Franks closed with a slap the great leathern flanks of his account-book, and sat a moment burying his head in his arms. Then he suddenly rose and stood before the young girl. “Mr. Fenton’s your cousin, Miss, you say, eh? Well, then, let me tell you that your cousin’s a swindler! I can prove it to you on those books! Nice books they are! Where is my money, thirty thousand dollars that I put into this d——d humbug of a business? What is there to show for it? I have been made a fool of,—as if I wasn’t fool enough already.” The tears stood in his eyes, he stamped with the bitterness of his spite; and then, thrusting his hat on his head and giving Nora’s amazement no time to reply, he darted out of the door and went up the alley. Nora saw him from the window, looking up and down the street. Suddenly, while he stood and while she looked, George came up. Mr. Franks’s fury seemed suddenly to evaporate; he received his companion’s hand-shake and nodded toward the office, as if to tell of Nora’s being there; while, to her surprise, George hereupon, without looking toward the window, turned back into the street. In a few minutes, however, he reappeared alone, and in another moment he stood before her. “Well!” he cried: “here you are, then!” “George,” she said, “I have taken you at your word.” “My word? O yes!” cried George, bravely. She saw that he was changed, and not for the better. He looked older, he was better dressed and more prosperous; but as Nora looked at him, she felt that she had asked too much of her imagination. He eyed her from head to foot, and in a moment he had noted her simple dress and her pale face. “What on earth has happened?” he asked, closing the door with a kick. Nora hesitated, feeling that, with words, tears might come. “You are sick,” he said, “or you are going to be sick.” This horrible idea helped her to recall her self-control. “I have left Mr. Lawrence,” she said. “So I see!” said George, wavering between relish and disapproval. When, a few moments before, his partner had told him that a young lady was in the office, calling herself his cousin, he had straightway placed himself on his guard. The case was delicate; so that, instead of immediately advancing, he had retreated behind a green baize door twenty yards off, had “taken something,” and briskly meditated. She had taken him at his word; he knew that before she told him. But confound his word if it came to this! It had been meant, not as an invitation to put herself under his care, but as a kind of speculative “feeler.” Fenton, however, had a native sympathy with positive measures; and he felt, moreover, the instinct to angle in Nora’s troubled waters. “What’s the matter now?” he asked. “Have you quarrelled?” “Don’t call it a quarrel, George! He is as kind, he is kinder than ever,” Nora cried. “But what do you think? He has asked me to marry him.” “Eh, my dear, I told you he would.”