n that she could
never call five minutes her own. She would entreat them to call tomorrow,
only she would then be moving to her new lodgings. "But, oh! my dear, my
blessed Rhoda!" the letter concluded, "do keep fast in your heart that I
do love you so, and pray that we may meet soon, as I pray it every night
and all day long. Beg father to stop till we meet. Things will soon be
arranged. They must. Oh! oh, my Rhoda, love! how handsome you have grown.
It is very well to be fair for a time, but the brunettes have the
happiest lot. They last, and when we blonde ones cry or grow thin, oh!
what objects we become!"

There were some final affectionate words, but no further explanations.

The wrinkles again settled on the farmer's mild, uncomplaining forehead.

Rhoda said: "Let us wait, father."

When alone, she locked the letter against her heart, as to suck the
secret meaning out of it. Thinking over it was useless; except for this
one thought: how did her sister know she had grown very handsome? Perhaps
the housemaid had prattled.

CHAPTER XI

Dahlia, the perplexity to her sister's heart, lay stretched at full
length upon the sofa of a pleasantly furnished London drawing-room,
sobbing to herself, with her handkerchief across her eyes. She had cried
passion out, and sobbed now for comfort.

She lay in her rich silken dress like the wreck of a joyful creature,
while the large red Winter sun rounded to evening, and threw
deep-coloured beams against the wall above her head. They touched the
nut-brown hair to vivid threads of fire: but she lay faceless. Utter
languor and the dread of looking at her eyelids in the glass kept her
prostrate.

So, the darkness closed her about; the sickly gas-lamps of the street
showing her as a shrouded body.

A girl came in to spread the cloth for dinner, and went through her
duties with the stolidity of the London lodging-house maidservant, poking
a clogged fire to perdition, and repressing a songful spirit.

Dahlia knew well what was being done; she would have given much to have
saved her nostrils from the smell of dinner; it was a great immediate
evil to her sickened senses; but she had no energy to call out, nor will
of any kind. The odours floated to her, and passively she combated them.

At first she was nearly vanquished; the meat smelt so acrid, the potatoes
so sour; each afflicting vegetable asserted itself peculiarly; and the
bread, the salt even, on the wings of her mo