Page:Watch and Ward (Boston, Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1878).djvu/87

84 "O you poor little fool!" roared Fenton's eyes.

Roger was delighted. At a single stroke he might redeem his incivility and reinstate himself in Nora's affections. He took out his pocket-book. "Let me help you. It was very stupid of me not to have guessed your embarrassment." And he counted out a dozen notes.

Nora stepped to her cousin's side and passed her hand through his arm. "Don't be proud," she murmured caressingly.

Roger's notes were new and crisp. Fenton looked hard at the opposite wall, but, explain it who can, he read their successive figures,—a fifty, four twenties, six tens. He could have howled.

"Come, don't be proud," repeated Roger, holding out this little bundle of wealth.

Two great passionate tears welled into the young man's eyes. The sight of Roger's sturdy sleekness, of the comfortable twinkle of patronage in his eye, was too much for him. "I shall not give you a chance to be proud," he said. "Take care! Your papers may go into the fire."

"O George!" murmured Nora; and her murmur seemed to him delicious.

He bent down his head, passed his arm round her shoulders, and kissed her on her forehead. "Good by, dearest Nora," he said.

Roger stood staring, with his proffered gift. "You decline?" he cried, almost defiantly.

"'Decline' is not the word. A man does not decline an insult."

Was Fenton, then, to have the best of it, and was his own very generosity to be turned against him? Blindly,