“Then, how could you have married him?”

They heard the farmer’s roar of this unanswerable thing, aloft.

“Yes—­how! how!” cried Rhoda below, utterly forgetting the part she had played in the marriage.

“It’s too late to hate a man when you’ve married him, my girl.”

Sedgett went out to the foot of the stairs.

“Mr. Fleming—­she’s my wife.  I’ll teach her about hating and loving.  I’ll behave well to her, I swear.  I’m in the midst of enemies; but I say I do love my wife, and I’ve come for her, and have her I will.  Now, in two minutes’ time.  Mr. Fleming, my cart’s at the gate, and I’ve got business, and she’s my wife.”

The farmer called for Mrs. Sumfit to come up and pack Dahlia’s box, and the forlorn woman made her way to the bedroom.  All the house was silent.  Rhoda closed her sight, and she thought:  “Does God totally abandon us?”

She let her father hear:  “Father, you know that you are killing your child.”

“I hear ye, my lass,” said he.

“She will die, father.”

“I hear ye, I hear ye.”

“She will die, father.”

He stamped furiously, exclaiming:  “Who’s got the law of her better and above a husband?  Hear reason, and come and help and fetch down your sister.  She goes!”

“Father!” Rhoda cried, looking at her open hands, as if she marvelled to see them helpless.

There was for a time that silence which reigns in a sickchamber when the man of medicine takes the patient’s wrist.  And in the silence came a blessed sound—­the lifting of a latch.  Rhoda saw Robert’s face.

“So,” said Robert, as she neared him, “you needn’t tell me what’s happened.  Here’s the man, I see.  He dodged me cleverly.  The hound wants practice; the fox is born with his cunning.”

Few words were required to make him understand the position of things in the house.  Rhoda spoke out all without hesitation in Sedgett’s hearing.

But the farmer respected Robert enough to come down to him and explain his views of his duty and his daughter’s duty.  By the kitchen firelight he and Robert and Sedgett read one another’s countenances.

“He has a proper claim to take his wife, Robert,” said the farmer.  “He’s righted her before the world, and I thank him; and if he asks for her of me he must have her, and he shall.”

“All right, sir,” replied Robert, “and I say too, shall, when I’m stiff as log-wood.”

“Oh!  Robert, Robert!” Rhoda cried in great joy.

“Do you mean that you step ’twixt me and my own?” said Mr. Fleming.

“I won’t let you nod at downright murder—­that’s all,” said Robert.  “She—­Dahlia, take the hand of that creature!”

“Why did she marry me?” thundered Sedgett.

“There’s one o’ the wonders!” Robert rejoined.  “Except that you’re an amazingly clever hypocrite with women; and she was just half dead and had no will of her own; and some one set you to hunt her down.  I tell you, Mr. Fleming, you might as well send your daughter to the hangman as put her in this fellow’s hands.”