Mr Dupuy drew himself up very stiffly, and answered in a tone of the chilliest order: ‘I don’t know to whom you can be alluding, sir, when you speak of “Nora;” but if you refer to my daughter, Miss Dupuy, I regret to say she is suffering just at present from—ur—a severe indisposition, which unfortunately prevents her from paying a call on Mrs Hawthorn.’ Edward coughed an angry little cough, which Marian saw at once meant a fixed determination to pursue the matter to the bitter end. ‘Miss Dupuy herself requested me to call her Nora,’ he said, ‘on our journey over, during which we naturally became very intimate, as she was put in charge of my wife at Southampton, by her aunt in England. If she had not done so, I should never have dreamt of addressing her, or speaking of her, by her Christian name. As she did do so, however, I shall take the liberty of continuing to call her by that name, until I receive a request to desist from her own lips. We have long been expecting a call, I repeat, Mr Dupuy, from your daughter Nora.’ ‘Sir!’ Mr Dupuy exclaimed angrily; the blood of the fighting Dupuys was boiling up now savagely within him. ‘We have been expecting her,’ Edward Hawthorn repeated firmly; ‘and I insist upon knowing the reason why you have not brought her with you.’ ‘I have already said, sir,’ Mr Dupuy answered, rising and growing purple in the face, ‘that my daughter is suffering from a severe indisposition.’ ‘And I refuse,’ Edward replied, in his sternest tone, rising also, ‘to accept that flimsy excuse—in short, to call it by its proper name, that transparent falsehood. If you do not tell me the true reason at once, much as I respect and like Miss Dupuy, I shall have to ask you, sir, to leave my house immediately.’ A light seemed to burst suddenly upon the passionate planter, which altered his face curiously, by gradual changes, from livid blue to bright scarlet. The corners of his mouth began to go up sideways in a solemnly ludicrous fashion: the crow’s-feet about his eyes first relaxed and then tightened deeply; his whole big body seemed to be inwardly shaken by a kind of suppressed impalpable laughter. ‘Why, Tom,’ he exclaimed, turning with a curious half-comical look to his wondering nephew, ‘do you know—upon my word—I really believe—no, it can’t be possible—but I really believe—they don’t even now know anything at all about it.’ ‘Explain yourself,’ Edward said sternly, placing himself between Mr Dupuy and the door, as if on purpose to bar the passage outward. ‘If you really don’t know about it,’ Mr Dupuy said slowly, with an unusual burst of generosity for him, ‘why, then, I admit, the insult to Miss Dupuy is—is—is less deliberately intentional than I at first sight imagined.—But no, no: you _must_ know all about it already. You can’t still remain in ignorance. It’s impossible, quite impossible.’ ‘Explain,’ Edward reiterated inexorably. ‘You compel me?’ ‘I compel you.’ ‘You’d better not; you won’t like it.’