‘Of course he will,’ Nora replied, drawing herself up and laughing quietly. ‘But I don’t care a bit, you know, for all his anger. I’m not going to keep away from a dear old darling like you, and a dear, good, kind fellow like Edward, all for nothing, just to please him. He may storm away as long as he has a mind to; but I tell you what, my dear, he shan’t prevent me.’
‘I don’t mind a bit about it now, Nora, since you’re come at last to me.’
‘Mind it, darling! I should think not! Why on earth should you mind it? It’s too preposterous! Why, Marian, whenever I think of it—though I’m a West Indian born myself, and dreadfully prejudiced, and all that wicked sort of thing, you know—it seems to me the most ridiculous nonsense I ever heard of. Just consider what kind of people these are out here in Trinidad, and what kind of people you and Edward are, and all your friends over in England! There’s my cousin, Tom Dupuy, now, for example; what a pretty sort of fellow he is, really. Even if I didn’t care a pin for you, I couldn’t give way to it; and as it is, I’m going to come here just as often as ever I please, and nobody shall stop me. Papa and Tom are always talking about the fighting Dupuys; but I can tell you they’ll find I’m one of the fighting Dupuys too, if they want to fight me about it.—Now, tell me, Marian, doesn’t it seem to you yourself the most ridiculous reversal of the natural order of things you ever heard of in all your life, that these people here should pretend to set themselves up as—as being in any way your equals, darling?’ And Nora laughed a merry little laugh of pure amusement, so contagious, that Edward and Marian joined in it too, for the first time almost since they came to that dreadful Trinidad.
Companionship and a fresh point of view lighten most things. Nora stopped with the two Hawthorns all that day till nearly dinnertime, talking and laughing with them much as usual after the first necessary explanations; and by five o’clock, Marian and Edward were positively ashamed themselves that they had ever made so much of what grew with thinking on it into so absurdly small and unimportant a matter. ‘Upon my word, Marian,’ Edward said, as Nora rode away gaily, unprotected—she positively wouldn’t allow him to accompany her homeward—‘I really begin to believe it would be better after all to stop in Trinidad and fight it out bravely as well as we’re able for just a year or two.’
‘I thought so from the first,’ Marian answered courageously; ‘and now that Nora has cheered us up a little, I think so a great deal more than ever.’
When Nora reached Orange Grove, Mr Dupuy stood, black as thunder, waiting to receive her in the piazza. Two negro men-servants were loitering about casually in the doorway.
‘Nora,’ he said, in a voice of stern displeasure, ‘have you been to visit these new nigger people?’
Nora glanced back at him defiantly and haughtily. ‘I have not,’ she answered with a steady stare. ‘I have been calling upon my very dear friends, the District Court Judge and Mrs Hawthorn, who are both our equals. I am not in the habit of associating with what you choose to call nigger people.’
Mr Dupuy’s face grew purple once more. He glanced round quickly at the two men-servants. ‘Go to your room, miss,’ he said with suppressed rage—‘go to your room, and stop there till I send for you!’
‘I was going there myself,’ Nora answered calmly, without moving a muscle. ‘I mean to remain there, and hold no communication with the rest of the family, as long as you choose to apply such unjust and untrue names to my dearest friends and oldest companions.—Rosina, come here, please! Have the kindness to bring me up some dinner to my own boudoir.’