‘And for dat reason,’ added Miss Euphemia with stately coldness, ‘none of de ladies in de brown society of Trinidad have been present at dis morning’s ceremony. De gentlemen went, but de ladies didn’t.’ ‘It seems to me,’ Dr Whitaker said, in a pained and humiliated tone, ‘that we oughtn’t to be making these absurd distinctions of minute hue between ourselves, but ought rather to be trying our best to break down the whole barrier of time-honoured prejudice by which the coloured race, as a race, is so surrounded.—Don’t you agree with me, Mr Hawthorn?’ ‘Pho!’ Miss Euphemia exclaimed, with evident disgust. ‘Just listen to Wilberforce! He has no proper pride in his family or in his colour. He would go and shake hands wit any vulgar, dirty, nigger woman, I believe, as black as de poker; his ideas are so common!—Wilberforce, I declare, I’s quite ashamed of you!’ Dr Whitaker played nervously with the knob of his walking-stick. ‘I feel sure, Euphemia,’ he said at last, ‘these petty discriminations between shade and shade are the true disgrace and ruin of our brown people. In despising one another, or boasting over one another, for our extra fraction or so of white blood, we are implicitly admitting in principle the claim of white people to look down upon all of us impartially as inferior creatures.—Don’t you think so, Mr Hawthorn?’ ‘I quite agree with you,’ Edward answered warmly. ‘The principle’s obvious.’ Dr Whitaker looked pleased and flattered. Edward stole a glance at Marian, and neither could resist a faint smile at Miss Euphemia’s prejudices of colour, in spite of their pressing doubts and preoccupations. And yet, they didn’t even then begin to perceive the true meaning of the situation. They had not long to wait, however, for before the Whitakers rose to take their departure, Thomas came in with a couple of cards to announce Mr Theodore Dupuy, and his nephew, Mr Tom Dupuy of Pimento Valley. The Whitakers went off shortly, Miss Euphemia especially in very high spirits, because Mrs Hawthorn had shaken hands in the most cordial manner with her, before the face of the two white men. Edward and Marian would fain have refused to see the Dupuys, as they hadn’t thought fit to bring even Nora with them; and at that last mysterious insult—a dagger to her heart—the tears came up irresistibly to poor wearied Marian’s swimming eyelids. But Thomas had brought the visitors in before the Whitakers rose to go, and so there was nothing left but to get through the interview somehow, with what grace they could manage to muster. ‘We had hoped to see Nora long before this,’ Edward Hawthorn said pointedly to Mr Dupuy—after a few preliminary polite inanities—half hoping thus to bring things at last to a positive crisis. ‘My wife and she were school-girls together, you know, and we saw so much of one another on the way out. We have been quite looking forward to her paying us a visit.’