"Thank goodness that is knocked on the head!" Miles said, rising triumphantly to his feet. "I swear to you, the bare possibility makes me feel positively faint. We all know what German officers are like—bullying drinkers and gamblers——"
Nora turned and looked at him. There was something very like hatred in her dangerously bright eyes.
"I forbid you to speak like that of a class to which my future husband belongs!" she said. "Besides what you said being nonsense, it is also cowardly to attack where no chance is given to defend. As to my engagement"—she turned again to her father, and her voice grew calm and firm—"whether you give your consent or not makes no real difference. In a short time I shall be of age, and then I shall marry Wolff. We can afford to wait, if it must be."
"Nora!" The Rev. John recovered his breath with difficulty. "How can you—how dare you speak to me like that? Have you forgotten that I am your father—that——"
"I have not forgotten anything," Nora interrupted, in the same steady accents, "but it would be hypocritical of me to pretend a submission which I do not feel and which I should consider disloyal. Hitherto my duty has been towards you—it is now due to the man whom I love above every other earthly consideration. It does not matter in the least to me that Wolff is a foreigner. If he were a Hottentot it would make no difference."
Neither the Rev. John nor his son found any immediate answer. They looked at the proud, determined face, and perhaps in various degrees of distinctness each realised that Nora the child was a creature of the past, and that this was a woman who stood before them, armed and invulnerable in the strength of her awakened passion.
The Rev. John, completely thrown out of his concept by this unexpected revelation, looked at his wife with the weak appeal of a blusterer who suddenly discovers that he has blustered in vain. Mrs. Ingestre saw the look—possibly she had been waiting for it.
"I think that, if all Nora says is true, we have no right to interfere," she said quietly, "and the best thing we can do is to ask Captain von Arnim to come and see us. What do you say, Nora?"
Nora's whole face lit up, but she said nothing, only looked at her father and waited. Had she burst out into a storm of girlish delight and gratitude, the Rev. John might have plucked up courage and held his ground, but that steady self-repression indicated a strength of purpose of which he himself was incapable. He shrugged his shoulders.
"Since my authority is denied in my own house, there is no object in appealing to me," he said peevishly. "Do what you like—only, in the future remember that I warned you. You have taken your life into your own hands, Nora. I can no longer hold myself responsible."