Rhoda spoke of “the money” as if she had taken heated metal into her mouth.

“All the more likely,” said Robert.  “Let him rest.  Had you your eyes on him when he saw me in the vestry?  For years that man has considered me his deadly enemy, because I punished him once.  What a scene!  I’d have given a limb, I’d have given my life, to have saved you from that scene, Rhoda.”

She replied:  “If my sister could have been spared!  I ought to know what wickedness there is in the world.  It’s ignorance that leads to the unhappiness of girls.”

“Do you know that I’m a drunkard?”

“No.”

“He called me something like it; and he said something like the truth.  There’s the sting.  Set me adrift, and I drink hard.  He spoke a fact, and I couldn’t answer him.”

“Yes, it’s the truth that gives such pain,” said Rhoda, shivering.  “How can girls know what men are?  I could not guess that you had any fault.  This man was so respectful; he sat modestly in the room when I saw him last night—­last night, was it?  I thought, ’he has been brought up with sisters and a mother.’  And he has been kind to my dear—­and all we thought love for her, was—­shameful! shameful!”

She pressed her eyelids, continuing:  “He shall have the money—­he shall have it.  We will not be in debt to such a man.  He has saved my sister from one as bad—­who offered it to be rid of her.  Oh, men!—­you heard that?—­and now pretends to love her.  I think I dream.  How could she ever have looked happily on that hateful face?”

“He would be thought handsome,” said Robert, marvelling how it was that Rhoda could have looked on Sedgett for an instant without reading his villanous nature.  “I don’t wish you to regret anything you have done or you may do, Rhoda.  But this is what made me cry out when I looked on that man, and knew it was he who had come to be Dahlia’s husband.  He’ll be torture to her.  The man’s temper, his habits—­but you may well say you are ignorant of us men.  Keep so.  What I do with all my soul entreat of you is—­to get a hiding-place for your sister.  Never let him take her off.  There’s such a thing as hell upon earth.  If she goes away with him she’ll know it.  His black temper won’t last.  He will come for her, and claim her.”

“He shall have money.”  Rhoda said no more.

On a side-table in the room stood a remarkable pile, under cover of a shawl.  Robert lifted the shawl, and beheld the wooden boxes, one upon the other, containing Master Gammon’s and Mrs. Sumfit’s rival savings, which they had presented to Dahlia, in the belief that her husband was under a cloud of monetary misfortune that had kept her proud heart from her old friends.  The farmer had brought the boxes and left them there, forgetting them.

“I fancy,” said Robert, “we might open these.”

“It may be a little help,” said Rhoda.

“A very little,” Robert thought; but, to relieve the oppression of the subject they had been discussing, he forthwith set about procuring tools, with which he split first the box which proved to be Mrs. Sumfit’s, for it contained, amid six gold sovereigns and much silver and pence, a slip of paper, whereon was inscribed, in a handwriting identified by Rhoda as peculiar to the loving woman,—­