Nancy had started to her feet, when he said with such energy that he would not do it: but something arrested her. Whether the reasonableness of it, which was not likely, or the new force and vigour with which he spoke, or the pathos of the entreaty at the end, it would be difficult to say. But she was arrested, her attention caught, and the rush of her hasty blood restrained. After all, perhaps, there was something in what he said. It was not worth her while to fly from them--to avoid them as if she was afraid. But rather to show them her own superiority--to convince them that she was as good as they were, and had no occasion to fear them. This, perhaps, was scarcely the sentiment inculcated by Arthur’s speech; but rather the turn it took in the alembic of her own mind, in which a hundred crude ideas were fermenting and getting fused daily. She sat down again after a moment, when he had ceased speaking. Arthur, notwithstanding his appeal, had excited himself too much to care precisely what she was thinking, and even this gave a wholesome stimulus to the turn in the tide of her thoughts. He did not care, but he should be made to care--he should be proud of her--he should feel that those people who slighted her were slighting something above themselves. She would not yield so far as to say anything, to give her promise that she would endeavour to conciliate Mrs. Curtis. Not for her life; but what she said did not need to be any criterion of what she would do. She took up a book which happened to be on the table, and pretended to read it with an absolute absorption of interest which justified her silence; while he, on the other hand, having no certainty that he had moved her, but rather fearing the worst, kept pacing up and down between the window and the door, excited beyond the immediate question, having, for the first time, opened up the ultimate matter with himself. And when he once began to think of it, he could not shake off the idea. It was no question of expediency or possibility--a thing which ought to be done perhaps, yet might not. It seemed to him, thinking of it, that he must at once explain everything, and claim his forgiveness, and the reception of his bride. “I have done wrong--but it cannot be undone; nor is the wrong half so serious as you think.” This was what he must say. He had intended to write ever since he got to Paris, but had deferred it as an unpleasant business which might stand off from day to day. But now it appeared to him, all at once, that nothing was so important. Whatever else he did, he must reconcile himself with his father and mother, his own flesh and blood. If they would not, he must bear it; but nothing must be left undone on his part. This sudden conviction was brought upon him--was it by the sight of his relations--was it by Nancy’s unreasonable and absurd antipathy to them? He could not tell--but the fact that he could think of any sentiment on Nancy’s part as absurd and