Page:Watch and Ward (Boston, Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1878).djvu/207

204 an hour later he knocked at her door; quite too loudly, she thought, for good taste. When she opened it, he stood there, excited, angry, ill-disposed. "I am sorry you are ill," he said; "but a night's rest will put you right. I have seen Roger."

"Roger! is he here?"

"Yes, he 's here. But he don't know where you are. Thank the Lord you left him! he 's a brute!" Nora would fain have learned more,—whether he was angry, whether he was suffering, whether he had asked to see her; but at these words she shut the door in her cousin's face. She hardly dared think of what offered impertinence this outbreak of Fenton's was the rebound. Her night's rest brought little comfort. She wondered whether Roger had supposed George to be her appointed mediator, and asked herself whether it was not her duty to see him once again and bid him a respectfully personal farewell. It was a long time after she rose before she could bring herself to leave her room. She had a vague hope that if she delayed, her companions might have gone out. But in the dining-room, in spite of the late hour, she found George gallantly awaiting her. He had apparently had the discretion to dismiss Mrs. Paul to the background, and apologized for her absence by saying that she had breakfasted long since and had left the house. He seemed to have slept off his wrath and was full of brotherly bonhomie. "I suppose you will want to know about Roger," he said, when they were seated at breakfast. "He had followed you directly, in spite of your hope that he would n't; but it was not to beg you to come back. He counts on your repentance, and he