As regarded her uncle, Dahlia admitted that she had behaved forgetfully and unkindly, and promised amendment.  She talked of the Farm as of an old ruin, with nothing but a thin shade of memory threading its walls, and appeared to marvel vaguely that it stood yet.  “Father shall not always want money,” she said.  She was particular in prescribing books for Rhoda to read; good authors, she emphasized, and named books of history, and poets, and quoted their verses.  “For my darling will some day have a dear husband, and he must not look down on her.”  Rhoda shook her head, full sure that she could never be brought to utter such musical words naturally.  “Yes, dearest, when you know what love is,” said Dahlia, in an underbreath.

Could Robert inspire her with the power?  Rhoda looked upon that poor homely young man half-curiously when she returned, and quite dismissed the notion.  Besides she had no feeling for herself.  Her passion was fixed upon her sister, whose record of emotions in the letters from London placed her beyond dull days and nights.  The letters struck many chords.  A less subservient reader would have set them down as variations of the language of infatuation; but Rhoda was responsive to every word and change of mood, from the, “I am unworthy, degraded, wretched,” to “I am blest above the angels.”  If one letter said, “We met yesterday,” Rhoda’s heart beat on to the question, “Shall I see him again to-morrow?” And will she see him?—­has she seen him?—­agitated her and absorbed her thoughts.

So humbly did she follow her sister, without daring to forecast a prospect for her, or dream of an issue, that when on a summer morning a letter was brought in at the breakfast-table, marked “urgent and private,” she opened it, and the first line dazzled her eyes—­the surprise was a shock to her brain.  She rose from her unfinished meal, and walked out into the wide air, feeling as if she walked on thunder.

The letter ran thus:—­

“My Own Innocent!—­I am married.  We leave England to-day.  I must not love you too much, for I have all my love to give to my Edward, my own now, and I am his trustingly for ever.  But he will let me give you some of it—­and Rhoda is never jealous.  She shall have a great deal.  Only I am frightened when I think how immense my love is for him, so that anything—­everything he thinks right is right to me.  I am not afraid to think so.  If I were to try, a cloud would come over me—­it does, if only I fancy for half a moment I am rash, and a straw.  I cannot exist except through him.  So I must belong to him, and his will is my law.  My prayer at my bedside every night is that I may die for him.  We used to think the idea of death so terrible!  Do you remember how we used to shudder together at night when we thought of people lying in the grave?  And now, when I think that perhaps I may some day die for him, I feel like a crying in my heart with joy.

“I have left a letter—­sent it, I mean—­enclosed to uncle for father.  He will see Edward by-and-by.  Oh! may heaven spare him from any grief.  Rhoda will comfort him.  Tell him how devoted I am.  I am like drowned to everybody but one.