CHAPTER XXV

It requires, happily, many years of an ordinary man's life to teach him

to believe in the exceeding variety and quantity of things money can buy:

yet, when ingenuous minds have fully comprehended the potent character of

the metal, they are likely enough to suppose that it will buy everything:

after which comes the groaning anxiety to possess it.

This stage of experience is a sublime development in the great souls of

misers. It is their awakening moment, and it is their first real sense of

a harvest being in their hands. They have begun under the influence of

the passion for hoarding, which is but a blind passion of the

finger-ends. The idea that they have got together, bit by bit, a power,

travels slowly up to their heavy brains. Once let it be grasped, however,

and they clutch a god. They feed on everybody's hunger for it. And, let

us confess, they have in that a mighty feast.

Anthony Hackbut was not a miser. He was merely a saving old man. His

vanity was, to be thought a miser, envied as a miser. He lived in daily

hearing of the sweet chink of gold, and loved the sound, but with a

poetical love, rather than with the sordid desire to amass gold pieces.

Though a saving old man, he had his comforts; and if they haunted him and

reproached him subsequently, for indulging wayward appetites for herrings

and whelks and other sea-dainties that render up no account to you when

they have disappeared, he put by copper and silver continually, weekly

and monthly, and was master of a sum.

He knew the breadth of this sum with accuracy, and what it would expand

to this day come a year, and probably this day come five years. He knew

it only too well. The sum took no grand leaps. It increased, but did not

seem to multiply. And he was breathing in the heart of the place, of all

places in the world, where money did multiply.

He was the possessor of twelve hundred pounds, solid, and in haven; that

is, the greater part in the Bank of England, and a portion in Boyne's

Bank. He had besides a few skirmishing securities, and some such bits of

paper as Algernon had given him in the public-house on that remarkable

night of his visit to the theatre.

These, when the borrowers were defaulters in their payments and pleaded

for an extension of time, inspired him with sentiments of grandeur that

the solid property could not impart. Nevertheless, the anti-poetical

tendency within him which warred with the poetical, and set him reducing

whatsoever he claimed to plain figures, made it but a fitful hour of

satisfaction.

He had only to fix his mind upon Farmer Fleming's conception of his

wealth, to feel the miserable smallness of what seemed legitimately his

own; and he felt it with so poignant an emotion that at times his fears

of death were excited by the knowledge of a dead man's impotence to

suggest hazy margins in the final exposure of his property. There it

would lie, dead as himself! contracted, coffined, contemptible!

What would the farmer think when he came to hear that his brother Tony's

estate was not able to buy up Queen Anne's Farm?--when, in point of fact,

he found that he had all along been the richer man of the two!

Anthony's comfort was in the unfaltering strength of his constitution. He

permitted his estimate of it to hint at the probability of his outlasting

his brother William John, to whom he wished no earthly ill, but only that

he should not live with a mitigated veneration for him. He was really

nourished by the farmer's gluttonous delight in his supposed piles of

wealth. Sometimes, for weeks, he had the gift of thinking himself one of

the Bank with which he had been so long connected; and afterward a

wretched reaction set in.

It was then that his touch upon Bank money began to intoxicate him

strangely. He had at times thousands hugged against his bosom, and his

heart swelled to the money-bags immense. He was a dispirited, but a

grateful creature, after he had delivered them up. The delirium came by

fits, as if a devil lurked to surprise him.

"With this money," said the demon, "you might speculate, and in two days

make ten times the amount."

To which Anthony answered: "My character's worth fifty times the amount."

Such was his reply, but he did not think it. He was honest, and his

honesty had become a habit; but the money was the only thing which acted

on his imagination; his character had attained to no sacred halo, and was

just worth his annual income and the respect of the law for his person.

The money fired his brain!

"Ah! if it was mine!" he sighed. "If I could call it mine for just forty

or fifty hours! But it ain't, and I can't."

