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He Knew He Was Right

by Anthony Trollope · English · Gutenberg #5140 · 1,873,008 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: He Knew He Was Right

Author: Anthony Trollope


        
Release date: February 1, 2004 [eBook #5140]
                Most recently updated: April 16, 2011

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5140

Credits: E-text prepared by Andrew Turek and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D., and Delpine Lettau


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HE KNEW HE WAS RIGHT ***


E-text prepared by Andrew Turek and revised by
Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D., and Delpine Lettau



Transcriber's note:

      This novel was first published in serial form in 1868-1869,
      followed by a two-volume book version in 1869. Both were
      illustrated by Marcus Stone, and those illustrations can
      be seen in the HTML version of this e-text. See
      (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5140/pg5140-images.html)
      or
      (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5140/5140-h.zip)





HE KNEW HE WAS RIGHT

by

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

With Illustrations by Marcus Stone







CONTENTS

         I. SHEWING HOW WRATH BEGAN.
        II. COLONEL OSBORNE.
       III. LADY MILBOROUGH'S DINNER PARTY.
        IV. HUGH STANBURY.
         V. SHEWING HOW THE QUARREL PROGRESSED.
        VI. SHEWING HOW RECONCILIATION WAS MADE.
       VII. MISS JEMIMA STANBURY, OF EXETER.
      VIII. "I KNOW IT WILL DO."
        IX. SHEWING HOW THE QUARREL PROGRESSED AGAIN.
         X. HARD WORDS.
        XI. LADY MILBOROUGH AS AMBASSADOR.
       XII. MISS STANBURY'S GENEROSITY.
      XIII. THE HONOURABLE MR. GLASCOCK.
       XIV. THE CLOCK HOUSE AT NUNCOMBE PUTNEY.
        XV. WHAT THEY SAID ABOUT IT IN THE CLOSE.
       XVI. DARTMOOR.
      XVII. A GENTLEMAN COMES TO NUNCOMBE PUTNEY.
     XVIII. THE STANBURY CORRESPONDENCE.
       XIX. BOZZLE, THE EX-POLICEMAN.
        XX. SHEWING HOW COLONEL OSBORNE WENT TO COCKCHAFFINGTON.
       XXI. SHEWING HOW COLONEL OSBORNE WENT TO NUNCOMBE PUTNEY.
      XXII. SHEWING HOW MISS STANBURY BEHAVED TO HER TWO NIECES.
     XXIII. COLONEL OSBORNE AND MR. BOZZLE RETURN TO LONDON.
      XXIV. NIDDON PARK.
       XXV. HUGH STANBURY SMOKES HIS PIPE.
      XXVI. A THIRD PARTY IS SO OBJECTIONABLE.
     XXVII. MR. TREVELYAN'S LETTER TO HIS WIFE.
    XXVIII. GREAT TRIBULATION.
      XXIX. MR. AND MRS. OUTHOUSE.
       XXX. DOROTHY MAKES UP HER MIND.
      XXXI. MR. BROOKE BURGESS.
     XXXII. THE "FULL MOON" AT ST. DIDDULPH'S.
    XXXIII. HUGH STANBURY SMOKES ANOTHER PIPE.
     XXXIV. PRISCILLA'S WISDOM.
      XXXV. MR. GIBSON'S GOOD FORTUNE.
     XXXVI. MISS STANBURY'S WRATH.
    XXXVII. MONT CENIS.
   XXXVIII. VERDICT OF THE JURY--"MAD, MY LORD."
     XXXIX. MISS NORA ROWLEY IS MALTREATED.
        XL. "C. G."
       XLI. SHEWING WHAT TOOK PLACE AT ST. DIDDULPH'S.
      XLII. MISS STANBURY AND MR. GIBSON BECOME TWO.
     XLIII. LABURNUM COTTAGE.
      XLIV. BROOKE BURGESS TAKES LEAVE OF EXETER.
       XLV. TREVELYAN AT VENICE.
      XLVI. THE AMERICAN MINISTER.
     XLVII. ABOUT FISHING, AND NAVIGATION, AND HEAD-DRESSES.
    XLVIII. MR. GIBSON IS PUNISHED.
      XLIX. MR. BROOKE BURGESS AFTER SUPPER.
         L. CAMILLA TRIUMPHANT.
        LI. SHEWING WHAT HAPPENED DURING MISS STANBURY'S ILLNESS.
       LII. MR. OUTHOUSE COMPLAINS THAT IT'S HARD.
      LIII. HUGH STANBURY IS SHEWN TO BE NO CONJUROR.
       LIV. MR. GIBSON'S THREAT.
        LV. THE REPUBLICAN BROWNING.
       LVI. WITHERED GRASS.
      LVII. DOROTHY'S FATE.
     LVIII. DOROTHY AT HOME.
       LIX. MR. BOZZLE AT HOME.
        LX. ANOTHER STRUGGLE.
       LXI. PARKER'S HOTEL, MOWBRAY STREET.
      LXII. LADY ROWLEY MAKES AN ATTEMPT.
     LXIII. SIR MARMADUKE AT HOME.
      LXIV. SIR MARMADUKE AT HIS CLUB.
       LXV. MYSTERIOUS AGENCIES.
      LXVI. OF A QUARTER OF LAMB.
     LXVII. RIVER'S COTTAGE.
    LXVIII. MAJOR MAGRUDER'S COMMITTEE.
      LXIX. SIR MARMADUKE AT WILLESDEN.
       LXX. SHEWING WHAT NORA ROWLEY THOUGHT ABOUT CARRIAGES.
      LXXI. SHEWING WHAT HUGH STANBURY THOUGHT ABOUT THE DUTY OF MAN.
     LXXII. THE DELIVERY OF THE LAMB.
    LXXIII. DOROTHY RETURNS TO EXETER.
     LXXIV. THE LIONESS AROUSED.
      LXXV. THE ROWLEYS GO OVER THE ALPS.
     LXXVI. "WE SHALL BE SO POOR."
    LXXVII. THE FUTURE LADY PETERBOROUGH.
   LXXVIII. CASALUNGA.
     LXXIX. "I CAN SLEEP ON THE BOARDS."
      LXXX. "WILL THEY DESPISE HIM?"
     LXXXI. MR. GLASCOCK IS MASTER.
    LXXXII. MRS. FRENCH'S CARVING KNIFE.
   LXXXIII. BELLA VICTRIX.
    LXXXIV. SELF-SACRIFICE.
     LXXXV. THE BATHS OF LUCCA.
    LXXXVI. MR. GLASCOCK AS NURSE.
   LXXXVII. MR. GLASCOCK'S MARRIAGE COMPLETED.
  LXXXVIII. CROPPER AND BURGESS.
    LXXXIX. "I WOULDN'T DO IT, IF I WAS YOU."
        XC. LADY ROWLEY CONQUERED.
       XCI. FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING.
      XCII. TREVELYAN DISCOURSES ON LIFE.
     XCIII. "SAY THAT YOU FORGIVE ME."
      XCIV. A REAL CHRISTIAN.
       XCV. TREVELYAN BACK IN ENGLAND.
      XCVI. MONKHAMS.
     XCVII. MRS. BROOKE BURGESS.
    XCVIII. ACQUITTED.
      XCIX. CONCLUSION.



