  Ah, there’s a weddin’ ring on your finger, sure enough.  Plain gold—­and, Lord! how bony your fingers ha’ got, Dahly.  If you are a sinner, you’re a bony one now, and that don’t seem so bad to me.  I don’t accuse you, my dear.  Perhaps I’d like to see your husband’s banker’s book.  But what your father hears, is—­You’ve gone wrong.”

Dahlia smiled in a consummate simulation of scorn.

“And your father thinks that’s true.”

She smiled with an equal simulation of saddest pity.

“And he says this:  ‘Proof,’ he says, ’proof’s what I want, that she’s an honest woman.’  He asks for you to clear yourself.  He says, ’It’s hard for an old man’—­these are his words ’it’s hard for an old man to hear his daughter called...’”

Anthony smacked his hand tight on his open mouth.

He was guiltless of any intended cruelty, and Dahlia’s first impulse when she had got her breath, was to soothe him.  She took his hand.  “Dear father! poor father!  Dear, dear father!” she kept saying.

“Rhoda don’t think it,” Anthony assured her.

“No?” and Dahlia’s bosom exulted up to higher pain.

“Rhoda declares you are married.  To hear that gal fight for you—­there’s ne’er a one in Wrexby dares so much as hint a word within a mile of her.”

“My Rhoda! my sister!” Dahlia gasped, and the tears came pouring down her face.

In vain Anthony lifted her tea-cup and the muffin-plate to her for consolation.  His hushings and soothings were louder than her weeping.  Incapable of resisting such a protest of innocence, he said, “And I don’t think it, neither.”

She pressed his fingers, and begged him to pay the people of the shop:  at which sign of her being probably moneyless, Anthony could not help mumbling, “Though I can’t make out about your husband, and why he lets ye be cropped—­that he can’t help, may be—­but lets ye go about dressed like a mill’ner gal, and not afford cabs.  Is he very poor?”