He fought dogged battles with the tempter, and beat him off again and

again. One day he made a truce with him by saying that if ever the farmer

should be in town of an afternoon he would steal ten minutes or so, and

make an appointment with him somewhere and show him the money-bags

without a word: let him weigh and eye them: and then the plan was for

Anthony to talk of politics, while the farmer's mind was in a ferment.

With this arrangement the infernal Power appeared to be content, and

Anthony was temporarily relieved of his trouble. In other words, the

intermittent fever of a sort of harmless rascality was afflicting this

old creature. He never entertained the notion of running clear away with

the money entrusted to him.

Whither could an aged man fly? He thought of foreign places as of spots

that gave him a shivering sense of its being necessary for him to be born

again in nakedness and helplessness, if ever he was to see them and set

foot on them.

London was his home, and clothed him about warmly and honourably, and so

he said to the demon in their next colloquy.

Anthony had become guilty of the imprudence of admitting him to

conferences and arguing with him upon equal terms. They tell us, that

this is the imprudence of women under temptation; and perhaps Anthony was

pushed to the verge of the abyss from causes somewhat similar to those

which imperil them, and employed the same kind of efforts in his

resistance.

In consequence of this compromise, the demon by degrees took seat at his

breakfast-table, when Mrs. Wicklow, his landlady, could hear Anthony

talking in the tone of voice of one who was pushed to his sturdiest

arguments. She conceived that the old man's head was softening.

He was making one of his hurried rushes with the porterage of money on an

afternoon in Spring, when a young female plucked at his coat, and his

wrath at offenders against the law kindled in a minute into fury.

"Hands off, minx!" he cried. "You shall be given in charge. Where's a

policeman?"

"Uncle!" she said.

"You precious swindler in petticoats!" Anthony fumed.

But he had a queer recollection of her face, and when she repeated

piteously: "Uncle!" he peered at her features, saying,--

"No!" in wonderment, several times.

Her hair was cut like a boy's. She was in common garments, with a

close-shaped skull-cap and a black straw bonnet on her head; not gloved,

of ill complexion, and with deep dark lines slanting down from the

corners of her eyes. Yet the inspection convinced him that he beheld

Dahlia, his remembering the niece. He was amazed; but speedily priceless

trust in his arms, and the wickedness of the streets, he bade her follow

him. She did so with some difficulty, for he ran, and dodged, and treated

the world as his enemy, suddenly vanished, and appeared again breathing

freely.

"Why, my girl?" he said: "Why, Dahl--Mrs. What's-your-name? Why, who'd

have known you? Is that"--he got his eyes close to her hair; "is that the

ladies' fashion now? 'Cause, if it is, our young street scamps has only

got to buy bonnets, and--I say, you don't look the Pomp. Not as you used

to, Miss Ma'am, I mean--no, that you don't. Well, what's the news? How's

your husband?"

"Uncle," said Dahlia; "will you, please, let me speak to you somewhere?"

"Ain't we standing together?"

"Oh! pray, out of the crowd!"

"Come home with me, if my lodgings ain't too poor for you," said Anthony.

"Uncle, I can't. I have been unwell. I cannot walk far. Will you take me

to some quiet place?"

"Will you treat me to a cab?" Anthony sneered vehemently.

"I have left off riding, uncle."

"What! Hulloa!" Anthony sang out. "Cash is down in the mouth at home, is

it? Tell me that, now?"

Dahlia dropped her eyelids, and then entreated him once more to conduct

her to a quiet place where they might sit together, away from noise. She

was very earnest and very sad, not seeming to have much strength.

"Do you mind taking my arm?" said Anthony.

