“You’re the beauty to my taste, and devil is what I want in a woman!  I can make something out of a girl with a temper like yours.  You don’t know me, Miss Rhoda.  I’m what you reckon a good young man.  Isn’t that it?”

Robert drew up with a very hard smile.

“I would to God I were!  Mind, I feel for you about your sister.  I like you the better for holding to her through thick and thin.  But my sheepishness has gone, and I tell you I’ll have you whether you will or no.  I can help you and you can help me.  I’ve lived here as if I had no more fire in me than old Gammon snoring on his pillow up aloft; and who kept me to it?  Did you see I never touched liquor?  What did you guess from that?—­that I was a mild sort of fellow?  So I am:  but I haven’t got that reputation in other parts.  Your father ’d like me to marry you, and I’m ready.  Who kept me to work, so that I might learn to farm, and be a man, and be able to take a wife?  I came here—­I’ll tell you how.  I was a useless dog.  I ran from home and served as a trooper.  An old aunt of mine left me a little money, which just woke me up and gave me a lift of what conscience I had, and I bought myself out.

“I chanced to see your father’s advertisement—­came, looked at you all, and liked you—­brought my traps and settled among you, and lived like a good young man.  I like peace and orderliness, I find.  I always thought I did, when I was dancing like mad to hell.  I know I do now, and you’re the girl to keep me to it.  I’ve learnt that much by degrees.  With any other, I should have been playing the fool, and going my old ways, long ago.  I should have wrecked her, and drunk to forget.  You’re my match.  By-and-by you’ll know, me yours!  You never gave me, or anybody else that I’ve seen, sly sidelooks.

“Come!  I’ll speak out now I’m at work.  I thought you at some girl’s games in the Summer.  You went out one day to meet a young gentleman.  Offence or no offence, I speak and you listen.  You did go out.  I was in love with you then, too.  I saw London had been doing its mischief.  I was down about it.  I felt that he would make nothing of you, but I chose to take the care of you, and you’ve hated me ever since.

“That Mr. Algernon Blancove’s a rascal.  Stop!  You’ll say as much as you like presently.  I give you a warning—­the man’s a rascal.  I didn’t play spy on your acts, but your looks.  I can read a face like yours, and it’s my home, my home!—­by heaven, it is.  Now, Rhoda, you know a little more of me.  Perhaps I’m more of a man than you thought.  Marry another, if you will; but I’m the man for you, and I know it, and you’ll go wrong if you don’t too.  Come! let your father sleep well.  Give me your hand.”

All through this surprising speech of Robert’s, which was a revelation of one who had been previously dark to her, she had steeled her spirit as she felt herself being borne upon unexpected rapids, and she marvelled when she found her hand in his.