ILLUSTRATIONS

   SHEWING HOW WRATH BEGAN.                         Chapter I
   SHEWING HOW RECONCILIATION WAS MADE.             Chapter VI
   "I ONLY COME AS A MESSENGER."                    Chapter IX
   AUNT STANBURY AT DINNER WILL NOT SPEAK.          Chapter XII
   TO HAVE BEEN THE MOTHER OF A FUTURE PEER!        Chapter XIII
   NORA TRIES TO MAKE HERSELF BELIEVE.              Chapter XVI
   THE WOODEN-LEGGED POSTMAN OF NUNCOMBE PUTNEY.    Chapter XXI
   NIDDON PARK.                                     Chapter XXIV
   THAT THIRD PERSON WAS MR. BOZZLE.                Chapter XXVI
   DOROTHY MAKES UP HER MIND.                       Chapter XXX
   THE "FULL MOON" AT ST. DIDDULPH'S.               Chapter XXXII
   "I WONDER WHY PEOPLE MAKE THESE REPORTS."        Chapter XXXV
   "AM I TO GO?"                                    Chapter XXXIX
   AT ST. DIDDULPH'S.                               Chapter XLI
   BROOKE BURGESS TAKES HIS LEAVE.                  Chapter XLIV
   MISS STANBURY VISITS THE FRENCHES.               Chapter XLVIII
   THE WORLD WAS GOING ROUND WITH DOROTHY.          Chapter LI
   NORA'S LETTER.                                   Chapter LIII
   "BROOKE WANTS ME TO BE HIS WIFE."                Chapter LVII
   "PUT IT ON THE FIRE-BACK, BOZZLE."               Chapter LIX
   "AND WHY DOES HE COME HERE?"                     Chapter LXIII
   "YOU HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN MAMMA?"                   Chapter LXVII
   "BUT YOU MUST GIVE IT UP," SAID SIR MARMADUKE.   Chapter LXX
   "ONLY THE VAGARIES OF AN OLD WOMAN."             Chapter LXXIII
   THE RIVALS.                                      Chapter LXXVI
   "IT IS HARD TO SPEAK SOMETIMES."                 Chapter LXXIX
   CAMILLA'S WRATH.                                 Chapter LXXXII
   TREVELYAN AT CASALUNGA.                          Chapter LXXXIV
   BARTY BURGESS.                                   Chapter LXXXVIII
   "I MUST ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT I MET YOU THERE."   Chapter XC
   NORA'S VEIL.                                     Chapter XCV
   MONKHAMS.                                        Chapter XCVI




CHAPTER I.

SHEWING HOW WRATH BEGAN.


   [Illustration]

When Louis Trevelyan was twenty-four years old, he had all the world
before him where to choose; and, among other things, he chose to go
to the Mandarin Islands, and there fell in love with Emily Rowley,
the daughter of Sir Marmaduke, the governor. Sir Marmaduke Rowley,
at this period of his life, was a respectable middle-aged public
servant, in good repute, who had, however, as yet achieved for
himself neither an exalted position nor a large fortune. He had been
governor of many islands, and had never lacked employment; and now,
at the age of fifty, found himself at the Mandarins, with a salary
of L3,000 a year, living in a temperature at which 80 deg. in the shade
is considered to be cool, with eight daughters, and not a shilling
saved. A governor at the Mandarins who is social by nature and
hospitable on principle, cannot save money in the islands even on
L3,000 a year when he has eight daughters. And at the Mandarins,
though hospitality is a duty, the gentlemen who ate Sir Rowley's
dinners were not exactly the men whom he or Lady Rowley desired to
welcome to their bosoms as sons-in-law. Nor when Mr. Trevelyan came
that way, desirous of seeing everything in the somewhat indefinite
course of his travels, had Emily Rowley, the eldest of the flock,
then twenty years of age, seen as yet any Mandariner who exactly came
up to her fancy. And, as Louis Trevelyan was a remarkably handsome
young man, who was well connected, who had been ninth wrangler at
Cambridge, who had already published a volume of poems, and who
possessed L3,000 a year of his own, arising from various perfectly
secure investments, he was not forced to sigh long in vain. Indeed,
the Rowleys, one and all, felt that providence had been very good to
them in sending young Trevelyan on his travels in that direction, for
he seemed to be a very pearl among men. Both Sir Marmaduke and Lady
Rowley felt that there might be objections to such a marriage as that
proposed to them, raised by the Trevelyan family. Lady Rowley would
not have liked her daughter to go to England, to be received with
cold looks by strangers. But it soon appeared that there was no one
to make objections. Louis, the lover, had no living relative nearer
than cousins. His father, a barrister of repute, had died a widower,
and had left the money which he had made to an only child. The head
of the family was a first cousin who lived in Cornwall on a moderate
property,--a very good sort of stupid fellow, as Louis said, who
would be quite indifferent as to any marriage that his cousin might
make. No man could be more independent or more clearly justified in
pleasing himself than was this lover. And then he himself proposed
that the second daughter, Nora, should come and live with them in
London. What a lover to fall suddenly from the heavens into such a
dovecote!

"I haven't a penny-piece to give to either of them," said Sir Rowley.

"It is my idea that girls should not have fortunes," said Trevelyan.
"At any rate, I am quite sure that men should never look for money.
A man must be more comfortable, and, I think, is likely to be more
affectionate, when the money has belonged to himself."

Sir Rowley was a high-minded gentleman, who would have liked to have
handed over a few thousand pounds on giving up his daughters; but,
having no thousands of pounds to hand over, he could not but admire
the principles of his proposed son-in-law. As it was about time for
him to have his leave of absence, he and sundry of the girls went to
England with Mr. Trevelyan, and the wedding was celebrated in London
by the Rev. Oliphant Outhouse, of Saint Diddulph-in-the-East, who
had married Sir Rowley's sister. Then a small house was taken and
furnished in Curzon Street, Mayfair, and the Rowleys went back to the
seat of their government, leaving Nora, the second girl, in charge of
her elder sister.

The Rowleys had found, on reaching London, that they had lighted upon
a pearl indeed. Louis Trevelyan was a man of whom all people said
all good things. He might have been a fellow of his college had he
not been a man of fortune. He might already,--so Sir Rowley was
told,--have been in Parliament, had he not thought it to be wiser to
wait awhile. Indeed, he was very wise in many things. He had gone
out on his travels thus young,--not in search of excitement, to kill
beasts, or to encounter he knew not what novelty and amusement,--but
that he might see men and know the world. He had been on his travels
for more than a year when the winds blew him to the Mandarins. Oh,
how blessed were the winds! And, moreover, Sir Rowley found that his
son-in-law was well spoken of at the clubs by those who had known him
during his university career, as a man popular as well as wise, not
a book-worm, or a dry philosopher, or a prig. He could talk on all
subjects, was very generous, a man sure to be honoured and respected;
and then such a handsome, manly fellow, with short brown hair, a nose
divinely chiselled, an Apollo's mouth, six feet high, with shoulders
and legs and arms in proportion,--a pearl of pearls! Only, as Lady
Rowley was the first to find out, he liked to have his own way.

"But his way is such a good way," said Sir Marmaduke. "He will be
such a good guide for the girls!"

"But Emily likes her way too," said Lady Rowley.

Sir Marmaduke argued the matter no further, but thought, no doubt,
that such a husband as Louis Trevelyan was entitled to have his own
way. He probably had not observed his daughter's temper so accurately
as his wife had done. With eight of them coming up around him, how
should he have observed their tempers? At any rate, if there were
anything amiss with Emily's temper, it would be well that she should
find her master in such a husband as Louis Trevelyan.

For nearly two years the little household in Curzon Street went on
well, or if anything was the matter no one outside of the little
household was aware of it. And there was a baby, a boy, a young
Louis, and a baby in such a household is apt to make things go
sweetly.

The marriage had taken place in July, and after the wedding tour
there had been a winter and a spring in London; and then they passed
a month or two at the sea-side, after which the baby had been born.
And then there came another winter and another spring. Nora Rowley
was with them in London, and by this time Mr. Trevelyan had begun to
think that he should like to have his own way completely. His baby
was very nice, and his wife was clever, pretty, and attractive. Nora
was all that an unmarried sister should be. But,--but there had come
to be trouble and bitter words. Lady Rowley had been right when she
said that her daughter Emily also liked to have her own way.

"If I am suspected," said Mrs. Trevelyan to her sister one morning,
as they sat together in the little back drawing-room, "life will not
be worth having."

"How can you talk of being suspected, Emily?"

"What does he mean then by saying that he would rather not have
Colonel Osborne here? A man older than my own father, who has known
me since I was a baby!"

"He didn't mean anything of that kind, Emily. You know he did not,
and you should not say so. It would be too horrible to think of."

"It was a great deal too horrible to be spoken, I know. If he does
not beg my pardon, I shall,--I shall continue to live with him, of
course, as a sort of upper servant, because of baby. But he shall
know what I think and feel."

