‘And what were the reasons that made you so very anxious, then, to visit Trinidad?’ ‘Why, Mrs Hawthorn, how can you ask me? Wasn’t I naturally desirous of seeing you and Edward once more after a year’s absence?’ Marian coughed a little dry cough. ‘Friendship is a very powerfully attractive magnet, isn’t it, Edward?’ she said with an arch smile to her husband. ‘It was very good of Mr Noel to have thought of coming four thousand miles across the Atlantic just to visit you and me, dear—now, wasn’t it?’ ‘So very good,’ Edward answered, laughing, ‘that I should almost be inclined myself (as a lawyer) to suspect some other underlying motive.’ ‘Well, she _is_ a very dear little girl,’ Marian went on reflectively. ‘She is, certainly,’ her husband echoed. Harry laughed. ‘I see you’ve found me out,’ he answered, not altogether unpleased. ‘Well, yes, I may as well make a clean breast of it, Mrs Hawthorn. I’ve come across on purpose to ask her; and I won’t go back either, till I can take her with me. I’ve waited for twelve months, to make quite sure I knew my own heart and wasn’t mistaken about it. Every day, her image has remained there clearer and clearer than before, and I _will_ win her, or else stop here for ever.’ ‘When a man says that and really means it,’ Marian replied encouragingly, ‘I believe in the end he can always win the girl he has set his heart upon.’ ‘But I suppose you know,’ Edward interrupted, ‘that her father has already made up his mind that she’s to marry a cousin of hers at Pimento Valley, a planter in the island, and has announced the fact publicly to half Trinidad?’ ‘Not Mr Tom Dupuy?’ Harry cried in amazement. ‘Yes, Tom Dupuy—the very man. Then you’ve met him already?’ ‘He lunched with us to-day at Orange Grove!’ Harry answered, puckering his brow a little. ‘And her father actually wants her to marry that fellow! By Jove, what a desecration!’ ‘Then you don’t like what you’ve seen so far of Mr Tom?’ Marian asked with a smile. Harry rose and leaned against the piazza pillar with his hands behind him. ‘The man’s a cad,’ he answered briefly. ‘If we were in Piccadilly again,’ Edward Hawthorn said quietly, ‘I should say that was probably a piece of pure class prejudice, Noel; but as we are in Trinidad, and as I happen to know Mr Tom Dupuy by two or three pieces of personal adventure, I don’t mind telling you in strict confidence, I cordially agree with you.’ ‘Ah!’ Harry Noel cried with much amusement, clapping him heartily on his broad shoulder. ‘So coming to Trinidad has knocked some of that radical humbug and nonsense clean out of you, has it, Teddy? I knew it would, my dear fellow; I knew you’d get rid of it!’ ‘On the contrary, Mr Noel,’ Marian answered with quiet dignity, ‘I think it has really made us a great deal more confirmed in our own opinions than we were to begin with. We have suffered a great deal ourselves, you know, since we came to Trinidad.’