y to her, and an arm of might? The thought of the storm she had
sown upon all sides made her tremble foolishly. When she placed her hand
in Robert's, she gave his fingers a confiding pressure, and all but
dropped her head upon his bosom, so sick she was with weakness. It would
have been a deceit toward him, and that restrained her; perhaps, yet
more, she was restrained by the gloomy prospect of having to reply to any
words of love, without an idea of what to say, and with a loathing of
caresses. She saw herself condemned to stand alone, and at a season when
she was not strengthened by pure self-support.

Rhoda had not surrendered the stern belief that she had done well by
forcing Dahlia's hand to the marriage, though it had resulted evilly. In
reflecting on it, she had still a feeling of the harsh joy peculiar to
those who have exercised command with a conscious righteousness upon
wilful, sinful, and erring spirits, and have thwarted the wrongdoer. She
could only admit that there was sadness in the issue; hitherto, at least,
nothing worse than sad disappointment. The man who was her sister's
husband could no longer complain that he had been the victim of an
imposition. She had bought his promise that he would leave the country,
and she had rescued the honour of the family by paying him. At what cost?
She asked herself that now, and then her self-support became uneven.
Could her uncle have parted with the great sum--have shed it upon her,
merely beneficently, and because he loved her? Was it possible that he
had the habit of carrying his own riches through the streets of London?
She had to silence all questions imperiously, recalling exactly her ideas
of him, and the value of money in the moment when money was an object of
hunger--when she had seized it like a wolf, and its value was quite
unknown, unguessed at.

Rhoda threw up her window before she slept, that she might breathe the
cool night air; and, as she leaned out, she heard steps moving away, and
knew them to be Robert's, in whom that pressure of her hand had cruelly
resuscitated his longing for her. She drew back, wondering at the
idleness of men--slaves while they want a woman's love, savages when they
have won it. She tried to pity him, but she had not an emotion to spare,
save perhaps one of dull exultation, that she, alone of women, was free
from that wretched mess called love; and upon it she slept.

It was between the breakfast and dinner hours, at the fa