“You cannot deny it.  Me crying to you for help!  What have we talked together?—­that we would sit in a country house, and I was to look to the flower-beds, and always have dishes of green peas for you-plenty, in June; and you were to let the village boys know what a tongue you have, if they made a clatter of their sticks along the garden-rails; and you were to drink your tea, looking on a green and the sunset.  Uncle!  Poor old, good old soul!  You mean kindly.  You must be kind.  A day will make it too late.  You have the money there.  You get older and older every minute with trying to refuse me.  You know that I can make you happy.  I have the power, and I have the will.  Help me, I say, in my great trouble.  That money is a burden.  You are forced to carry it about, for fear.  You look guilty as you go running in the streets, because you fear everybody.  Do good with it.  Let it be money with a blessing on it!  It will save us from horrid misery! from death! from torture and death!  Think, uncle! look, uncle!  You with the money—­me wanting it.  I pray to heaven, and I meet you, and you have it.  Will you say that you refuse to give it, when I see—­when I show you, you are led to meet me and help me?  Open;—­put down that arm.”

Against this storm of mingled supplication and shadowy menace, Anthony held out with all outward firmness until, when bidding him to put down his arm, she touched the arm commandingly, and it fell paralyzed.

Rhoda’s eyes were not beautiful as they fixed on the object of her quest.  In this they were of the character of her mission.  She was dealing with an evil thing, and had chosen to act according to her light, and by the counsel of her combative and forceful temper.  At each step new difficulties had to be encountered by fresh contrivances; and money now—­money alone had become the specific for present use.  There was a limitation of her spiritual vision to aught save to money; and the money being bared to her eyes, a frightful gleam of eagerness shot from them.  Her hands met Anthony’s in a common grasp of the money-bags.

“It’s not mine!” Anthony cried, in desperation.

“Whose money is it?” said Rhoda, and caught up her hands as from fire.

“My Lord!” Anthony moaned, “if you don’t speak like a Court o’ Justice.  Hear yourself!”

“Is the money yours, uncle?”

“It—­is,” and “isn’t” hung in the balance.

“It is not?” Rhoda dressed the question for him in the terror of contemptuous horror.

“It is.  I—­of course it is; how could it help being mine?  My money?  Yes.  What sort o’ thing’s that to ask—­whether what I’ve got’s mine or yours, or somebody else’s?  Ha!”

“And you say you are not rich, uncle?”

A charming congratulatory smile was addressed to him, and a shake of the head of tender reproach irresistible to his vanity.

“Rich! with a lot o’ calls on me; everybody wantin’ to borrow—­I’m rich!  And now you coming to me!  You women can’t bring a guess to bear upon the right nature o’ money.”