“You have an esteem for Mrs. Lovell, have you not?”

Edward flushed.  “I should have a very perfect esteem for her, if—­” he laughed slightly—­“you will think I want everybody to be married and in the traces now; she will never be manageable till she is married.”

“I am also of that opinion,” said Sir William.  “I will detain you no longer.  It is a quarter to five in the morning.  You will sleep here, of course.”

“No, I must go to the Temple.  By the way, Algy prefers a petition for Sherry.  He is beginning to discern good wine from bad, which may be a hopeful augury.”

“I will order Holmes to send some down to him when he has done a week’s real duty at the Bank.”

“Sooner or later, then.  Good morning, sir.”

“Good morning.”  Sir William shook his son’s hand.

A minute after, Edward had quitted the house.  “That’s over!” he said, sniffing the morning air gratefully, and eyeing certain tinted wisps of cloud that were in a line of the fresh blue sky.

CHAPTER XXXV

A shy and humble entreaty had been sent by Dahlia through Robert to Rhoda, saying that she wished not to be seen until the ceremony was at an end; but Rhoda had become mentally stern toward her sister, and as much to uphold her in the cleansing step she was about to take, as in the desire to have the dear lost head upon her bosom, she disregarded Dahlia’s foolish prayer, and found it was well that she had done so; for, to her great amazement, Dahlia, worn, shorn, sickened, and reduced to be a mark for the scorn of the cowardice which is in the world, through the selfishness of a lying man, loved the man still, and wavered, or rather shrank with a pitiful fleshly terror from the noble husband who would wipe the spot of shame from her forehead.

When, after their long separation, the sisters met, Dahlia was mistress of herself, and pronounced Rhoda’s name softly, as she moved up to kiss her.  Rhoda could not speak.  Oppressed by the strangeness of the white face which had passed through fire, she gave a mute kiss and a single groan, while Dahlia gently caressed her on the shoulder.  The frail touch of her hand was harder to bear than the dreary vision had been, and seemed not so real as many a dream of it.  Rhoda sat by her, overcome by the awfulness of an actual sorrow, never imagined closely, though she had conjured up vague pictures of Dahlia’s face.  She had imagined agony, tears, despair, but not the spectral change, the burnt-out look.  It was a face like a crystal lamp in which the flame has died.  The ghastly little skull-cap showed forth its wanness rigidly.  Rhoda wondered to hear her talk simply of home and the old life.  At each question, the then and the now struck her spirit with a lightning flash of opposing scenes.  But the talk deepened.  Dahlia’s martyrdom was near, and their tongues were hurried into plain