"If I were you I would forget it."

"How can I forget it? Nothing that I can do pleases him. He is civil
and kind to you because he is not your master; but you don't know
what things he says to me. Am I to tell Colonel Osborne not to come?
Heavens and earth! How should I ever hold up my head again if I were
driven to do that? He will be here to-day I have no doubt; and Louis
will sit there below in the library, and hear his step, and will not
come up."

"Tell Richard to say you are not at home."

"Yes; and everybody will understand why. And for what am I to deny
myself in that way to the best and oldest friend I have? If any such
orders are to be given, let him give them and then see what will come
of it."

Mrs. Trevelyan had described Colonel Osborne truly as far as words
went, in saying that he had known her since she was a baby, and that
he was an older man than her father. Colonel Osborne's age exceeded
her father's by about a month, and as he was now past fifty, he might
be considered perhaps, in that respect, to be a safe friend for a
young married woman. But he was in every respect a man very different
from Sir Marmaduke. Sir Marmaduke, blessed and at the same time
burdened as he was with a wife and eight daughters, and condemned as
he had been to pass a large portion of his life within the tropics,
had become at fifty what many people call quite a middle-aged man.
That is to say, he was one from whom the effervescence and elasticity
and salt of youth had altogether passed away. He was fat and slow,
thinking much of his wife and eight daughters, thinking much also of
his dinner. Now Colonel Osborne was a bachelor, with no burdens but
those imposed upon him by his position as a member of Parliament,--a
man of fortune to whom the world had been very easy. It was not
therefore said so decidedly of him as of Sir Marmaduke, that he
was a middle-aged man, although he had probably already lived more
than two-thirds of his life. And he was a good-looking man of his
age, bald indeed at the top of his head, and with a considerable
sprinkling of grey hair through his bushy beard; but upright in his
carriage, active, and quick in his step, who dressed well, and was
clearly determined to make the most he could of what remained to him
of the advantages of youth. Colonel Osborne was always so dressed
that no one ever observed the nature of his garments, being no doubt
well aware that no man after twenty-five can afford to call special
attention to his coat, his hat, his cravat, or his trousers; but
nevertheless the matter was one to which he paid much attention, and
he was by no means lax in ascertaining what his tailor did for him.
He always rode a pretty horse, and mounted his groom on one at any
rate as pretty. He was known to have an excellent stud down in the
shires, and had the reputation of going well with hounds. Poor Sir
Marmaduke could not have ridden a hunt to save either his government
or his credit. When, therefore, Mrs. Trevelyan declared to her sister
that Colonel Osborne was a man whom she was entitled to regard with
semi-parental feelings of veneration because he was older than her
father, she made a comparison which was more true in the letter than
in the spirit. And when she asserted that Colonel Osborne had known
her since she was a baby, she fell again into the same mistake.
Colonel Osborne had indeed known her when she was a baby, and had in
old days been the very intimate friend of her father; but of herself
he had seen little or nothing since those baby days, till he had met
her just as she was about to become Mrs. Trevelyan; and though it was
natural that so old a friend should come to her and congratulate her
and renew his friendship, nevertheless it was not true that he made
his appearance in her husband's house in the guise of the useful old
family friend, who gives silver cups to the children and kisses the
little girls for the sake of the old affection which he has borne for
the parents. We all know the appearance of that old gentleman, how
pleasant and dear a fellow he is, how welcome is his face within the
gate, how free he makes with our wine, generally abusing it, how he
tells our eldest daughter to light his candle for him, how he gave
silver cups when the girls were born, and now bestows tea-services as
they get married,--a most useful, safe, and charming fellow, not a
year younger-looking or more nimble than ourselves, without whom life
would be very blank. We all know that man; but such a man was not
Colonel Osborne in the house of Mr. Trevelyan's young bride.

Emily Rowley, when she was brought home from the Mandarin Islands
to be the wife of Louis Trevelyan, was a very handsome young woman,
tall, with a bust rather full for her age, with dark eyes--eyes that
looked to be dark because her eye-brows and eye-lashes were nearly
black, but which were in truth so varying in colour, that you could
not tell their hue. Her brown hair was very dark and very soft; and
the tint of her complexion was brown also, though the colour of her
cheeks was often so bright as to induce her enemies to say falsely of
her that she painted them. And she was very strong, as are some girls
who come from the tropics, and whom a tropical climate has suited.
She could sit on her horse the whole day long, and would never be
weary with dancing at the Government House balls. When Colonel
Osborne was introduced to her as the baby whom he had known, he
thought it would be very pleasant to be intimate with so pleasant a
friend,--meaning no harm indeed, as but few men do mean harm on such
occasions,--but still, not regarding the beautiful young woman whom
he had seen as one of a generation succeeding to that of his own, to
whom it would be his duty to make himself useful on account of the
old friendship which he bore to her father.

It was, moreover, well known in London,--though not known at all
to Mrs. Trevelyan,--that this ancient Lothario had before this
made himself troublesome in more than one family. He was fond of
intimacies with married ladies, and perhaps was not averse to the
excitement of marital hostility. It must be remembered, however, that
the hostility to which allusion is here made was not the hostility
of the pistol or the horsewhip,--nor, indeed, was it generally the
hostility of a word of spoken anger. A young husband may dislike
the too-friendly bearing of a friend, and may yet abstain from that
outrage on his own dignity and on his wife, which is conveyed by a
word of suspicion. Louis Trevelyan having taken a strong dislike to
Colonel Osborne, and having failed to make his wife understand that
this dislike should have induced her to throw cold water upon the
Colonel's friendship, had allowed himself to speak a word which
probably he would have willingly recalled as soon as spoken. But
words spoken cannot be recalled, and many a man and many a woman who
has spoken a word at once regretted, are far too proud to express
that regret. So it was with Louis Trevelyan when he told his wife
that he did not wish Colonel Osborne to come so often to his house.
He had said it with a flashing eye and an angry tone; and though she
had seen the eye flash before, and was familiar with the angry tone,
she had never before felt herself to be insulted by her husband. As
soon as the word had been spoken Trevelyan had left the room, and had
gone down among his books. But when he was alone, he knew that he
had insulted his wife. He was quite aware that he should have spoken
to her gently, and have explained to her, with his arm round her
waist, that it would be better for both of them that this friend's
friendship should be limited. There is so much in a turn of the eye
and in the tone given to a word when such things have to be said,--so
much more of importance than in the words themselves. As Trevelyan
thought of this, and remembered what his manner had been, how much
anger he had expressed, how far he had been from having his arm round
his wife's waist as he spoke to her, he almost made up his mind to
go up-stairs and to apologise. But he was one to whose nature the
giving of any apology was repulsive. He could not bear to have to own
himself to have been wrong. And then his wife had been most provoking
in her manner to him. When he had endeavoured to make her understand
his wishes by certain disparaging hints which he had thrown out as to
Colonel Osborne, saying that he was a dangerous man, one who did not
show his true character, a snake in the grass, a man without settled
principles, and such like, his wife had taken up the cudgels for her
friend, and had openly declared that she did not believe a word of
the things that were alleged against him. "But still, for all that,
it is true," the husband had said. "I have no doubt that you think
so," the wife had replied. "Men do believe evil of one another, very
often. But you must excuse me if I say that I think you are mistaken.
I have known Colonel Osborne much longer than you have done, Louis,
and papa has always had the highest opinion of him." Then Mr.
Trevelyan had become very angry, and had spoken those words which
he could not recall. As he walked to and fro among his books
down-stairs, he almost felt that he ought to beg his wife's pardon.
He knew his wife well enough to be sure that she would not forgive
him unless he did so. He would do so, he thought, but not exactly
now. A moment would come in which it might be easier than at present.
He would be able to assure her when he went up to dress for dinner,
that he had meant no harm. They were going out to dine at the house
of a lady of rank, the Countess Dowager of Milborough, a lady
standing high in the world's esteem, of whom his wife stood a little
in awe; and he calculated that this feeling, if it did not make his
task easy would yet take from it some of its difficulty. Emily would
be, not exactly cowed, by the prospect of Lady Milborough's dinner,
but perhaps a little reduced from her usual self-assertion. He would
say a word to her when he was dressing, assuring her that he had not
intended to animadvert in the slightest degree upon her own conduct.


