Page:Watch and Ward (Boston, Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1878).djvu/68

Rh with mankind. Roger would have liked to believe that he doubted his word, that there was a chance of his not being Nora's cousin, but a youth of an ardent swindling genius who had come into possession of a parcel of facts too provokingly pertinent to be wasted. He had evidently known the late Mr. Lambert,—the poor man must have had plenty of such friends; but was he, in truth, his wife's nephew? Had not this shadowy nepotism been excogitated over an unpaid hotel bill? So Roger fretfully meditated, but generally with no great gain of ground. He inclined, on the whole, to believe the young man's pretensions were valid, and to reserve his pugnacity for the use he might possibly make of them. Of course Fenton had not come down to spend a stupid week in the country out of cousinly affection. Nora was but the means; Roger's presumptive wealth and bounty were the end. "He comes to make love to his cousin, and marry her if he can. I, who have done so much, will of course do more; settle an income directly on the bride, make my will in her favor, and die at my earliest convenience! How furious he must be," Roger continued to meditate, "to find me so young and hearty! How furious he would be if he knew a little more!" This line of argument was justified in a manner by the frankness of Fenton's intimation that he was incapable of any other relation to a fact than a desire to turn it to pecuniary account. Roger was uneasy, yet he took a certain comfort in the belief that, thanks to his early lessons, Nora could be trusted to confine her cousin to the limits of cousinship. In whatever he might have failed, he had certainly taught her to know a gentleman. Cousins are born, not made;