Harry Noel, when he received Mr Dupuy’s pressing invitation, was naturally charmed at the prospect of thus being quartered under the same roof with pretty little Nora. Had he known the whole circumstances of the case, indeed, his native good feeling would, of course, have prompted him to go to the Hawthorns’; but Edward had been restrained by a certain sense of false shame from writing the whole truth about this petty local race prejudice to his friend in England; and so Harry jumped at once at the idea of being so comfortably received into the very house of which he so greatly desired to become an inmate. ‘You’re very good, I’m sure,’ he answered in his off-hand manner to the old planter. ‘Upon my word, I never met anything in my life to equal your open-hearted West Indian hospitality. Wherever one goes, one’s uniformly met with open arms. I shall be delighted, Mr Dupuy, to put up at your place—Orange Grove, I think you call it—ah, exactly—if you’ll kindly permit me.—Here, you fellow, go down below, will you, and ask for my luggage.’ Edward Hawthorn was a minute or two too late. Harry came forward eagerly, in the old friendly fashion, to grasp his hand with a hard grip, but explained to him with a look, which Edward immediately understood, that Orange Grove succeeded in offering him superior attractions even to Mulberry. So the very next day found Nora and Harry Noel seated together at lunch at Mr Dupuy’s well-loaded table; while Tom Dupuy, who had actually stolen an hour or two from his beloved canes, dropped in casually to take stock of this new possible rival, as he half suspected the gay young Englishman would turn out to be. From the first moment that their eyes met, Tom Dupuy conceived an immediate dislike and distrust for Harry Noel. What did he want coming here to Trinidad? Tom wondered: a fine-spoken, stuck-up, easy-going, haw-haw Londoner, of the sort that your true-born colonist hates and detests with all the force of his good-hater’s nature. Harry irritated him immensely by his natural superiority: a man of Tom Dupuy’s type can forgive anything in any other man except higher intelligence and better breeding. Those are qualities for which he feels a profound contempt, not unmingled with hatred, envy, malice, and all uncharitableness. So, as soon as Nora had risen from the table and the men were left alone, West Indian fashion, to their afternoon cigar and cup of coffee, Tom Dupuy began to open fire at once on Harry about his precious coloured friends the Hawthorns at Mulberry.