   [Illustration: Shewing how wrath began.]


Luncheon was served, and the two ladies went down into the
dining-room. Mr. Trevelyan did not appear. There was nothing in
itself singular in that, as he was accustomed to declare that
luncheon was a meal too much in the day, and that a man should eat
nothing beyond a biscuit between breakfast and dinner. But he would
sometimes come in and eat his biscuit standing on the hearth-rug,
and drink what he would call half a quarter of a glass of sherry. It
would probably have been well that he should have done so now; but
he remained in his library behind the dining-room, and when his wife
and his sister-in-law had gone up-stairs, he became anxious to learn
whether Colonel Osborne would come on that day, and, if so, whether
he would be admitted. He had been told that Nora Rowley was to be
called for by another lady, a Mrs. Fairfax, to go out and look at
pictures. His wife had declined to join Mrs. Fairfax's party, having
declared that, as she was going to dine out, she would not leave
her baby all the afternoon. Louis Trevelyan, though he strove to
apply his mind to an article which he was writing for a scientific
quarterly review, could not keep himself from anxiety as to this
expected visit from Colonel Osborne. He was not in the least jealous.
He swore to himself fifty times over that any such feeling on his
part would be a monstrous injury to his wife. Nevertheless he knew
that he would be gratified if on that special day Colonel Osborne
should be informed that his wife was not at home. Whether the man
were admitted or not, he would beg his wife's pardon; but he could,
he thought, do so with more thorough efficacy and affection if she
should have shown a disposition to comply with his wishes on this
day.

"Do say a word to Richard," said Nora to her sister in a whisper as
they were going up-stairs after luncheon.

"I will not," said Mrs. Trevelyan.

"May I do it?"

"Certainly not, Nora. I should feel that I were demeaning myself were
I to allow what was said to me in such a manner to have any effect
upon me."

"I think you are so wrong, Emily. I do indeed."

"You must allow me to be the best judge what to do in my own house,
and with my own husband."

"Oh, yes; certainly."

"If he gives me any command I will obey it. Or if he had expressed
his wish in any other words I would have complied. But to be told
that he would rather not have Colonel Osborne here! If you had seen
his manner and heard his words, you would not have been surprised
that I should feel it as I do. It was a gross insult,--and it was not
the first."

As she spoke the fire flashed from her eye, and the bright red colour
of her cheek told a tale of her anger which her sister well knew how
to read. Then there was a knock at the door, and they both knew that
Colonel Osborne was there. Louis Trevelyan, sitting in his library,
also knew of whose coming that knock gave notice.




CHAPTER II.

COLONEL OSBORNE.


It has been already said that Colonel Osborne was a bachelor, a man
of fortune, a member of Parliament, and one who carried his half
century of years lightly on his shoulders. It will only be necessary
to say further of him that he was a man popular with those among
whom he lived, as a politician, as a sportsman, and as a member
of society. He could speak well in the House, though he spoke but
seldom, and it was generally thought of him that he might have been
something considerable, had it not suited him better to be nothing at
all. He was supposed to be a Conservative, and generally voted with
the Conservative party; but he could boast that he was altogether
independent, and on an occasion would take the trouble of proving
himself to be so. He was in possession of excellent health; had all
that the world could give; was fond of books, pictures, architecture,
and china; had various tastes, and the means of indulging them, and
was one of those few men on whom it seems that every pleasant thing
has been lavished. There was that little slur on his good name to
which allusion has been made; but those who knew Colonel Osborne best
were generally willing to declare that no harm was intended, and
that the evils which arose were always to be attributed to mistaken
jealousy. He had, his friends said, a free and pleasant way with
women which women like,--a pleasant way of free friendship; that
there was no more, and that the harm which had come had always
come from false suspicion. But there were certain ladies about the
town,--good, motherly, discreet women,--who hated the name of Colonel
Osborne, who would not admit him within their doors, who would not
bow to him in other people's houses, who would always speak of him as
a serpent, a hyena, a kite, or a shark. Old Lady Milborough was one
of these, a daughter of a friend of hers having once admitted the
serpent to her intimacy.

"Augustus Poole was wise enough to take his wife abroad," said old
Lady Milborough, discussing about this time with a gossip of hers
the danger of Mrs. Trevelyan's position, "or there would have been a
break-up there; and yet there never was a better girl in the world
than Jane Marriott."

The reader may be quite certain that Colonel Osborne had no
premeditated evil intention when he allowed himself to become the
intimate friend of his old friend's daughter. There was nothing
fiendish in his nature. He was not a man who boasted of his
conquests. He was not a ravening wolf going about seeking whom he
might devour, and determined to devour whatever might come in his
way; but he liked that which was pleasant; and of all pleasant things
the company of a pretty clever woman was to him the pleasantest. At
this exact period of his life no woman was so pleasantly pretty to
him, and so agreeably clever, as Mrs. Trevelyan.

When Louis Trevelyan heard on the stairs the step of the dangerous
man, he got up from his chair as though he too would have gone into
the drawing-room, and it would perhaps have been well had he done so.
Could he have done this, and kept his temper with the man, he would
have paved the way for an easy reconciliation with his wife. But when
he reached the door of his room, and had placed his hand upon the
lock, he withdrew again. He told himself he withdrew because he would
not allow himself to be jealous; but in truth he did so because he
knew he could not have brought himself to be civil to the man he
hated. So he sat down, and took up his pen, and began to cudgel
his brain about the scientific article. He was intent on raising a
dispute with some learned pundit about the waves of sound,--but he
could think of no other sound than that of the light steps of Colonel
Osborne as he had gone up-stairs. He put down his pen, and clenched
his fist, and allowed a black frown to settle upon his brow. What
right had the man to come there, unasked by him, and disturb his
happiness? And then this poor wife of his, who knew so little of
English life, who had lived in the Mandarin Islands almost since she
had been a child, who had lived in one colony or another almost since
she had been born, who had had so few of those advantages for which
he should have looked in marrying a wife, how was the poor girl to
conduct herself properly when subjected to the arts and practised
villanies of this viper? And yet the poor girl was so stiff in her
temper, had picked up such a trick of obstinacy in those tropical
regions, that Louis Trevelyan felt that he did not know how to manage
her. He too had heard how Jane Marriott had been carried off to
Naples after she had become Mrs. Poole. Must he too carry off his
wife to Naples in order to place her out of the reach of this hyena?
It was terrible to him to think that he must pack up everything and
run away from such a one as Colonel Osborne. And even were he to
consent to do this, how could he explain it all to that very wife for
whose sake he would do it? If she got a hint of the reason she would,
he did not doubt, refuse to go. As he thought of it, and as that
visit up-stairs prolonged itself, he almost thought it would be best
for him to be round with her! We all know what a husband means when
he resolves to be round with his wife. He began to think that he
would not apologise at all for the words he had spoken,--but would
speak them again somewhat more sharply than before. She would be
very wrathful with him; there would be a silent enduring indignation,
which, as he understood well, would be infinitely worse than any
torrent of words. But was he, a man, to abstain from doing that which
he believed to be his duty because he was afraid of his wife's anger?
Should he be deterred from saying that which he conceived it would
be right that he should say, because she was stiff-necked? No. He
would not apologise, but would tell her again that it was necessary,
both for his happiness and for hers, that all intimacy with Colonel
Osborne should be discontinued.

He was brought to this strongly marital resolution by the length of
the man's present visit; by that and by the fact that, during the
latter portion of it, his wife was alone with Colonel Osborne. Nora
had been there when the man came, but Mrs. Fairfax had called, not
getting out of her carriage, and Nora had been constrained to go down
to her. She had hesitated a moment, and Colonel Osborne had observed
and partly understood the hesitation. When he saw it, had he been
perfectly well-minded in the matter, he would have gone too. But he
probably told himself that Nora Rowley was a fool, and that in such
matters it was quite enough for a man to know that he did not intend
any harm.

