CHAPTER XIV

The two were together, and all preliminary difficulties had been cleared for Robert to say what he had to say, in a manner to make the saying of it well-nigh impossible.  And yet silence might be misinterpreted by her.  He would have drawn her to his heart at one sign of tenderness.  There came none.  The girl was frightfully torn with a great wound of shame.  She was the first to speak.

“Do you believe what father says of my sister?”

“That she—?” Robert swallowed the words.  “No!” and he made a thunder with his fist.

“No!” She drank up the word.  “You do not?  No!  You know that Dahlia is innocent?”

Rhoda was trembling with a look for the asseveration; her pale face eager as a cry for life; but the answer did not come at once hotly as her passion for it demanded.  She grew rigid, murmuring faintly:  “speak!  Do speak!”

His eyes fell away from hers.  Sweet love would have wrought in him to think as she thought, but she kept her heart closed from him, and he stood sadly judicial, with a conscience of his own, that would not permit him to declare Dahlia innocent, for he had long been imagining the reverse.

Rhoda pressed her hands convulsively, moaning, “Oh!” down a short deep breath.

“Tell me what has happened?” said Robert, made mad by that reproachful agony of her voice.  “I’m in the dark.  I’m not equal to you all.  If Dahlia’s sister wants one to stand up for her, and defend her, whatever she has done or not done, ask me.  Ask me, and I’ll revenge her.  Here am I, and I know nothing, and you despise me because—­don’t think me rude or unkind.  This hand is yours, if you will.  Come, Rhoda.  Or, let me hear the case, and I’ll satisfy you as best I can.  Feel for her?  I feel for her as you do.  You don’t want me to stand a liar to your question?  How can I speak?”

A woman’s instinct at red heat pierces the partial disingenuousness which Robert could only have avoided by declaring the doubts he entertained.  Rhoda desired simply to be supported by his conviction of her sister’s innocence, and she had scorn of one who would not chivalrously advance upon the risks of right and wrong, and rank himself prime champion of a woman belied, absent, and so helpless.  Besides, there was but one virtue possible in Rhoda’s ideas, as regarded Dahlia:  to oppose facts, if necessary, and have her innocent perforce, and fight to the death them that dared cast slander on the beloved head.

Her keen instinct served her so far.

His was alive when she refused to tell him what had taken place during their visit to London.

She felt that a man would judge evil of the circumstances.  Her father and her uncle had done so:  she felt that Robert would.  Love for him would have prompted her to confide in him absolutely.  She was not softened by love; there was no fire on her side to melt and make them run in one stream, and they could not meet.