This time there were neither exclamatory eyebrows nor smothered giggles, and Nora, forgetting that they had ever been, saw in Wolff's action the seal and charter of her happiness.
CHAPTER XII
NORA FORSAKES HER COUNTRY
Nora believed in unalloyed happiness. Any one with more experience would have known that unalloyed happiness, as such, does not exist. The moment when we feel ourselves supremely happy is the moment when we are most exposed to the rude shocks of fortune. We know it, and consequently our bliss is immediately overshadowed with the knowledge of its short duration.
When Mrs. Ingestre and Wolff had stood together hand in hand, as though in solemn compact of friendship and affection, Nora's heart had filled to overflowing; but already that same evening a dozen trifles, a dozen pin-pricks, came to prove to her that the storms and misadventures of the last weeks were by no means at an end. Her father who, to do him justice, never accused a fellow-creature until he was proved guilty, was none the less on the lookout for proofs of Wolff's unsuitability, and continued distressed and grave. If at any time the conversation became in the least animated, or showed a tendency to the mildest form of hilarity, he was at once on the spot with some painfully repressing commonplace. It was as though he were constantly murmuring, "Children, remember what has happened! This is not an occasion for unseemly mirth!" and in spite of all efforts the conversation drifted into a channel which would have been considered unnecessarily depressing at a funeral.
Miles aided and abetted his father after his own fashion. His asides to Nora were marked by pungent humour and sarcasm. Inquiries after Wolff's tailor, and whether it was the fashion in Germany to wear one's tie at "that angle," were varied with shocked appeals that "that fellow might be told to put his knife and fork together when he had finished eating, and not leave it sprawling about his plate like a yokel!"
Nora never retorted. She felt the uselessness of explaining that the Germans were different, but not on that account worse; but she felt like an enraged tigress who sees her cub attacked by brutal, clumsy hands. She did not see that Wolff, unaccustomed to such things, had struggled in vain with a refractory evening tie, nor that the cut of his coat was scarcely of the latest fashion. She saw first and foremost that he was a man and a gentleman, and her love and respect for him kindled in the same measure that her love for her father and brother diminished. There were moments during Wolff's fortnight visit when she came to hate both, so intensely did she resent their attitude towards her future husband. The Rev. John, thanks to Mrs. Ingestre, remained formal and polite to Wolff's face. Behind his back he displayed an all-damning charity.
"Of course, we must not judge a foreigner by our standards," he would say pathetically, "and I daresay he is well-meaning, but I wish, my poor child——"
He would then break off, and look out of the window with an expression full of the most moving pity and regret.
Miles, fortified with the knowledge of exams. passed and a dawning manhood, was not so reserved in his opinions.