"And Kitty is never to hear a word about it! I don't want to give her a good excuse, or what she might think a good excuse, for her flirtation with Waldberg. You might reverse your story on my behalf; for it seems to me that a poor young man is trying to poach on my preserves. You'd better give him and Kitty a little of the admonition you've been good enough to bestow on me!"
Through Nora's mind there had been running, since Lizzie's visit, that afternoon, some lines she had long ago learned by heart, in one of Macaulay's Lays. They were from "Virginia," and she just remembered snatches of them.
"Our very hearts that were so high sank down beneath your will;
Riches, and lands and power and state—ye have them;—keep them still;
But leave the poor Plebeian his single tie to life—
The sweet, sweet love of daughter, of sister, and of wife.
Spare us the inexpiable wrong, the unutterable shame,
That turns the coward's heart to steel—the sluggard's blood to flame
Lest, when our latest hope is fled, ye taste of our despair,
And learn by proof, in some wild hour, how much the wretched dare!"
But her cheek burned a little as she felt that it would be "casting pearls before swine" to appeal further to Harold Pomeroy's sensibilities, hardened—almost atrophied—as these were, by a life of unrestrained self-indulgence. A young man, who had never learned to consider the feelings of an animal, but regarded it merely as an instrument for his own amusement, who "went in" for pigeon-matches when he had the chance, and docked his horse's tail, and tortured him with a cruel check rein, without an atom of compunction for the creature's suffering, was not likely to be over-particular when he came to deal with human beings whom he also looked upon as an inferior order of beings at that. To Nora, he was a puzzle, and she gave him up in despair.
Yet the young man was, after all, a little impressed by her earnest appeal. "She really does seem to take an awful lot of trouble about other people!" he thought, wonderingly, as he walked homeward, after leaving Miss Blanchard at her brother's door. "I really believe she walked out all that way to-night, just to have the chance of giving me that lecture. Too bad I can't tell Kitty about it!" and he laughed a little over the adventure.
He never knew the real meaning of Miss Blanchard's unusual procedure. It had the effect, however, of preventing an act of violence which would have seriously imperilled the success of the strike and even of the labor movement in Minton, as well as what Mr. Harold Pomeroy would have thought of much more consequence,—his own preservation of a whole skin.
CHAPTER XXIII.
UNEXPECTED DENOUEMENTS.
That night, it happened that Roland Graeme, harassed by a natural anxiety as to the results of the strike, with which he well knew public opinion would be sure to connect his efforts after reform, felt unusually wakeful, and, fearing a sleepless night unless he took some means to quiet his nervous excitement, set out for a long walk after his evening's work had been completed. This was a favorite expedient of his for securing sleep when wakeful, and sometimes it succeeded.