She leaned her hand on his arm, and he dived across the road with her,

among omnibuses and cabs, shouting to them through the roar,--

"We're the Independence on two legs, warranted sound, and no

competition;" and saying to Dahlia: "Lor' bless you! there's no retort in

'em, or I'd say something worth hearing. It's like poking lions in cages

with raw meat, afore you get a chaffing-match out o' them. Some of 'em

know me. They'd be good at it, those fellows. I've heard of good things

said by 'em. But there they sit, and they've got no circulation--ain't

ready, except at old women, or when they catch you in a mess, and getting

the worst of it. Let me tell you; you'll never get manly chaff out of big

bundles o' fellows with ne'er an atom o' circulation. The river's the

place for that. I've heard uncommon good things on the river--not of 'em,

but heard 'em. T' other's most part invention. And, they tell me,

horseback's a prime thing for chaff. Circulation, again. Sharp and

lively, I mean; not bawl, and answer over your back--most part impudence,

and nothing else--and then out of hearing. That sort o' chaff's cowardly.

Boys are stiff young parties--circulation--and I don't tackle them pretty

often, 'xcept when I'm going like a ball among nine-pins. It's all a

matter o' circulation. I say, my dear," Anthony addressed her seriously,

"you should never lay hold o' my arm when you see me going my pace of an

afternoon. I took you for a thief, and worse--I did. That I did. Had you

been waiting to see me?"

"A little," Dahlia replied, breathless.

"You have been ill?"

"A little," she said.

"You've written to the farm? O' course you have!"

"Oh! uncle, wait," moaned Dahlia.

"But, ha' you been sick, and not written home?"

"Wait; please, wait," she entreated him.

"I'll wait," said Anthony; "but that's no improvement to queerness; and

'queer''s your motto. Now we cross London Bridge. There's the Tower that

lived in times when no man was safe of keeping his own money, 'cause of

grasping kings--all claws and crown. I'm Republican as far as 'none o'

them'--goes. There's the ships. The sun rises behind 'em, and sets afore

'em, and you may fancy, if you like, there's always gold in their

rigging. Gals o' your sort think I say, come! tell me, if you are a

lady?"

"No, uncle, no!" Dahlia cried, and then drawing in her breath, added:

"not to you."

"Last time I crossed this bridge with a young woman hanging on my arm, it

was your sister; they say she called on you, and you wouldn't see her;

and a gal so good and a gal so true ain't to be got for a sister every

day in the year! What are you pulling me for?"

Dahlia said nothing, but clung to him with a drooping head, and so they

hurried along, until Anthony stopped in front of a shop displaying cups

and muffins at the window, and leprous-looking strips of bacon, and

sausages that had angled for appetites till they had become pallid sodden

things, like washed-out bait.

Into this shop he led her, and they took possession of a compartment, and

ordered tea and muffins.

The shop was empty.

"It's one of the expenses of relationship," Anthony sighed, after probing

Dahlia unsatisfactorily to see whether she intended to pay for both, or

at least for herself; and finding that she had no pride at all. "My

sister marries your father, and, in consequence--well! a muffin now and

then ain't so very much. We'll forget it, though it is a breach, mind, in

counting up afterwards, and two-pences every day's equal to a good big

cannonball in the castle-wall at the end of the year. Have you written

home?"

Dahlia's face showed the bright anguish of unshed tears.

"Uncle-oh! speak low. I have been near death. I have been ill for so long

a time. I have come to you to hear about them--my father and Rhoda. Tell

me what they are doing, and do they sleep and eat well, and are not in

trouble? I could not write. I was helpless. I could not hold a pen. Be

kind, dear uncle, and do not reproach me. Please, tell me that they have

not been sorrowful."

A keenness shot from Anthony's eyes. "Then, where's your husband?" he

asked.

She made a sad attempt at smiling. "He is abroad."

"How about his relations? Ain't there one among 'em to write for you when

you're ill?"

"He... Yes, he has relatives. I could not ask them. Oh! I am not strong,

uncle; if you will only leave following me so with questions; but tell

me, tell me what I want to know."

"Well, then, you tell me where your husband banks," returned Anthony.

"Indeed, I cannot say."

"Do you," Anthony stretched out alternative fingers, "do you get money

from him to make payments in gold, or, do you get it in paper?"

She stared as in terror of a pit-fall. "Paper," she said at a venture.

"Well, then, name your Bank."

There was no cunning in her eye as she answered: "I don't know any bank,

except the Bank of England."

