She meant, true as regarded her sensations.  Rhoda could barely give a smile for response; and Dahlia’s intelligence being supernaturally active, she read her sister’s doubt, and cried out,—­

“Then let me talk of him!”

It was the fiery sequence to her foregone speech, signifying that if her passion had liberty to express itself, she could clear understandings.  But even a moment’s free wing to passion renewed the blinding terror within her.  Rhoda steadied her along the walks, praying for the time to come when her friends, the rector and his wife, might help in the task of comforting this poor sister.  Detestation of the idea of love made her sympathy almost deficient, and when there was no active work to do in aid, she was nearly valueless, knowing that she also stood guilty of a wrong.

The day was very soft and still.  The flowers gave light for light.  They heard through the noise of the mill-water the funeral bell sound.  It sank in Rhoda like the preaching of an end that was promise of a beginning, and girdled a distancing land of trouble.  The breeze that blew seemed mercy.  To live here in forgetfulness with Dahlia was the limit of her desires.  Perhaps, if Robert worked among them, she would gratefully give him her hand.  That is, if he said not a word of love.

Master Gammon and Mrs. Sumfit were punctual in their return near the dinnerhour; and the business of releasing the dumplings and potatoes, and spreading out the cold meat and lettuces, restrained for some period the narrative of proceedings at the funeral.  Chief among the incidents was, that Mrs. Sumfit had really seen, and only wanted, by corroboration of Master Gammon, to be sure she had positively seen, Anthony Hackbut on the skirts of the funeral procession.  Master Gammon, however, was no supporter of conjecture.  What he had thought he had thought; but that was neither here nor there.  He would swear to nothing that he had not touched;—­eyes deceived;—­he was never a guesser.  He left Mrs. Sumfit to pledge herself in perturbation of spirit to an oath that her eyes had seen Anthony Hackbut; and more, which was, that after the close of the funeral service, the young squire had caught sight of Anthony crouching in a corner of the churchyard, and had sent a man to him, and they had disappeared together.  Mrs. Sumfit was heartily laughed at and rallied both by Robert and the farmer.  “Tony at a funeral! and train expenses!” the farmer interjected.  “D’ye think, mother, Tony’d come to Wrexby churchyard ’fore he come Queen Anne’s Farm?  And where’s he now, mayhap?”

Mrs. Sumfit appealed in despair to Master Gammon, with entreaties, and a ready dumpling.

“There, Mas’ Gammon; and why you sh’d play at ‘do believe’ and at ’don’t believe,’ after that awesome scene, the solem’est of life’s, when you did declare to me, sayin’, it was a stride for boots out o’ London this morning.  Your words, Mas’ Gammon! and ’boots’-=it’s true, if by that alone!  For, ‘boots,’ I says to myself—­he thinks by ‘boots,’ there being a cord’er in his family on the mother’s side; which you yourself told to me, as you did, Mas’ Gammon, and now holds back, you did, like a bad horse.”