‘Oh, you may laugh if you like,’ Tom Dupuy replied evasively, at once assuming the defensive, as boors always do by instinct under similar circumstances. ‘I know the ways of you girls that have been brought up at highfalutin’ schools over in England. You think West Indian gentlemen aren’t good enough for you, and you go running after cavalry-officer fellows, or else after some confounded upstart woolly-headed mulatto or other, who come out from England. I know the ways of you. But you may laugh as you like. I see you don’t mean to listen to me now; but you’ll have to listen to me in the end; for Uncle Theodore and I have made up our minds about it, and what a Dupuy makes up his mind about, he generally sticks to, and there’s no turning him. So in the end, I know, Nora, you’ll have to marry me.’ ‘You seem to forget,’ Nora said haughtily, ‘that I too am a Dupuy, as much as you are.’ ‘Ah, but you’re only a woman, and that’s very different. I don’t mind a bit about your answering me _no_ to-day. It seems I’ve tapped the puncheon a hit too early; that’s all: leave the liquor alone, and it’ll mature of itself in time in its own cellar. Sooner or later, Nora, you see if you don’t marry me.’ ‘But, Tom,’ Nora cried, abashed into seriousness for a moment by his sudden outburst of native vulgarity, ‘this is really so unexpected and so ridiculous. We’re cousins, you know; I’ve never thought of you at all in any way except as a cousin. I didn’t mean to be rude to you; but your proposal and your way of putting it took me really so much by surprise.’ ‘Oh, if that’s all you mean,’ Tom Dupuy answered, somewhat mollified, ‘I don’t mind your laughing, no, not tuppence. All I mind is your saying _no_ so straight outright to me. If you want time to consider’—— ‘Never!’ Nora interrupted quickly in a sharp voice of unswerving firmness. ‘Never, Nora? Never? Why never?’ ‘Because, Tom, I don’t care for you; I can’t care for you; and I never will care for you. Is that plain enough?’ Tom stroked his chin and looked at her dubiously, as a man looks at an impatient horse of doubtful temper. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Nora, you’re a fine one, you are—a very fine one. I know what this means. I’ve seen it before lots of times. You want to marry some woolly-headed brown man. I heard you were awfully thick with some of those people on board the _Severn_. That’s what always comes of sending West Indian girls to be educated in England. You’ll have to marry me in the end, though, all the same, because of the property. But you just mark my words: if you don’t marry me, as sure as fate, you’ll finish with marrying a woolly-headed mulatto!’ Nora rose to her full height with offended dignity. ‘Tom Dupuy,’ she said angrily, ‘you insult me! Leave the house, sir, this minute, or I shall retire to my room. Get back to your sugar-canes and your centrifugals until you’ve learned better manners.’