This, her execrated word, coming from his mouth, vanquished her self-possession.

“Are you cold?” he said, seeing the ripple of a trembling run over her.

“I am not cold.  I cannot remain here.”  Rhoda tightened her intertwisting fingers across under her bosom.  “Don’t try to kill my sister outright.  She’s the ghost of what she was.  Be so good as to go.  She will soon be out of your reach.  You will have to kill me first, if you get near her.  Never! you never shall.  You have lied to her—­brought disgrace on her poor head.  We poor people read our Bibles, and find nothing that excuses you.  You are not punished, because there is no young man in our family.  Go.”

Edward gazed at her for some time.  “Well, I’ve deserved worse,” he said, not sorry, now that he saw an opponent in her, that she should waste her concentrated antagonism in this fashion, and rejoiced by the testimony it gave him that he was certainly not too late.

“You know, Rhoda, she loves me.”

“If she does, let her pray to God on her knees.”

“My good creature, be reasonable.  Why am I here?  To harm her?  You take me for a kind of monster.  You look at me very much, let me say, like a bristling cat.  Here are the streets getting full of people, and you ought not to be seen.  Go to Dahlia.  Tell her I am here.  Tell her I am come to claim her for good, and that her troubles are over.  This is a moment to use your reason.  Will you do what I ask?”

“I would cut my tongue out, if it did you a service,” said Rhoda.

“Citoyenne Corday,” thought Edward, and observed:  “Then I will dispense with your assistance.”

He moved in the direction of the house.  Rhoda swiftly outstripped him.  They reached the gates together.  She threw herself in the gateway.  He attempted to parley, but she was dumb to it.

“I allow nothing to stand between her and me,” he said, and seized her arm.  She glanced hurriedly to right and left.  At that moment Robert appeared round a corner of the street.  He made his voice heard, and, coming up at double quick, caught Edward Blancove by the collar, swinging him off.  Rhoda, with a sign, tempered him to muteness, and the three eyed one another.

“It’s you,” said Robert, and, understanding immediately the tactics desired by Rhoda, requested Edward to move a step or two away in his company.

Edward settled the disposition of his coat-collar, as a formula wherewith to regain composure of mind, and passed along beside Robert, Rhoda following.

“What does this mean?” said Robert sternly.

Edward’s darker nature struggled for ascendancy within him.  It was this man’s violence at Fairly which had sickened him, and irritated him against Dahlia, and instigated him, as he remembered well, more than Mrs. Lovell’s witcheries, to the abhorrent scheme to be quit of her, and rid of all botheration, at any cost.

“You’re in some conspiracy to do her mischief, all of you,” he cried.