But when she looked up and saw his countenance so pale, so earnest, without one trace of anger or impatience, or any feeling save profoundest pity, and sweetness, and sorrow, her heart melted. The right chord was touched. She could not be moved by compassion for herself, but she was penetrated by sorrow for him. In an impulse of pitying sympathy she exclaimed, "Oh, don't be so sorry for me, Mr. Powell! I will try! I will do what you say, if----" The door opened, and her father stood in the room. Rhoda sprang from her knees, rushed past him, and out at the open door. "Man, man, what have you done?" cried Powell, wringing his hands. Then he sat down and hid his face. Jonathan Maxfield stood looking at him with a heavy frown. "We must have no more o' this," he said harshly. CHAPTER X. The time which elapsed between Rhoda's first visit to Minnie Bodkin and the beginning of February--February, which was to carry Algernon Errington away to the great metropolis--was a vexed and stormy one for the Maxfield household. Jonathan Maxfield had come to a downright quarrel with the preacher--or to something as near to a quarrel as can be attained, where the violence and vituperation are all on one side--and had ordered Powell out of his house. This was a serious step, and was sure to be searchingly canvassed. Maxfield absented himself from the next class-meeting on the plea of ill-health. There was a general knowledge in the class and throughout the Society that there had been a breach, and many members began to take sides rather warmly. Maxfield was not a personally popular man, but he had considerable influence amongst his fellow Wesleyans; the influence of wealth, and a strong will, and the long habit of being a leading personage. David Powell, on the other hand, was not heartily liked by many of the congregation. The Whitford Methodists had slid into a sleepy, comfortable state of mind in their obscure little corner. They acquired no new members, and lost no old ones. Even the well-devised machinery of Methodism, so calculated to enforce movement and quicken attention, had grown somewhat rusty in Whitford. Frequent change of preachers is a powerful spur to sluggish hearers; but even this--among the fundamental peculiarities of Methodism--was very seldom applied to the Whitfordians. Circumstances, and their own apathy, had brought it to pass that two elderly preachers--steady, jog-trot old roadsters--had alternately succeeded each other in exhorting and preaching to this quiet flock for several years. There was, besides, Nick Green, foreman to Mr. Gladwish, the shoemaker, who enjoyed the rank of local preacher for a time, but who finally seceded from the main body, and drew with him half-a-dozen or so of the more zealous or excitable worshippers, who subscribed to hire a room over a corn-dealer's storehouse in Lady Lane, and by the stentorian vehemence of this Sunday devotion there speedily acquired the title of Ranters.