"You had better go down, Nora," said Mrs. Trevelyan; "Mrs. Fairfax
will be ever so angry if you keep her waiting."

Then Nora had gone and the two were alone together. Nora had gone,
and Trevelyan had heard her as she was going and knew that Colonel
Osborne was alone with his wife.

"If you can manage that it will be so nice," said Mrs. Trevelyan,
continuing the conversation.

"My dear Emily," he said, "you must not talk of my managing it, or
you will spoil it all."

He had called them both Emily and Nora when Sir Marmaduke and Lady
Rowley were with them before the marriage, and, taking the liberty of
a very old family friend, had continued the practice. Mrs. Trevelyan
was quite aware that she had been so called by him in the presence of
her husband,--and that her husband had not objected. But that was now
some months ago, before baby was born; and she was aware also that
he had not called her so latterly in presence of her husband. She
thoroughly wished that she knew how to ask him not to do so again;
but the matter was very difficult, as she could not make such a
request without betraying some fear on her husband's part. The
subject which they were now discussing was too important to her
to allow her to dwell upon this trouble at the moment, and so she
permitted him to go on with his speech.

"If I were to manage it, as you call it,--which I can't do at
all,--it would be a gross job."

"That's all nonsense to us, Colonel Osborne. Ladies always like
political jobs, and think that they,--and they only,--make politics
bearable. But this would not be a job at all. Papa could do it better
than anybody else. Think how long he has been at it!"

The matter in discussion was the chance of an order being sent out to
Sir Marmaduke to come home from his islands at the public expense,
to give evidence, respecting colonial government in general, to a
committee of the House of Commons which was about to sit on the
subject. The committee had been voted, and two governors were to be
brought home for the purpose of giving evidence. What arrangement
could be so pleasant to a governor living in the Mandarin Islands,
who had had a holiday lately, and who could but ill afford to
take any holidays at his own expense? Colonel Osborne was on this
committee, and, moreover, was on good terms at the Colonial Office.
There were men in office who would be glad to do Colonel Osborne a
service, and then if this were a job, it would be so very little of
a job! Perhaps Sir Marmaduke might not be the very best man for the
purpose. Perhaps the government of the Mandarins did not afford the
best specimen of that colonial lore which it was the business of the
committee to master. But then two governors were to come, and it
might be as well to have one of the best sort, and one of the second
best. No one supposed that excellent old Sir Marmaduke was a paragon
of a governor, but then he had an infinity of experience! For over
twenty years he had been from island to island, and had at least
steered clear of great scrapes.

"We'll try it, at any rate," said the Colonel.

"Do, Colonel Osborne. Mamma would come with him, of course?"

"We should leave him to manage all that. It's not very likely that he
would leave Lady Rowley behind."

"He never has. I know he thinks more of mamma than he ever does of
himself. Fancy having them here in the autumn! I suppose if he came
for the end of the session, they wouldn't send him back quite at
once?"

"I rather fancy that our foreign and colonial servants know how to
stretch a point when they find themselves in England."

"Of course they do, Colonel Osborne; and why shouldn't they? Think of
all that they have to endure out in those horrible places. How would
you like to live in the Mandarins?"

"I should prefer London, certainly."

"Of course you would; and you mustn't begrudge papa a month or two
when he comes. I never cared about your being in Parliament before,
but I shall think so much of you now if you can manage to get papa
home."

There could be nothing more innocent than this,--nothing more
innocent at any rate as regarded any offence against Mr. Trevelyan.
But just then there came a word which a little startled Mrs.
Trevelyan, and made her feel afraid that she was doing wrong.

"I must make one stipulation with you, Emily," said the Colonel.

"What is that?"

"You must not tell your husband."

"Oh, dear! and why not?"

"I am sure you are sharp enough to see why you should not. A word of
this repeated at any club would put an end at once to your project,
and would be very damaging to me. And, beyond that, I wouldn't wish
him to know that I had meddled with it at all. I am very chary of
having my name connected with anything of the kind; and, upon my
word, I wouldn't do it for any living human being but yourself.
You'll promise me, Emily?"

She gave the promise, but there were two things in the matter, as it
stood at present, which she did not at all like. She was very averse
to having any secret from her husband with Colonel Osborne; and she
was not at all pleased at being told that he was doing for her a
favour that he would not have done for any other living human being.
Had he said so to her yesterday, before those offensive words had
been spoken by her husband, she would not have thought much about it.
She would have connected the man's friendship for herself with his
very old friendship for her father, and she would have regarded the
assurance as made to the Rowleys in general, and not to herself in
particular. But now, after what had occurred, it pained her to be
told by Colonel Osborne that he would make, specially on her behalf,
a sacrifice of his political pride which he would make for no other
person living. And then, as he had called her by her Christian name,
as he had exacted the promise, there had been a tone of affection in
his voice that she had almost felt to be too warm. But she gave the
promise; and when he pressed her hand at parting, she pressed his
again, in token of gratitude for the kindness to be done to her
father and mother.

Immediately afterwards Colonel Osborne went away, and Mrs. Trevelyan
was left alone in her drawing-room. She knew that her husband was
still down-stairs, and listened for a moment to hear whether he would
now come up to her. And he, too, had heard the Colonel's step as he
went, and for a few moments had doubted whether or no he would at
once go to his wife. Though he believed himself to be a man very firm
of purpose, his mind had oscillated backwards and forwards within the
last quarter of an hour between those two purposes of being round
with his wife, and of begging her pardon for the words which he
had already spoken. He believed that he would best do his duty by
that plan of being round with her; but then it would be so much
pleasanter--at any rate, so much easier, to beg her pardon. But of
one thing he was quite certain, he must by some means exclude Colonel
Osborne from his house. He could not live and continue to endure the
feelings which he had suffered while sitting down-stairs at his desk,
with the knowledge that Colonel Osborne was closeted with his wife
up-stairs. It might be that there was nothing in it. That his wife
was innocent he was quite sure. But nevertheless, he was himself so
much affected by some feeling which pervaded him in reference to this
man, that all his energy was destroyed, and his powers of mind and
body were paralysed. He could not, and would not, stand it. Rather
than that he would follow Mr. Poole, and take his wife to Naples. So
resolving, he put his hat on his head and walked out of the house. He
would have the advantage of the afternoon's consideration before he
took either the one step or the other.

As soon as he was gone Emily Trevelyan went up-stairs to her baby.
She would not stir as long as there had been a chance of his coming
to her. She very much wished that he would come, and had made up her
mind, in spite of the fierceness of her assertion to her sister, to
accept any slightest hint at an apology which her husband might offer
to her. To this state of mind she was brought by the consciousness of
having a secret from him, and by a sense not of impropriety on her
own part, but of conduct which some people might have called improper
in her mode of parting from the man against whom her husband had
warned her. The warmth of that hand-pressing, and the affectionate
tone in which her name had been pronounced, and the promise made to
her, softened her heart towards her husband. Had he gone to her now
and said a word to her in gentleness all might have been made right.
But he did not go to her.

"If he chooses to be cross and sulky, he may be cross and sulky,"
said Mrs. Trevelyan to herself as she went up to her baby.

"Has Louis been with you?" Nora asked, as soon as Mrs. Fairfax had
brought her home.

"I have not seen him since you left me," said Mrs. Trevelyan.

"I suppose he went out before Colonel Osborne?"

"No, indeed. He waited till Colonel Osborne had gone, and then he
went himself; but he did not come near me. It is for him to judge of
his own conduct, but I must say that I think he is very foolish."

This the young wife said in a tone which clearly indicated that she
had judged her husband's conduct, and had found it to be very foolish
indeed.

"Do you think that papa and mamma will really come?" said Nora,
changing the subject of conversation.

"How can I tell? How am I to know? After all that has passed I am
afraid to say a word lest I should be accused of doing wrong. But
remember this, Nora, you are not to speak of it to any one."

"You will tell Louis?"

"No; I will tell no one."

"Dear, dear Emily; pray do not keep anything secret from him."

