She bowed her head.

“Poor?”

“He is very poor.”

“Is he, or ain’t he, a gentleman?”

Dahlia seemed torn by a new anguish.

“I see,” said Anthony.  “He goes and persuades you he is, and you’ve been and found out he’s nothin’ o’ the sort—­eh?  That’d be a way of accounting for your queerness, more or less.  Was it that fellow that Wicklow gal saw ye with?”

Dahlia signified vehemently, “No.”

“Then, I’ve guessed right; he turns out not to be a gentleman—­eh, Dahly?  Go on noddin’, if ye like.  Never mind the shop people; we’re well-conducted, and that’s all they care for.  I say, Dahly, he ain’t a gentleman?  You speak out or nod your head.  You thought you’d caught a gentleman and ’taint the case.  Gentlemen ain’t caught so easy.  They all of ’em goes to school, and that makes ’em knowin’.  Come; he ain’t a gentleman?”

Dahlia’s voice issued, from a terrible inward conflict, like a voice of the tombs.  “No,” she said.

“Then, will you show him to me?  Let me have a look at him.”

Pushed from misery to misery, she struggled within herself again, and again in the same hollow manner said, “Yes.”

“You will?”

“Yes.”

“Seein’s believin’.  If you’ll show him to me, or me to him...”

“Oh! don’t talk of it.”  Dahlia struck her fingers in a tight lock.

“I only want to set eye on him, my gal.  Whereabouts does he live?”

“Down—­down a great—­very great way in the West.”

Anthony stared.

She replied to the look:  “In the West of London—­a long way down.”

“That’s where he is?”

“Yes.”

“I thought—­hum!” went the old man suspiciously.  When am I to see him?  Some day?”

“Yes; some day.”

“Didn’t I say, Sunday?”

“Next Sunday?”—­Dahlia gave a muffled cry.

“Yes, next Sunday.  Day after to-morrow.  And I’ll write off to-morrow, and ease th’ old farmer’s heart, and Rhoda ’ll be proud for you.  She don’t care about gentleman—­or no gentleman.  More do th’ old farmer.  It’s let us, live and die respectable, and not disgrace father nor mother.  Old-fashioned’s best-fashioned about them things, I think.  Come, you bring him—­your husband—­to me on Sunday, if you object to my callin’ on you.  Make up your mind to.”

“Not next Sunday—­the Sunday after,” Dahlia pleaded.  “He is not here now.”

“Where is he?” Anthony asked.

“He’s in the country.”

Anthony pounced on her, as he had done previously.

“You said to me he was abroad.”

“In the country—­abroad.  Not—­not in the great cities.  I could not make known your wishes to him.”

She gave this cool explanation with her eyelids fluttering timorously, and rose as she uttered it, but with faint and ill-supporting limbs, for during the past hour she had gone through the sharpest trial of her life, and had decided for the course of her life.  Anthony was witless thereof, and was mystified by his incapability of perceiving where and how he had been deluded; but he had eaten all the muffin on the plate, and her rising proclaimed that she had no intention of making him call for another; which was satisfactory.  He drank off her cup of tea at a gulp.