But Dahlia was a soft creature, without this apology for extravagance, and what right had she to letters addressed to “Miss Fleming?” The farmer prepared to ask a question, and was further instigated to it by seeing Mrs. Sumfit’s eyes roll sympathetic under a burden of overpowering curiosity and bewilderment.  On the point of speaking, he remembered that he had pledged his word to ask no questions; he feared to—­that was the secret; he had put his trust in Rhoda’s assurance, and shrank from a spoken suspicion.  So, checking himself, he broke out upon Mrs. Sumfit:  “Now, then, mother!” which caused her to fluster guiltily, she having likewise given her oath to be totally unquestioning, even as was Master Gammon, whom she watched with a deep envy.  Mrs. Sumfit excused the anxious expression of her face by saying that she was thinking of her dairy, whither, followed by the veteran, she retired.

Rhoda stood eyeing Dahlia, nerved to battle against the contents of that letter, though in the first conflict she had been beaten.  “Oh, this curse of love!” she thought in her heart; and as Dahlia left the room, flushed, stupefied, and conscienceless, Rhoda the more readily told her father the determination which was the result of her interview with Robert.

No sooner had she done so, than a strange fluttering desire to look on Robert awoke within her bosom.  She left the house, believing that she went abroad to seek her uncle, and walked up a small grass-knoll, a little beyond the farm-yard, from which she could see green corn-tracts and the pastures by the river, the river flowing oily under summer light, and the slow-footed cows, with their heads bent to the herbage; far-away sheep, and white hawthorn bushes, and deep hedge-ways bursting out of the trimness of the earlier season; and a nightingale sang among the hazels near by.

This scene of unthrobbing peacefulness was beheld by Rhoda with her first conscious delight in it.  She gazed round on the farm, under a quick new impulse of affection for her old home.  And whose hand was it that could alone sustain the working of the farm, and had done so, without reward?  Her eyes travelled up to Wrexby Hall, perfectly barren of any feeling that she was to enter the place, aware only that it was full of pain for her.  She accused herself, but could not accept the charge of her having ever hoped for transforming events that should twist and throw the dear old farm-life long back into the fields of memory.  Nor could she understand the reason of her continued coolness to Robert.  Enough of accurate reflection was given her to perceive that discontent with her station was the original cause of her discontent now.  What she had sown she was reaping:—­and wretchedly colourless are these harvests of our dream!  The sun has not shone on them.  They may have a tragic blood-hue, as with Dahlia’s; but they will never have any warm, and fresh, and nourishing sweetness—­the juice which is in a single blade of grass.