"Why the deuce didn't you say so at once--eh?" cried Anthony. "He gives

you bank-notes. Nothing better in the world. And he a'n't been givin' you

many lately--is that it? What's his profession, or business?"

"He is...he is no profession."

"Then, what is he? Is he a gentleman?"

"Yes," she breathed plaintively.

"Your husband's a gentleman. Eh?--and lost his money?"

"Yes."

"How did he lose it?"

The poor victim of this pertinacious interrogatory now beat about within

herself for succour. "I must not say," she replied.

"You're going to try to keep a secret, are ye?" said Anthony; and she, in

her relief at the pause to her torment, said: "I am," with a little

infantile, withering half-smile.

"Well, you've been and kept yourself pretty secret," the old man pursued.

"I suppose your husband's proud? He's proud, ain't he? He's of a family,

I'll be bound. Is he of a family? How did he like your dressing up like a

mill'ner gal to come down in the City and see me?"

Dahlia's guile was not ready. "He didn't mind," she said.

"He didn't mind, didn't he? He don't mind your cutting of your hair

so?--didn't mind that?"

She shook her head. "No."

Anthony was down upon her like a hawk.

"Why, he's abroad!"

"Yes; I mean, he did not see me."

With which, in a minute, she was out of his grasp; but her heart beat

thick, her lips were dry, and her thoughts were in disorder.

"Then, he don't know you've been and got shaved, and a poll like a

turnip-head of a thief? That's something for him to learn, is it?"

The picture of her beauty gone, seared her eyes like heated brass. She

caught Anthony's arm with one firm hand to hold him silent, and with the

other hand covered her sight and let the fit of weeping pass.

When the tears had spent themselves, she relinquished her hold of the

astonished old man, who leaned over the table to her, and dominated by

the spirit of her touch, whispered, like one who had accepted a bond of

secresy: "Th' old farmer's well. So's Rhoda--my darkie lass. They've

taken on a bit. And then they took to religion for comfort. Th' old

farmer attends Methody meetin's, and quotes Scriptur' as if he was fixed

like a pump to the Book, and couldn't fetch a breath without quotin'.

Rhoda's oftenest along with your rector's wife down there, and does works

o' charity, sicknussin', readin'--old farmer does the preachin'. Old

mother Sumfit's fat as ever, and says her money's for you. Old Gammon

goes on eatin' of the dumplins. Hey! what a queer old ancient he is. He

seems to me to belong to a time afore ever money was. That Mr. Robert's

off...never been down there since he left, 'cause my darkie lass thought

herself too good for him. So she is!--too good for anybody. They're going

to leave the farm; sell, and come to London."

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Dahlia; "not going to leave the dear old farm, and

our lane, and the old oaks, leading up to the heath. Are they? Father

will miss it. Rhoda will mourn so. No place will ever be like that to

them. I love it better than any place on earth."

"That's queer," said Anthony. "Why do you refuse to go, or won't let your

husband take you down there; if you like the place that raving-like? But

'queer''s your motto. The truth is this--you just listen. Hear me--hush!

I won't speak in a bawl. You're a reasonable being, and you don't--that's

to say, you do understand, the old farmer feels it uncomfortable--"

"But I never helped him when I was there," said Dahlia, suddenly

shrinking in a perceptible tremble of acute divination. "I was no use. I

never helped him--not at all. I was no--no use!"

Anthony blinked his eyes, not knowing how it was that he had thus been

thrown out of his direct road. He began again, in his circumlocutory

delicacy: "Never mind; help or no help, what th' old farmer feels is--and

quite nat'ral. There's sensations as a father, and sensations as a man;

and what th' old farmer feels is--"

"But Rhoda has always been more to father than I have," Dahlia cried, now

stretching forward with desperate courage to confront her uncle, distract

his speech, and avert the saying of the horrible thing she dreaded.

"Rhoda was everything to him. Mother perhaps took to me--my mother!"

The line of her long underlie drawn sharp to check her tears, stopped her

speaking.