"What do you mean by secret? There isn't any secret. Only in such
matters as that,--about politics,--no gentleman likes to have his
name talked about!"

A look of great distress came upon Nora's face as she heard this. To
her it seemed to be very bad that there should be a secret between
her sister and Colonel Osborne to be kept from her brother-in-law.

"I suppose you will suspect me next?" said Mrs. Trevelyan, angrily.

"Emily, how can you say anything so cruel?"

"You look as if you did."

"I only mean that I think it would be wiser to tell all this to
Louis."

"How can I tell him Colonel Osborne's private business, when Colonel
Osborne has desired me not to do so. For whose sake is Colonel
Osborne doing this? For papa's and mamma's! I suppose Louis won't
be--jealous, because I want to have papa and mamma home. It would not
be a bit less unreasonable than the other."




CHAPTER III.

LADY MILBOROUGH'S DINNER PARTY.


Louis Trevelyan went down to his club in Pall Mall, the Acrobats, and
there heard a rumour that added to his anger against Colonel Osborne.
The Acrobats was a very distinguished club, into which it was now
difficult for a young man to find his way, and almost impossible
for a man who was no longer young, and therefore known to many. It
had been founded some twenty years since with the idea of promoting
muscular exercise and gymnastic amusements; but the promoters had
become fat and lethargic, and the Acrobats spent their time mostly in
playing whist, and in ordering and eating their dinners. There were
supposed to be, in some out-of-the-way part of the building, certain
poles and sticks and parallel bars with which feats of activity might
be practised, but no one ever asked for them now-a-days, and a man,
when he became an Acrobat, did so with a view either to the whist or
the cook, or possibly to the social excellences of the club. Louis
Trevelyan was an Acrobat;--as was also Colonel Osborne.

"So old Rowley is coming home," said one distinguished Acrobat to
another in Trevelyan's hearing.

"How the deuce is he managing that? He was here a year ago?"

"Osborne is getting it done. He is to come as a witness for this
committee. It must be no end of a lounge for him. It doesn't count as
leave, and he has every shilling paid for him, down to his cab-fares
when he goes out to dinner. There's nothing like having a friend at
Court."

Such was the secrecy of Colonel Osborne's secret! He had been so
chary of having his name mentioned in connection with a political
job, that he had found it necessary to impose on his young friend
the burden of a secret from her husband, and yet the husband heard
the whole story told openly at his club on the same day! There was
nothing in the story to anger Trevelyan had he not immediately felt
that there must be some plan in the matter between his wife and
Colonel Osborne, of which he had been kept ignorant. Hitherto,
indeed, his wife, as the reader knows, could not have told him. He
had not seen her since the matter had been discussed between her and
her friend. But he was angry because he first learned at his club
that which he thought he ought to have learned at home.

As soon as he reached his house he went at once to his wife's room,
but her maid was with her, and nothing could be said at that moment.
He then dressed himself, intending to go to Emily as soon as the girl
had left her; but the girl remained,--was, as he believed, kept in
the room purposely by his wife, so that he should have no moment of
private conversation. He went down-stairs, therefore, and found Nora
standing by the drawing-room fire.

"So you are dressed first to-day?" he said. "I thought your turn
always came last."

"Emily sent Jenny to me first to-day because she thought you would be
home, and she didn't go up to dress till the last minute."

This was intended well by Nora, but it did not have the desired
effect. Trevelyan, who had no command over his own features, frowned,
and showed that he was displeased. He hesitated a moment, thinking
whether he would ask Nora any question as to this report about her
father and mother; but, before he had spoken, his wife was in the
room.

"We are all late, I fear," said Emily.

"You, at any rate, are the last," said her husband.

"About half a minute," said the wife.

Then they got into the hired brougham which was standing at the door.

Trevelyan, in the sweet days of his early confidence with his wife,
had offered to keep a carriage for her, explaining to her that the
luxury, though costly, would not be beyond his reach. But she had
persuaded him against the carriage, and there had come to be an
agreement that instead of the carriage there should always be an
autumn tour. "One learns something from going about; but one learns
nothing from keeping a carriage," Emily had said. Those had been
happy days, in which it had been intended that everything should
always be rose-coloured. Now he was meditating whether, in lieu of
that autumn tour, it would not be necessary to take his wife away to
Naples altogether, so that she might be removed from the influence
of--of--of--; no, not even to himself would he think of Colonel
Osborne as his wife's lover. The idea was too horrible! And yet, how
dreadful was it that he should have, for any reason, to withdraw her
from the influence of any man!

Lady Milborough lived ever so far away, in Eccleston Square, but
Trevelyan did not say a single word to either of his companions
during the journey. He was cross and vexed, and was conscious that
they knew that he was cross and vexed. Mrs. Trevelyan and her sister
talked to each other the whole way, but they did so in that tone
which clearly indicates that the conversation is made up, not for any
interest attached to the questions asked or the answers given, but
because it is expedient that there should not be silence. Nora said
something about Marshall and Snellgrove, and tried to make believe
that she was very anxious for her sister's answer. And Emily said
something about the opera at Covent Garden, which was intended
to show that her mind was quite at ease. But both of them failed
altogether, and knew that they failed. Once or twice Trevelyan
thought that he would say a word in token, as it were, of repentance.
Like the naughty child who knew that he was naughty, he was trying to
be good. But he could not do it. The fiend was too strong within him.
She must have known that there was a proposition for her father's
return through Colonel Osborne's influence. As that man at the club
had heard it, how could she not have known it? When they got out at
Lady Milborough's door he had spoken to neither of them.

There was a large dull party, made up mostly of old people. Lady
Milborough and Trevelyan's mother had been bosom friends, and
Lady Milborough had on this account taken upon herself to be much
interested in Trevelyan's wife. But Louis Trevelyan himself, in
discussing Lady Milborough with Emily, had rather turned his mother's
old friend into ridicule, and Emily had, of course, followed her
husband's mode of thinking. Lady Milborough had once or twice given
her some advice on small matters, telling her that this or that air
would be good for her baby, and explaining that a mother during a
certain interesting portion of her life, should refresh herself
with a certain kind of malt liquor. Of all counsel on such domestic
subjects Mrs. Trevelyan was impatient,--as indeed it was her nature
to be in all matters, and consequently, authorized as she had been
by her husband's manner of speaking of his mother's friend, she
had taken a habit of quizzing Lady Milborough behind her back,
and almost of continuing the practice before the old lady's face.
Lady Milborough, who was the most affectionate old soul alive,
and good-tempered with her friends to a fault, had never resented
this, but had come to fear that Mrs. Trevelyan was perhaps a little
flighty. She had never as yet allowed herself to say anything worse
of her young friend's wife than that. And she would always add that
that kind of thing would cure itself as the nursery became full. It
must be understood therefore that Mrs. Trevelyan was not anticipating
much pleasure from Lady Milborough's party, and that she had accepted
the invitation as a matter of duty.

There was present among the guests a certain Honourable Charles
Glascock, the eldest son of Lord Peterborough, who made the
affair more interesting to Nora than it was to her sister. It had
been whispered into Nora's ears, by more than one person,--and
among others by Lady Milborough, whose own daughters were all
married,--that she might, if she thought fit, become the Honourable
Mrs. Charles Glascock. Now, whether she might think fit, or
whether she might not, the presence of the gentleman under such
circumstances, as far as she was concerned, gave an interest to the
evening. And as Lady Milborough took care that Mr. Glascock should
take Nora down to dinner, the interest was very great. Mr. Glascock
was a good-looking man, just under forty, in Parliament, heir to
a peerage, and known to be well off in respect to income. Lady
Milborough and Mrs. Trevelyan had told Nora Rowley that should
encouragement in that direction come in her way, she ought to allow
herself to fall in love with Mr. Glascock. A certain amount of
encouragement had come in her way, but she had not as yet allowed
herself to fall in love with Mr. Glascock. It seemed to her that Mr.
Glascock was quite conscious of the advantages of his own position,
and that his powers of talking about other matters than those with
which he was immediately connected were limited. She did believe that
he had in truth paid her the compliment of falling in love with her,
and this is a compliment to which few girls are indifferent. Nora
might perhaps have tried to fall in love with Mr. Glascock, had she
not been forced to make comparisons between him and another. This
other one had not fallen in love with her, as she well knew; and she
certainly had not fallen in love with him. But still, the comparison
was forced upon her, and it did not result in favour of Mr. Glascock.
On the present occasion Mr. Glascock as he sat next to her almost
proposed to her.

