“Lord!” said Mrs. Sumfit, “how I tremble!”

Robert, too, looked grave, and got away from the house.  The dread of evil news of Dahlia was common to them all; yet none had mentioned it, Robert conceiving that it would be impertinence on his part to do so; the farmer, that the policy of permitting Dahlia’s continued residence in London concealed the peril; while Mrs. Sumfit flatly defied the threatening of a mischance to one so sweet and fair, and her favourite.  It is the insincerity of persons of their class; but one need not lay stress on the wilfulness of uneducated minds.  Robert walked across the fields, walking like a man with an object in view.  As he dropped into one of the close lanes which led up to Wrexby Hall, he saw Rhoda standing under an oak, her white morning-dress covered with sun-spots.  His impulse was to turn back, the problem, how to speak to her, not being settled within him.  But the next moment his blood chilled; for he had perceived, though he had not felt simultaneously, that two gentlemen were standing near her, addressing her.  And it was likewise manifest that she listened to them.  These presently raised their hats and disappeared.  Rhoda came on toward Robert.

“You have forgotten your dinner,” he said, with a queer sense of shame at dragging in the mention of that meal.

“I have been too happy to eat,” Rhoda replied.

Robert glanced up the lane, but she gave no heed to this indication, and asked:  “Has uncle come?”

“Did you expect him?”

“I thought he would come.”

“What has made you happy?”

“You will hear from uncle.”

“Shall I go and hear what those—­”

Robert checked himself, but it would have been better had he spoken out.  Rhoda’s face, from a light of interrogation, lowered its look to contempt.

She did not affect the feminine simplicity which can so prettily misunderstand and put by an implied accusation of that nature.  Doubtless her sharp instinct served her by telling her that her contempt would hurt him shrewdly now.  The foolishness of a man having much to say to a woman, and not knowing how or where the beginning of it might be, was perceptible about him.  A shout from her father at the open garden-gate, hurried on Rhoda to meet him.  Old Anthony was at Mr. Fleming’s elbow.

“You know it?  You have her letter, father?” said Rhoda, gaily, beneath the shadow of his forehead.

“And a Queen of the Egyptians is what you might have been,” said Anthony, with a speculating eye upon Rhoda’s dark bright face.

Rhoda put out her hand to him, but kept her gaze on her father.

William Fleeting relaxed the knot of his brows and lifted the letter.

“Listen all!  This is from a daughter to her father.”

And he read, oddly accentuating the first syllables of the sentences:—­

Dear Father,—­

“My husband will bring me to see you when I return to dear England. 
I ought to have concealed nothing, I know.  Try to forgive me.  I
hope you will.  I shall always think of you.  God bless you!