The third time he uttered a threat that sprang an answer from her bosom in shrieks.

Rhoda went out on the landing and said softly, “Come up to her, father.”

After a little hesitation, he ascended the stairs.

“Why, girl, I only ask you to come down and see your husband,” he remarked with an attempt at kindliness of tone.  “What’s the harm, then?  Come and see him; that’s all; come and see him.”

Dahlia was shrinking out of her father’s sight as he stood in the doorway.  “Say,” she communicated to Rhoda, “say, I want my letter.”

“Come!” William Fleming grew impatient.

“Let her have her letter, father,” said Rhoda.  “You have no right to withhold it.”

“That letter, my girl” (he touched Rhoda’s shoulder as to satisfy her that he was not angry), “that letter’s where it ought to be.  I’ve puzzled out the meaning of it.  That letter’s in her husband’s possession.”

Dahlia, with her ears stretching for all that might be uttered, heard this.  Passing round the door, she fronted her father.

“My letter gone to him!” she cried.  “Shameful old man!  Can you look on me?  Father, could you give it?  I’m a dead woman.”

She smote her bosom, stumbling backward upon Rhoda’s arm.

“You have been a wicked girl,” the ordinarily unmoved old man retorted.  “Your husband has come for you, and you go with him.  Know that, and let me hear no threats.  He’s a modest-minded, quiet young man, and a farmer like myself, and needn’t be better than he is.  Come you down to him at once.  I’ll tell you:  he comes to take you away, and his cart’s at the gate.  To the gate you go with him.  When next I see you—­you visiting me or I visiting you—­I shall see a respected creature, and not what you have been and want to be.  You have racked the household with fear and shame for years.  Now come, and carry out what you’ve begun in the contrary direction.  You’ve got my word o’ command, dead woman or live woman.  Rhoda, take one elbow of your sister.  Your aunt’s coming up to pack her box.  I say I’m determined, and no one stops me when I say that.  Come out, Dahlia, and let our parting be like between parent and child.  Here’s the dark falling, and your husband’s anxious to be away.  He has business, and ’ll hardly get you to the station for the last train to town.  Hark at him below!  He’s naturally astonished, he is, and you’re trying his temper, as you’d try any man’s.  He wants to be off.  Come, and when next we meet I shall see you a happy wife.”

He might as well have spoken to a corpse.

“Speak to her still, father,” said Rhoda, as she drew a chair upon which she leaned her sister’s body, and ran down full of the power of hate and loathing to confront Sedgett; but great as was that power within her, it was overmatched by his brutal resolution to take his wife away.  No argument, no irony, no appeals, can long withstand the iteration of a dogged phrase.  “I’ve come for my wife,” Sedgett said to all her instances.  His voice was waxing loud and insolent, and, as it sounded, Mrs. Sumfit moaned and flapped her apron.