"All very well about Rhoda," said Anthony. "She's everything to me, too."

"Every--everybody loves her!" Dahlia took him up.

"Let 'em, so long as they don't do no harm to her," was Anthony's remark.

There was an idea in this that he had said, and the light of it led off

his fancy. It was some time before he returned to the attack.

"Neighbours gossip a good deal. O' course you know that."

"I never listen to them," said Dahlia, who now felt bare at any instant

for the stab she saw coming.

"No, not in London; but country's different, and a man hearing of his

child 'it's very odd!' and 'keepin' away like that!' and 'what's become

of her?' and that sort of thing, he gets upset."

Dahlia swallowed in her throat, as in perfect quietude of spirit, and

pretended to see no meaning for herself in Anthony's words.

But she said, inadvertently, "Dear father!" and it gave Anthony his

opening.

"There it is. No doubt you're fond of him. You're fond o' th' old farmer,

who's your father. Then, why not make a entry into the village, and show

'em? I loves my father, says you. I can or I can't bring my husband, you

seems to say; but I'm come to see my old father. Will you go down

to-morrow wi' me?"

"Oh!" Dahlia recoiled and abandoned all defence in a moan: "I can't--I

can't!"

"There," said Anthony, "you can't. You confess you can't; and there's

reason for what's in your father's mind. And he hearin' neighbours'

gossip, and it comes to him by a sort of extractin'--'Where's her

husband?' bein' the question; and 'She ain't got one,' the answer--it's

nat'ral for him to leave the place. I never can tell him how you went

off, or who's the man, lucky or not. You went off sudden, on a morning,

after kissin' me at breakfast; and no more Dahly visible. And he

suspects--he more'n suspects. Farm's up for sale. Th' old farmer thinks

it's unbrotherly of me not to go and buy, and I can't make him see I

don't understand land: it's about like changeing sovereigns for lumps o'

clay, in my notions; and that ain't my taste. Long and the short

is--people down there at Wrexby and all round say you ain't married. He

ain't got a answer for 'em; it's cruel to hear, and crueller to think:

he's got no answer, poor old farmer! and he's obliged to go inter exile.

Farm's up for sale."

Anthony thumped with his foot conclusively.

"Say I'm not married!" said Dahlia, and a bad colour flushed her

countenance. "They say--I'm not married. I am--I am. It's false. It's

cruel of father to listen to them--wicked people! base--base people! I am

married, uncle. Tell father so, and don't let him sell the farm. Tell

him, I said I was married. I am. I'm respected. I have only a little

trouble, and I'm sure others have too. We all have. Tell father not to

leave. It breaks my heart. Oh! uncle, tell him that from me."

Dahlia gathered her shawl close, and set an irresolute hand upon her

bonnet strings, that moved as if it had forgotten its purpose. She could

say no more. She could only watch her uncle's face, to mark the effect of

what she had said.

Anthony nodded at vacancy. His eyebrows were up, and did not descend from

their elevation. "You see, your father wants assurances; he wants facts.

They're easy to give, if give 'em you can. Ah, there's a weddin' ring on

your finger, sure enough. Plain gold--and, Lord! how bony your fingers

ha' got, Dahly. If you are a sinner, you're a bony one now, and that

don't seem so bad to me. I don't accuse you, my dear. Perhaps I'd like to

see your husband's banker's book. But what your father hears, is--You've

gone wrong."

Dahlia smiled in a consummate simulation of scorn.

"And your father thinks that's true."

She smiled with an equal simulation of saddest pity.

"And he says this: 'Proof,' he says, 'proof's what I want, that she's an

honest woman.' He asks for you to clear yourself. He says, 'It's hard for

an old man'--these are his words 'it's hard for an old man to hear his

daughter called...'"

Anthony smacked his hand tight on his open mouth.

He was guiltless of any intended cruelty, and Dahlia's first impulse when

she had got her breath, was to soothe him. She took his hand. "Dear

father! poor father! Dear, dear father!" she kept saying.

