fail her. And when at last she entered, she was so deadly pale, Rhoda lost
all her nervousness in pity for her; she felt sure that she must be ill.

"Yes, that will do very nicely," Miss Merivale said, after giving the
typewritten programmes a cursory glance and pushing them from her. Her
eyes went back to Rhoda's face. She saw now that the fleeting glimpse she
had got of her on the staircase had somewhat deceived her. Rhoda was not
as pretty as she had thought. Her mouth was a little too wide, and her
nose had too blunt a tip for beauty. But it was a charming face,
nevertheless, full of heart-sunshine; and the dark brown, darkly-fringed
eyes would have redeemed a plainer face.

Miss Merivale remembered with a sharp pang how Lydia had written of her
dark-eyed girl. She spoke of her sister, after a moment or two.

"It has struck me that your father might have been related to her second
husband," she said. She had determined after leaving Acacia Road to
mention this as possible both to Rhoda and to Tom and Rose.

Many people knew that Lydia had been Mrs. Sampson when she died, though
Miss Merivale believed that she herself was the only person who was aware
that her child had been named Rhoda.

But she soon found that Rhoda knew very little of her father. She had
lived so long with the M'Alisters that she had come to identify herself
with them, and had never desired to learn more of her own people. She
could scarcely remember her father, and could not remember his Christian
name. "J. Sampson is written in my little Bible," she said. "It is the
only book I have which belonged to him. Our house was burnt down when I
was about two years old, and all his books and papers were burnt with it.