"You have never seen Monkhams?" he said. Monkhams was his father's
seat, a very grand place in Worcestershire. Of course he knew very
well that she had never seen Monkhams. How should she have seen it?

"I have never been in that part of England at all," she replied.

"I should so like to show you Monkhams. The oaks there are the finest
in the kingdom. Do you like oaks?"

"Who does not like oaks? But we have none in the islands, and nobody
has ever seen so few as I have."

"I'll show you Monkhams some day. Shall I? Indeed, I hope that some
day I may really show you Monkhams."

Now when an unmarried man talks to a young lady of really showing her
the house in which it will be his destiny to live, he can hardly mean
other than to invite her to live there with him. It must at least be
his purpose to signify that, if duly encouraged, he will so invite
her. But Nora Rowley did not give Mr. Glascock much encouragement on
this occasion.

"I'm afraid it is not likely that anything will ever take me into
that part of the country," she said. There was something perhaps in
her tone which checked Mr. Glascock, so that he did not then press
the invitation.

When the ladies were up-stairs in the drawing-room, Lady Milborough
contrived to seat herself on a couch intended for two persons only,
close to Mrs. Trevelyan. Emily, thinking that she might perhaps hear
some advice about Guinness's stout, prepared herself to be saucy. But
the matter in hand was graver than that. Lady Milborough's mind was
uneasy about Colonel Osborne.

"My dear," said she, "was not your father very intimate with that
Colonel Osborne?"

"He is very intimate with him, Lady Milborough."

"Ah, yes; I thought I had heard so. That makes it of course natural
that you should know him."

"We have known him all our lives," said Emily, forgetting probably
that out of the twenty-three years and some months which she had
hitherto lived, there had been a consecutive period of more than
twenty years in which she had never seen this man whom she had known
all her life.

"That makes a difference, of course; and I don't mean to say anything
against him."

"I hope not, Lady Milborough, because we are all especially fond of
him." This was said with so much of purpose, that poor, dear old Lady
Milborough was stopped in her good work. She knew well the terrible
strait to which Augustus Poole had been brought with his wife,
although nobody supposed that Poole's wife had ever entertained a
wrong thought in her pretty little heart. Nevertheless he had been
compelled to break up his establishment, and take his wife to Naples,
because this horrid Colonel would make himself at home in Mrs.
Poole's drawing-room in Knightsbridge. Augustus Poole, with courage
enough to take any man by the beard, had taking by the beard been
possible, had found it impossible to dislodge the Colonel. He could
not do so without making a row which would have been disgraceful to
himself and injurious to his wife; and therefore he had taken Mrs.
Poole to Naples. Lady Milborough knew the whole story, and thought
that she foresaw that the same thing was about to happen in the
drawing-room in Curzon Street. When she attempted to say a word to
the wife, she found herself stopped. She could not go on in that
quarter after the reception with which the beginning of her word had
been met. But perhaps she might succeed better with the husband.
After all, her friendship was with the Trevelyan side, and not with
the Rowleys.

"My dear Louis," she said, "I want to speak a word to you. Come
here." And then she led him into a distant corner, Mrs. Trevelyan
watching her all the while, and guessing why her husband was thus
carried away. "I just want to give you a little hint, which I am sure
I believe is quite unnecessary," continued Lady Milborough. Then she
paused, but Trevelyan would not speak. She looked into his face, and
saw that it was black. But the man was the only child of her dearest
friend, and she persevered. "Do you know I don't quite like that
Colonel Osborne coming so much to your house." The face before her
became still blacker, but still the man said nothing. "I dare say it
is a prejudice on my part, but I have always disliked him. I think he
is a dangerous friend;--what I call a snake in the grass. And though
Emily's high good sense, and love for you, and general feelings on
such a subject, are just what a husband must desire--Indeed, I am
quite sure that the possibility of anything wrong has never entered
into her head. But it is the very purity of her innocence which makes
the danger. He is a bad man, and I would just say a word to her, if I
were you, to make her understand that his coming to her of a morning
is not desirable. Upon my word, I believe there is nothing he likes
so much as going about and making mischief between men and their
wives."

Thus she delivered herself; and Louis Trevelyan, though he was sore
and angry, could not but feel that she had taken the part of a
friend. All that she had said had been true; all that she had said
to him he had said to himself more than once. He too hated the man.
He believed him to be a snake in the grass. But it was intolerably
bitter to him that he should be warned about his wife's conduct by
any living human being; that he, to whom the world had been so full
of good fortune,--that he, who had in truth taught himself to think
that he deserved so much good fortune, should be made the subject of
care on behalf of his friend, because of danger between himself and
his wife! On the spur of the moment he did not know what answer to
make. "He is not a man whom I like myself," he said.

"Just be careful, Louis, that is all," said Lady Milborough, and then
she was gone.

To be cautioned about his wife's conduct cannot be pleasant to any
man, and it was very unpleasant to Louis Trevelyan. He, too, had been
asked a question about Sir Marmaduke's expected visit to England
after the ladies had left the room. All the town had heard of it
except himself. He hardly spoke another word that evening till the
brougham was announced; and his wife had observed his silence. When
they were seated in the carriage, he together with his wife and Nora
Rowley, he immediately asked a question about Sir Marmaduke. "Emily,"
he said, "is there any truth in a report I hear that your father is
coming home?" No answer was made, and for a moment or two there was
silence. "You must have heard of it, then," he said. "Perhaps you can
tell me, Nora, as Emily will not reply. Have you heard anything of
your father's coming?"

"Yes; I have heard of it," said Nora slowly.

"And why have I not been told?"

"It was to be kept a secret," said Mrs. Trevelyan boldly.

"A secret from me; and everybody else knows it! And why was it to be
a secret?"

"Colonel Osborne did not wish that it should be known," said Mrs.
Trevelyan.

"And what has Colonel Osborne to do between you and your father in
any matter with which I may not be made acquainted? I will have
nothing more between you and Colonel Osborne. You shall not see
Colonel Osborne. Do you hear me?"

"Yes, I hear you, Louis."

"And do you mean to obey me? By G----, you shall obey me. Remember
this, that I lay my positive order upon you, that you shall not see
Colonel Osborne again. You do not know it, perhaps, but you are
already forfeiting your reputation as an honest woman, and bringing
disgrace upon me by your familiarity with Colonel Osborne."

"Oh, Louis, do not say that!" said Nora.

"You had better let him speak it all at once," said Emily.

"I have said what I have got to say. It is now only necessary that
you should give me your solemn assurance that you will obey me."

"If you have said all that you have to say, perhaps you will listen
to me," said his wife.

"I will listen to nothing till you have given me your promise."

"Then I certainly shall not give it you."

"Dear Emily, pray, pray do what he tells you," said Nora.

"She has yet to learn that it is her duty to do as I tell her," said
Trevelyan. "And because she is obstinate, and will not learn from
those who know better than herself what a woman may do, and what she
may not, she will ruin herself, and destroy my happiness."

"I know that you have destroyed my happiness by your unreasonable
jealousy," said the wife. "Have you considered what I must feel in
having such words addressed to me by my husband? If I am fit to be
told that I must promise not to see any man living, I cannot be fit
to be any man's wife." Then she burst out into an hysterical fit of
tears, and in this condition she got out of the carriage, entered her
house, and hurried up to her own room.

"Indeed, she has not been to blame," said Nora to Trevelyan on the
staircase.

"Why has there been a secret kept from me between her and this man;
and that too, after I had cautioned her against being intimate with
him? I am sorry that she should suffer; but it is better that she
should suffer a little now, than that we should both suffer much
by-and-by."

