“He has known me as a child,” she continued, heedless of his sarcasm. “I shall always be a child, for him.” “He will like that,” said Fenton. “He will like a child of twenty.” Nora, for an instant was lost in meditation. “As regards marriage,” she said at last, quietly, “I will do what Roger wishes.” Fenton lost patience. “Roger be hanged!” he cried. “You are not his slave. You must choose for yourself and act for yourself. You must obey your own heart. You don’t know what you are talking about. One of these days your heart will say its say. Then we shall see what becomes of Roger’s wishes! If he wants to make what he pleases of you, he should have taken you younger,—or older! Don’t tell me seriously that you can ever love (don’t play upon words: love, I mean, in the one sense that means anything!) such a solemn little fop as that! Don’t protest, my dear girl; I must have my say. I speak in your own interest; I speak, at any rate, from my own heart. I detest the man. I came here perfectly on the square, and he has treated me as if I weren’t fit to touch with tongs. I am poor, I have my way to make, I ain’t fashionable; but I’m an honest man, for all that, and as good as he, take me altogether. Why can’t he show me a moment’s frankness? Why can’t he take me by the hand, and say, ‘Come, young man, I’ve got capital, and you’ve got brains; let’s pull together a stroke?’ Does he think I want to steal his spoons or pick his pocket? Is that hospitality? It’s a poor kind.” This passionate outbreak, prompted in about equal measure by baffled ambition and wounded conceit, made sad havoc with Nora’s loyalty to her friend. Her sense of natural property in her cousin,—the instinct of free affection alternating more gratefully than she knew with the dim consciousness of measured dependence,—had become in her heart a sort of sweet excitement. It made her feel that Roger’s mistrust was cruel; it was doubly cruel that George should feel it. Two angry men, at any rate, were quarrelling about her, and she must avert an explosion. She promised herself to dismiss Fenton the next day. Of course, by the very fact of this concession, Roger lost ground with her, and George acquired the grace of the persecuted. Meanwhile, Roger’s jealous irritation came to a head. On the evening following the little scene I have narrated the young couple sat by the fire in the library; Fenton on a stool at his cousin’s feet holding, while Nora wound them on reels, the wools which were to be applied to the manufacture of those invidious slippers. Roger, after grimly watching their mutual amenities for some time over the cover of a book, unable to master his fierce discomposure, departed with a telltale stride. They heard him afterwards walking up and down the piazza, where he was appealing from his troubled nerves to the ordered quietude of the stars. “He hates me so,” said Fenton, “that I believe if I were to go out there he would draw a knife.”