Nora stood up; one could see that the colour kept coming and going in her cheeks; that she was trembling; that she seemed to be panting for breath. "I--I think you'd better go." The Countess went calmly on; the girl's agitation seemed to make the elder woman calmer, and more corrosive. "I am going when it suits me; I assure you I have no wish to stay a moment longer in this abode of misrepresentation than I am compelled to. But before I go I wish to appeal to your sense of decency, if you have any sense of decency----" "How--how dare you! how dare you speak to me like this!" "I say, if you have any sense of decency, to release him from the most unfortunate position in which your father's misrepresentations, and your own peculiar behaviour, have entangled him." "Has--has he sent you here?" "If you persist in putting such a question I shall understand that you have no sense of decency; surely any young woman with a spark of honour in her composition, must perceive that in such a situation the man would not be likely to send--that the initiative must come from her, not from him." "I simply wish to learn if Mr. Robert Spencer knows that you have come to me upon this errand." "He does not know; which gives you an opportunity to free him gracefully before the true state of affairs does come to his knowledge." "If he wishes to be what you call 'free,' do you suppose that for one moment I would stand in his way?" "It is not so much a question of what he wishes, as of what you wish. If you wish, though ever so slightly, to hold him to his bargain, I dare say he'll be held, even to the extent of making you his wife; though he will regret it ever afterwards, and will probably live to curse the day on which you first placed yourself in his path. Young men have married undesirable women, who were in no way fitted to be their wives, and who were thinking only of themselves, before to-day, and will again; I have seen examples of it in my own family, to my great sorrow. I intend, if I can, to save my son Robert from such a fate, whatever you may say or do; the purport of my presence here is merely to learn if you are, or are not, possessed of a shred of principle." "I cannot conceive why you talk to me like this; what makes you think yourself entitled to take up such an attitude towards me; what I have done which causes you to address me in such a strain."