“Yes, he’s here. But he don’t know where you are. Thank the Lord you left him! he’s a brute!” Nora would fain have learned more,—whether he was angry, whether he was suffering, whether he had asked to see her; but at these words she shut the door in her cousin’s face. She hardly dared think of what offered impertinence this outbreak of Fenton’s was the rebound. Her night’s rest brought little comfort. She wondered whether Roger had supposed George to be her appointed mediator, and asked herself whether it was not her duty to see him once again and bid him a respectfully personal farewell. It was a long time after she rose before she could bring herself to leave her room. She had a vague hope that if she delayed, her companions might have gone out. But in the dining-room, in spite of the late hour, she found George gallantly awaiting her. He had apparently had the discretion to dismiss Mrs. Paul to the background, and apologized for her absence by saying that she had breakfasted long since and had left the house. He seemed to have slept off his wrath and was full of brotherly _bonhomie_. “I suppose you will want to know about Roger,” he said, when they were seated at breakfast. “He had followed you directly, in spite of your hope that he wouldn’t; but it was not to beg you to come back. He counts on your repentance, and he expects you to break down and come to him on your knees, to beg his pardon and promise never to do it again. Pretty terms to marry a man on, for a woman of spirit! But he doesn’t know his woman, does he, Nora? Do you know what he intimated? indeed, he came right out with it. That you and I want to make a match! That you’re in love with me, Miss, and ran away to marry me. That we expected him to forgive us and endow us with a pile of money. But he’ll not forgive us,—not he! We may starve, we and our brats, before he looks at us. Much obliged! We shall thrive, for many a year, as brother and sister, sha’n’t we, Nora, and need neither his money nor his pardon?” In reply to this speech, Nora sat staring in pale amazement. “Roger thought,” she at last found words to say, “that it was to marry _you_ I refused him,—to marry _you_ I came to New York?” Fenton, with seven-and-twenty years of impudence at his back, had received in his day snubs and shocks of various shades of intensity; but he had never felt in his face so chilling a blast of reprobation as this cold disgust of Nora’s. We know that the scorn of a lovely woman makes cowards brave; it may do something towards making knaves honest men. “Upon my word, my dear,” he cried, “I am sorry I hurt your feelings. It may be offensive, but it is true.”