Rhoda drew a long breath, and then suddenly found courage. Turning her blue eyes full upon him, she said, while the colour deepened in her cheeks and her lips quivered: “Yes, Sir Robert, I think you are.” Although he had invited her to be candid, this speech evidently took him by surprise. He stared at her apprehensively, and then said with the utmost meekness: “Will you tell me--to whom?” “I think,” stammered the girl, her breath coming fast, “that you are neglecting your duty to your wife.” This was direct indeed. He stopped short, made her stop too, and faced her roundly: “How?” said he. Rhoda knew that she must go on now, and she poured out all that was in her heart, without more ado. “I think,” she said, throwing out her words in little groups, with a strange, staccato stop after every few syllables, “that you ought to be with her more, not to let her go away without you, not to let her choose her own companions and friends. I think you ought to insist upon being her companion, her friend, yourself. Of course I know how hard it would be--that you don’t care for the same things or the same places. But since she won’t bend and give way, and do as she ought, I think you ought to do it all for her. You ought not to yield to her every caprice, to let her indulge every whim. If you go on running down one path while she is running down one that isn’t even parallel with yours, how can it end but in your finding yourselves some day, so far apart that--that you can never come together again?” It was plain speaking with a vengeance, and Rhoda would never have ventured upon it in cold blood. But when she was thus unexpectedly challenged by Sir Robert, she felt, honouring, respecting, loving him as she did, that there was nothing for her but to be daring, audacious, wholly, flagrantly honest, and to fling down thus before him her own views, without hesitation, without pause, and then, if necessary, ask for pardon. But there was no need for that. In Sir Robert’s face, as he listened to her, with head averted, tightly pressed lips, and eyes that seemed at last to open to look out upon the world around him as it was, and not as it ought to have been, there was a look which showed Rhoda that, however painful her words might be to utter and to hear, she had done right in speaking them. Like a succession of blows her sentences fell upon him, each helping to drive home to him the truth which he, good, kind-hearted, amiable man that he was, had so long been in danger of ignoring. He knew that there was no word of exaggeration in what she said, he was conscious that she was, on the whole, merciful to him. But her indictment was a severe one nevertheless, and at first he reeled under it. There was a long pause, during which poor Rhoda, recovering from the impulse of passion which had urged her on, became more and more timid and apologetic, until the light faded out of her eyes and the tears welled up to them.