the neighbourhood. And wherefore had he journeyed down? Had
he come to haunt her on account of the money he had poured into her lap?
Rhoda knew in a moment that she was near a great trial of her strength
and truth. She had more than once, I cannot tell you how distantly,
conceived that the money had been money upon which the mildest word
for "stolen" should be put to express the feeling she had got about
it, after she had parted with the bulk of it to the man Sedgett. Not
"stolen," not "appropriated," but money that had perhaps been entrusted,
and of which Anthony had forgotten the rightful ownership. This idea
of hers had burned with no intolerable fire; but, under a weight of all
discountenancing appearances, feeble though it was, it had distressed
her. The dealing with money, and the necessity for it, had given Rhoda a
better comprehension of its nature and value. She had taught herself to
think that her suspicion sprang from her uncle's wild demeanour, and the
scene of the gold pieces scattered on the floor, as if a heart had burst
at her feet.

No sooner did she hear that Anthony had been, by supposition, seen, than
the little light of secret dread flamed a panic through her veins. She
left the table before Master Gammon had finished, and went out of the
house to look about for her uncle. He was nowhere in the fields, nor in
the graveyard. She walked over the neighbourhood desolately, until her
quickened apprehension was extinguished, and she returned home relieved,
thinking it folly to have imagined her uncle was other than a man of
hoarded wealth, and that he was here. But, in the interval, she had
experienced emotions which warned her of a struggle to come. Who would
be friendly 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 evill