"Rhoda don't think it," Anthony assured her.

"No?" and Dahlia's bosom exulted up to higher pain.

"Rhoda declares you are married. To hear that gal fight for you--there's

ne'er a one in Wrexby dares so much as hint a word within a mile of her."

"My Rhoda! my sister!" Dahlia gasped, and the tears came pouring down her

face.

In vain Anthony lifted her tea-cup and the muffin-plate to her for

consolation. His hushings and soothings were louder than her weeping.

Incapable of resisting such a protest of innocence, he said, "And I don't

think it, neither."

She pressed his fingers, and begged him to pay the people of the shop: at

which sign of her being probably moneyless, Anthony could not help

mumbling, "Though I can't make out about your husband, and why he lets ye

be cropped--that he can't help, may be--but lets ye go about dressed like

a mill'ner gal, and not afford cabs. Is he very poor?"

She bowed her head.

"Poor?"

"He is very poor."

"Is he, or ain't he, a gentleman?"

Dahlia seemed torn by a new anguish.

"I see," said Anthony. "He goes and persuades you he is, and you've been

and found out he's nothin' o' the sort--eh? That'd be a way of accounting

for your queerness, more or less. Was it that fellow that Wicklow gal saw

ye with?"

Dahlia signified vehemently, "No."

"Then, I've guessed right; he turns out not to be a gentleman--eh, Dahly?

Go on noddin', if ye like. Never mind the shop people; we're

well-conducted, and that's all they care for. I say, Dahly, he ain't a

gentleman? You speak out or nod your head. You thought you'd caught a

gentleman and 'taint the case. Gentlemen ain't caught so easy. They all

of 'em goes to school, and that makes 'em knowin'. Come; he ain't a

gentleman?"

Dahlia's voice issued, from a terrible inward conflict, like a voice of

the tombs. "No," she said.

"Then, will you show him to me? Let me have a look at him."

Pushed from misery to misery, she struggled within herself again, and

again in the same hollow manner said, "Yes."

"You will?"

"Yes."

"Seein's believin'. If you'll show him to me, or me to him..."

"Oh! don't talk of it." Dahlia struck her fingers in a tight lock.

"I only want to set eye on him, my gal. Whereabouts does he live?"

"Down--down a great--very great way in the West."

Anthony stared.

She replied to the look: "In the West of London--a long way down."

"That's where he is?"

"Yes."

"I thought--hum!" went the old man suspiciously. When am I to see him?

Some day?"

"Yes; some day."

"Didn't I say, Sunday?"

"Next Sunday?"--Dahlia gave a muffled cry.

"Yes, next Sunday. Day after to-morrow. And I'll write off to-morrow, and

ease th' old farmer's heart, and Rhoda 'll be proud for you. She don't

care about gentleman--or no gentleman. More do th' old farmer. It's let

us, live and die respectable, and not disgrace father nor mother.

Old-fashioned's best-fashioned about them things, I think. Come, you

bring him--your husband--to me on Sunday, if you object to my callin' on

you. Make up your mind to."

"Not next Sunday--the Sunday after," Dahlia pleaded. "He is not here

now."

"Where is he?" Anthony asked.

"He's in the country."

Anthony pounced on her, as he had done previously.

"You said to me he was abroad."

"In the country--abroad. Not--not in the great cities. I could not make

known your wishes to him."

She gave this cool explanation with her eyelids fluttering timorously,

and rose as she uttered it, but with faint and ill-supporting limbs, for

during the past hour she had gone through the sharpest trial of her life,

and had decided for the course of her life. Anthony was witless thereof,

and was mystified by his incapability of perceiving where and how he had

been deluded; but he had eaten all the muffin on the plate, and her

rising proclaimed that she had no intention of making him call for

another; which was satisfactory. He drank off her cup of tea at a gulp.

The waitress named the sum he was to pay, and receiving a meditative look

in return for her air of expectancy after the amount had been laid on the

table, at once accelerated their passage from the shop by opening the

door.

