Harry flushed in the face a little. ‘You needn’t tell me all about it, Mrs Hawthorn,’ he said uneasily. ‘I’ve heard something about the matter already from the two Dupuys, and all I can say is, I never heard before such a foolish, ridiculous, nonsensical, cock-and-bull prejudice as the one they told me about, in the whole course of my precious existence. If it hadn’t been for Nora’s sake—I mean for Miss Dupuy’s’—and he checked himself suddenly—‘upon my word, I really think I should have knocked the fellow down in his uncle’s dining-room the very first moment he began to speak about it.’ ‘Mr Noel,’ Marian said, ‘I know how absurd it must seem to you, but you can’t imagine how much Edward and I have suffered about it since we’ve been in this island.’ ‘I can,’ Harry answered. ‘I can understand it easily. I had a specimen of it myself from those fellows at lunch this morning. I kept as calm as I could outwardly; but, by Jove, Mrs Hawthorn, it made my blood boil over within me to hear the way they spoke of your husband.—Upon my honour, if it weren’t for—for Miss Dupuy,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘I wouldn’t stop now a single night to accept that man’s hospitality after the way he spoke about you.’ ‘No, no; do stop,’ Marian answered simply. ‘We want you so much to marry Nora; and we want to save her from that horrid man her father has chosen for her.’ And then they began unburdening their hearts to Harry Noel with the long arrears of twelve months’ continuous confidences. It was such a relief to get a little fresh external sympathy, to be able to talk about it all to somebody just come from England, and entirely free from the taint of West Indian prejudice. They told Harry everything, without reserve; and Harry listened, growing more and more indignant every minute, to the long story of petty slights and undeserved insults. At last he could restrain his wrath no longer. ‘It’s preposterous,’ he cried, walking up and down the piazza angrily, by way of giving vent to his suppressed emotion; ‘it’s abominable! it’s outrageous! it’s not to be borne with! The idea of these people, these hole-and-corner nobodies, these miserable, stupid, ignorant noodles, with no more education or manners than an English ploughboy—O yes, my dear fellow, I know what they are—I’ve seen them in Barbadoes—setting themselves up to be better than you are—there, upon my word I’ve really no patience with it. I shall flog some of them soundly, some day, before I’ve done with them; I know I shall. I can’t avoid it. But what on earth can have induced you to stop here, my dear Teddy, when you might have gone back again comfortably to England, and have mixed properly in the sort of society you’re naturally fitted for?’