CHAPTER XIV


The two were together, and all preliminary difficulties had been cleared
for Robert to say what he had to say, in a manner to make the saying of
it well-nigh impossible. And yet silence might be misinterpreted by her.
He would have drawn her to his heart at one sign of tenderness. There
came none. The girl was frightfully torn with a great wound of shame.
She was the first to speak.

"Do you believe what father says of my sister?"

"That she--?" Robert swallowed the words. "No!" and he made a thunder
with his fist.

"No!" She drank up the word. "You do not? No! You know that Dahlia is
innocent?"

Rhoda was trembling with a look for the asseveration; her pale face eager
as a cry for life; but the answer did not come at once hotly as her
passion for it demanded. She grew rigid, murmuring faintly: "speak! Do
speak!"

His eyes fell away from hers. Sweet love would have wrought in him to
think as she thought, but she kept her heart closed from him, and he
stood sadly judicial, with a conscience of his own, that would not permit