"They don't mind," Nora put in sharply.
"It wouldn't make much difference if they did. And you needn't take up the cudgels like that! You grumbled enough that time Wolff said you couldn't have a new dress for the Hulsons' ball!"
"He gave it me," she retorted, in the same tone of repressed irritation.
"Yes; after you had worried enough. But I doubt very much if you would have got it if I hadn't been there to back you up. And the insolence of those fellows! He as good as called Arnold and me a pack of cowards because we wouldn't have anything to do with their idiotic duelling. As though we didn't know what a farce it all was! Whew! I am glad we are both well out of it, and I wish to goodness we could have given them a lesson they would not have forgotten in a hurry."
"A bully is always a coward," the Rev. John said sententiously. "I have always heard those Prussians were terrible bullies."
"I should think they are!" Miles agreed. "To hear my dear brother-in-law talk, one would have supposed that I was a raw recruit, or some inferior beast. I held my tongue for Nora's sake, but I tell you, there were moments——" He clenched his fist significantly, and Nora broke into a short angry laugh. "You were always a model of diplomacy, Miles," she said. Her tone was contemptuous, but her brother chose to take her words literally, and the other two were too absorbed to notice her.
"And that," said the squire furiously, "is the people we have kow-towed to—a lot of swaggering braggarts who don't know what to do with themselves for conceit. This comes of all our rubbishy peace-loving notions! The world only gives us credit for being afraid!"
He went on explosively tirading, but Nora no longer listened. She was thinking of her mother's words and wondering if these then were the narrow-hearted fools and braggarts against whom she was to struggle. And in that moment the struggle began in her own heart. She went to the window and tried to shut her ears against all that was going on about her. She tried to understand herself and the strange, conflicting emotions which had come to life in the last few minutes. Everything that the squire and her brother had said goaded her to a hot retort. She felt herself quivering with indignation—because they were abusing a people she hated, the man whom she had deserted because she no longer loved him! She wanted to ratify every word they said; she told herself that she had the right to do so, that it was all true; and yet her whole spirit rose in arms against their attack. What was worse, she felt a vague antipathy for these three men. She thought the squire coarse and arrogant; his entry and his greeting to her had been rough and without the respect to which she was accustomed. And why could Miles do nothing without his hands in his pockets? Why, when he sat down, had he to be either nursing his leg or "slouching"? Why was her father so weak and fussy-looking? And then, to her horror, Wolff stood before her eyes. Was it a feeling of pride which crept over her, pride in his upright bearing and dignity? He had never been rough or rude to her. His courtesy to her and all women had been unvarying. She turned quickly away, trying to stop her own thoughts. The squire was standing in his favourite attitude, with his legs wide apart, still tirading impartially against the German people and the English Government, who refused to wipe them off the face of the earth. Miles had collapsed into the most comfortable arm-chair, his head thrown back, his hands plunged deep in his pockets. The Rev. John stood between them, a picture of helpless dejection. It seemed to Nora that they had each taken up the attitude in which she hated them most. Hated! It was the word her thoughts had uttered. It could not be recalled. If she hated them—why, then, she had lost everything: her husband, her people, her own nationality! Why, then, she was nothing, she belonged to no one, no link of love bound her to any living being. Only her mother was left—her mother and that one other being the knowledge of whose existence had come too late to save her.
In the same moment that her full misery broke upon Nora some one tapped at the door and, without awaiting an answer, a pale, terrified-looking servant rushed in.
"If you please, sir," she stammered, "will you come at once? The mistress is—asleep—and we cannot wake her——"