divine that her not forsaking of Edward
might haply come to mean something disastrous to him. The touch of Mrs.
Lovell's hand made him forget Rhoda in a twinkling. He detained it,
audaciously, even until she frowned with petulance and stamped her foot.

There was over her bosom a large cameo-brooch, representing a tomb under
a palm-tree, and the figure of a veiled woman with her head bowed upon
the tomb. This brooch was falling, when Algernon caught it. The pin tore
his finger, and in the energy of pain he dashed the brooch to her feet,
with immediate outcries of violent disgust at himself and exclamations
for pardon. He picked up the brooch. It was open. A strange, discoloured,
folded substance lay on the floor of the carriage. Mrs. Lovell gazed down
at it, and then at him, ghastly pale. He lifted it by one corner, and the
diminutive folded squares came out, revealing a strip of red-stained
handkerchief.

Mrs. Lovell grasped it, and thrust it out of sight.

She spoke as they approached the church-door: "Mention nothing of this to
a soul, or you forfeit my friendship for ever."

When they alighted, she was smiling in her old affable manner.

CHAPTER IX

Some consideration for Robert, after all, as being the man who loved her,
sufficed to give him rank as a more elevated kind of criminal in Rhoda's
sight, and exquisite torture of the highest form was administered to him.
Her faith in her sister was so sure that she could half pardon him for
the momentary harm he had done to Dahlia with her father; but, judging
him by the lofty standard of one who craved to be her husband, she could
not pardon his unmanly hesitation and manner of speech. The old and deep
grievance in her heart as to what men thought of women, and as to the
harshness of men, was stirred constantly by the remembrance of his
irresolute looks, and his not having dared to speak nobly for Dahlia,
even though he might have had, the knavery to think evil. As the case
stood, there was still mischief to counteract. Her father had willingly
swallowed a drug, but his suspicions only slumbered, and she could not
instil her own vivid hopefulness and trust into him. Letters from Dahlia
came regularly. The first, from Lausanne, favoured Rhoda's conception of
her as of a happy spirit resting at celestial stages of her ascent upward
through spheres of ecstacy. Dahlia could see the snow-mountains in a
flying glimpse; and again, peacefully seated, she could see t