"If ever I did give pennies, I'd give 'em to you," said Anthony, when he

was out of her hearing. "Women beat men in guessing at a man by his face.

Says she--you're honourable--you're legal--but prodigal ain't your

portion. That's what she says, without the words, unless she's a reader.

Now, then, Dahly, my lass, you take my arm. Buckle to. We'll to the West.

Don't th' old farmer pronounce like 'toe' the West? We'll 'toe' the West.

I can afford to laugh at them big houses up there.

"Where's the foundation, if one of them's sound? Why, in the City.

"I'll take you by our governor's house. You know--you know--don't ye,

Dahly, know we been suspecting his nephew? 'cause we saw him with you at

the theatre.

"I didn't suspect. I knew he found you there by chance, somehow. And I

noticed your dress there. No wonder your husband's poor. He wanted to

make you cut a figure as one of the handsomes, and that's as ruinous as

cabs--ha! ha!"

Anthony laughed, but did not reveal what had struck him.

"Sir William Blancove's house is a first-rater. I've been in it. He lives

in the library. All the other rooms--enter 'em, and if 'taint like a sort

of, a social sepulchre! Dashed if he can get his son to live with him;

though they're friends, and his son'll get all the money, and go into

Parliament, and cut a shine, never fear.

"By the way, I've seen Robert, too. He called on me at the Bank. Asked

after you.

"'Seen her?' says he.

"'No,' I says.

"'Ever see Mr. Edward Blancove here?' he says.

"I told him, I'd heard say, Mr. Edward was Continentalling. And then

Robert goes off. His opinion is you ain't in England; 'cause a policeman

he spoke to can't find you nowhere.

"'Come," says I, 'let's keep our detectives to catch thieves, and not go

distracting of 'em about a parcel o' women.'

"He's awfully down about Rhoda. She might do worse than take him. I don't

think he's got a ounce of a chance now Religion's set in, though he's the

mildest big 'un I ever come across. I forgot to haul him over about what

he 'd got to say about Mr. Edward. I did remark, I thought--ain't I

right?--Mr. Algernon's not the man?--eh? How come you in the theatre with

him?"

Dahlia spoke huskily. "He saw me. He had seen me at home. It was an

accident."

"Exactly how I put it to Robert. And he agreed with me. There's sense in

that young man. Your husband wouldn't let you come to us there--eh?

because he...why was that?"

Dahlia had it on her lips to say it "Because he was poorer than I

thought;" but in the intensity of her torment, the wretchedness of this

lie, revolted her. "Oh! for God's sake, uncle, give me peace about that."

The old man murmured: "Ay, ay;" and thought it natural that she should

shun an allusion to the circumstance.

They crossed one of the bridges, and Dahlia stopped and said: "Kiss me,

uncle."

"I ain't ashamed," said Anthony.

This being over, she insisted on his not accompanying her farther.

Anthony made her pledge her word of honour as a married woman, to bring

her husband to the identical spot where they stood at three o'clock in

the afternoon of Sunday week. She promised it.

"I'll write home to th' old farmer--a penny," said Anthony, showing that

he had considered the outlay and was prepared for it.

"And uncle," she stipulated in turn, "they are not to see me yet. Very

soon; but not yet. Be true to me, and come alone, or it will be your

fault--I shall not appear. Now, mind. And beg them not to leave the farm.

It will kill father. Can you not," she said, in the faded sweetness of

her speech, "could you not buy it, and let father be your tenant, uncle?

He would pay you regularly."

Anthony turned a rough shoulder on her.

"Good-bye, Dahly. You be a good girl, and all 'll go right. Old farmer

talks about praying. If he didn't make it look so dark to a chap, I'd be

ready to fancy something in that. You try it. You try, Dahly. Say a bit

of a prayer to-night."

"I pray every night," Dahlia answered.

Her look of meek despair was hauntingly sad with Anthony on his way home.

He tracked her sorrowfulness to the want of money; and another of his

terrific vague struggles with the money-demon set in.