Norah was a model daughter, and he almost
loved her for the feebleness he had created
in her. But Colonel Lyndon was not prone
to love anything: and this, his nearest
approach, was but a poor imitation at the best.
Gregory, too, was a man who demanded
implicit obedience from a woman. With his
oriental temperament he had imbibed oriental
ideas, and could never reconcile himself
to the independence of Western women. But
he was of a widely different nature to the
colonel, even while seemingly at one with
him in the proper treatment and condition of
women. He wanted love together with
obedience: his slave must feel as well as act
according to his desires; and souls must yield
as well as breathe if he would be satisfied.
The colonel looked only for practical obedience;
Gregory, younger, more impassioned,
and in love, desired emotional sympathy as
well. Thus, while Norah's submissiveness
charmed him, her coldness and want of
demonstration often nearly maddened him; and
few men, perhaps, ever underwent greater
torture than Gregory had done since his
engagement with his cousin.

He often questioned her fiercely about her
love for him; and to-day the conversation
beneath the beech-tree led again over the old
ground.

"Of course, I love you," said Norah, in her
strange, timid way, not looking up, and
speaking without emphasis or intonation.

"Why don't you look as if you did, then?"
cried Gregory, impatiently.

"I cannot help my looks, cousin: they are
always against me. I look pale, but I am not
ill, and I believe I always look cross and
unhappy, but I am not either."

"No, no, not cross, Norah, but unhappy.
What makes you unhappy?" He spoke
quickly, bending his great black eyes eagerly
on her.

"I am not unhappy," said Norah, quietly.

"You are, Norah! you know you are!
Every look, every movement, the tones of
your voice, your gestures—everything tells
me that you are wretched, dejected, broken-hearted.
I see it. I see it. O heaven!
that face! and on the eve of our marriage!"
There was a certain deep vibration in the
tones of his voice which was always the
prelude to a fit of frenzy.

Norah, constitutionally afraid of passion,
began to tremble.

"There! there! see! I cannot speak to
you in the tenderest way—I cannot even
show you any love or care, without making
you tremble and shrink from me.
You cannot call this love. Norah! Why,
my very dog returns my caress, and my horse
knows my hand. These dumb creatures love
me, while you—you—you fear me, you shiver
with dread and disgust before me, you abhor
me, Norah!—you wish I was dead and swept
from your path for ever! I see it—I know
it—I feel it!"

He started up from the garden seat, and
began pacing the walk, and folding his arms
over his breast; but more as if he were a
modern Laocoön crushing a boa-constrictor,
than an ordinary English gentleman assuming
an ordinary English attitude.

"Please, cousin, sit down," said Norah,
timidly.

"O, this is torture!" he exclaimed, in a
voice of genuine anguish: then flinging
himself on his knees before her, he seized her
hands, and burst into such a wild strain of
despair and anguish that Norah felt almost
faint to hear him. Moreover, he had grasped
her so harshly, that, had she not been too
timid even for cowardice, she would have
screamed aloud. His nervous muscular
hands closing like a vice over those tiny
delicate fingers of hers, nearly crushed them.
Little frail Norah was no fit plaything for a
swarthy savage six feet high, and as powerful
as he was passionate. But now his despair
was so intense, and Norah felt in her own
soul that, though exaggerated, it was not
entirely groundless. She was too timid to
make an end of it herself. She could only
wait, trembling and terrified, until Gregory's
passion had burnt itself out, and he had
become calm by force of exhaustion. So she
sat still and silent; white and rigid like a
little marble statue.

At last the storm cleared off, and Gregory
tried to soothe her. She bore her cousin's
soothings passively, as she bore everything;
but her sole thought during the infliction
was, "When will this be over? O! when
will he go away?"

At last, passing through the shrubbery,
Norah saw a tall, great, spare military figure
coming towards them—a figure she never
remembered seeing with pleasure or gratitude
before.

"My father, cousin!" she said quietly, but
with a little sigh of relief.

Gregory had just time to start to his feet,
before Colonel Lyndon turned into the Long
Walk: for Gregory, half a savage, was almost
as much in awe of his uncle as Norah
herself.

With a stern, undeviating step, and a stern,
unchanging face, the Colonel came up to
them, and silently sat down on the other side
of Norah. No one spoke. Gregory was
occupied in regaining his self-possession, and
Norah waited, as she had been taught, until
her father should first address her.

"A beautiful day," said Colonel Lyndon,
after a time: speaking curtly and imperatively,
as if he were on parade giving orders,
and as if the weather were on the verge of
his displeasure. That was his way with
everything.

"Very," said Norah.

"Too close," muttered Gregory, wiping his
upper lip—that tell-tale upper lip—with the
Nubian blood seen so plainly in its thickened
lines and glowing red!