Nora endeavoured to explain to him the truth about the committee, and
Colonel Osborne's promised influence, and the reason why there was to
be a secret. But she was too much in a hurry to get to her sister to
make the matter plain, and he was too much angered to listen to her.
He shook his head when she spoke of Colonel Osborne's dislike to have
his name mentioned in connection with the matter. "All the world
knows it," he said with scornful laughter.

It was in vain that Nora endeavoured to explain to him that though
all the world might know it, Emily herself had only heard of the
proposition as a thing quite unsettled, as to which nothing at
present should be spoken openly. It was in vain to endeavour to make
peace on that night. Nora hurried up to her sister, and found that
the hysterical tears had again given place to anger. She would not
see her husband, unless he would beg her pardon; and he would not see
her unless she would give the promise he demanded. And the husband
and wife did not see each other again on that night.




CHAPTER IV.

HUGH STANBURY.


   [Illustration]

It has been already stated that Nora Rowley was not quite so well
disposed as perhaps she ought to have been, to fall in love with the
Honourable Charles Glascock, there having come upon her the habit of
comparing him with another gentleman whenever this duty of falling in
love with Mr. Glascock was exacted from her. That other gentleman was
one with whom she knew that it was quite out of the question that she
should fall in love, because he had not a shilling in the world; and
the other gentleman was equally aware that it was not open to him to
fall in love with Nora Rowley--for the same reason. In regard to such
matters Nora Rowley had been properly brought up, having been made
to understand by the best and most cautious of mothers, that in that
matter of falling in love it was absolutely necessary that bread and
cheese should be considered. "Romance is a very pretty thing," Lady
Rowley had been wont to say to her daughters, "and I don't think life
would be worth having without a little of it. I should be very sorry
to think that either of my girls would marry a man only because he
had money. But you can't even be romantic without something to eat
and drink." Nora thoroughly understood all this, and being well aware
that her fortune in the world, if it ever was to be made at all,
could only be made by marriage, had laid down for herself certain
hard lines,--lines intended to be as fast as they were hard. Let
what might come to her in the way of likings and dislikings, let the
temptation to her be ever so strong, she would never allow her heart
to rest on a man who, if he should ask her to be his wife, would not
have the means of supporting her. There were many, she knew, who
would condemn such a resolution as cold, selfish, and heartless. She
heard people saying so daily. She read in books that it ought to be
so regarded. But she declared to herself that she would respect the
judgment neither of the people nor of the books. To be poor alone, to
have to live without a husband, to look forward to a life in which
there would be nothing of a career, almost nothing to do, to await
the vacuity of an existence in which she would be useful to no one,
was a destiny which she could teach herself to endure, because it
might probably be forced upon her by necessity. Were her father to
die there would hardly be bread for that female flock to eat. As it
was, she was eating the bread of a man in whose house she was no more
than a visitor. The lot of a woman, as she often told herself, was
wretched, unfortunate, almost degrading. For a woman such as herself
there was no path open to her energy, other than that of getting a
husband. Nora Rowley thought of all this till she was almost sick of
the prospect of her life,--especially sick of it when she was told
with much authority by the Lady Milboroughs of her acquaintance that
it was her bounden duty to fall in love with Mr. Glascock. As to
falling in love with Mr. Glascock, she had not as yet quite made up
her mind. There was so much to be said on that side of the question,
if such falling in love could only be made possible. But she had
quite made up her mind that she would never fall in love with a poor
man. In spite, however, of all that, she felt herself compelled to
make comparisons between Mr. Glascock and one Mr. Hugh Stanbury, a
gentleman who had not a shilling.

Mr. Hugh Stanbury had been at college the most intimate friend of
Louis Trevelyan, and at Oxford had been, in spite of Trevelyan's
successes, a bigger man than his friend. Stanbury had not taken so
high a degree as Trevelyan,--indeed had not gone out in honours at
all. He had done little for the credit of his college, and had never
put himself in the way of wrapping himself up for life in the scanty
lambswool of a fellowship. But he had won for himself reputation as
a clever speaker, as a man who had learned much that college tutors
do not profess to teach, as a hard-headed, ready-witted fellow, who,
having the world as an oyster before him, which it was necessary that
he should open, would certainly find either a knife or a sword with
which to open it.

Immediately on leaving college he had come to town, and had entered
himself at Lincoln's Inn. Now, at the time of our story, he was a
barrister of four years' standing, but had never yet made a guinea.
He had never made a guinea by his work as a barrister, and was
beginning to doubt of himself whether he ever would do so. Not, as he
knew well, that guineas are generally made with ease by barristers
of four years' standing, but because, as he said to his friends, he
did not see his way to the knack of it. He did not know an attorney
in the world, and could not conceive how any attorney should ever
be induced to apply to him for legal aid. He had done his work of
learning his trade about as well as other young men, but had had no
means of distinguishing himself within his reach. He went the Western
Circuit because his aunt, old Miss Stanbury, lived at Exeter, but, as
he declared of himself, had he had another aunt living at York, he
would have had nothing whatsoever to guide him in his choice. He sat
idle in the courts, and hated himself for so sitting. So it had been
with him for two years without any consolation or additional burden
from other employment than that of his profession. After that, by
some chance, he had become acquainted with the editor of the Daily
Record, and by degrees had taken to the writing of articles. He had
been told by all his friends, and especially by Trevelyan, that if
he did this, he might as well sell his gown and wig. He declared,
in reply, that he had no objection to sell his gown and wig. He did
not see how he should ever make more money out of them than he would
do by such sale. But for the articles which he wrote, he received
instant payment, a process which he found to be most consolatory,
most comfortable, and, as he said to Trevelyan, as warm to him as a
blanket in winter.

Trevelyan, who was a year younger than Stanbury, had taken upon
himself to be very angry. He professed that he did not think much of
the trade of a journalist, and told Stanbury that he was sinking from
the highest to almost the lowest business by which an educated man
and a gentleman could earn his bread. Stanbury had simply replied
that he saw some bread on the one side, but none on the other; and
that bread from some side was indispensable to him. Then there had
come to be that famous war between Great Britain and the republic
of Patagonia, and Hugh Stanbury had been sent out as a special
correspondent by the editor and proprietor of the Daily Record.
His letters had been much read, and had called up a great deal of
newspaper pugnacity. He had made important statements which had been
flatly denied, and found to be utterly false; which again had been
warmly reasserted and proved to be most remarkably true to the
letter. In this way the correspondence, and he as its author, became
so much talked about that, on his return to England, he did actually
sell his gown and wig and declare to his friends,--and to Trevelyan
among the number,--that he intended to look to journalism for his
future career.

He had been often at the house in Curzon Street in the earliest
happy days of his friend's marriage, and had thus become
acquainted,--intimately acquainted,--with Nora Rowley. And now again,
since his return from Patagonia, that acquaintance had been renewed.
Quite lately, since the actual sale of that wig and gown had been
effected, he had not been there so frequently as before, because
Trevelyan had expressed his indignation almost too openly.

"That such a man as you should be so faint-hearted," Trevelyan had
said, "is a thing that I can not understand."

"Is a man faint-hearted when he finds it improbable that he shall be
able to leap his horse over a house?"

"What you had to do had been done by hundreds before you."

"What I had to do has never yet been done by any man," replied
Stanbury. "I had to live upon nothing till the lucky hour should
strike."

"I think you have been cowardly," said Trevelyan.

Even this had made no quarrel between the two men; but Stanbury had
expressed himself annoyed by his friend's language, and partly on
that account, and partly perhaps on another, had stayed away from
Curzon Street. As Nora Rowley had made comparisons about him, so had
he made comparisons about her. He had owned to himself that had it
been possible that he should marry, he would willingly entrust his
happiness to Miss Rowley. And he had thought once or twice that
Trevelyan had wished that such an arrangement might be made at some
future day. Trevelyan had always been much more sanguine in expecting
success for his friend at the Bar, than Stanbury had been for
himself. It might well be that such a man as Trevelyan might think
that a clever rising barrister would be an excellent husband for his
sister-in-law, but that a man earning a precarious living as a writer
for a penny paper would be by no means so desirable a connection.
Stanbury, as he thought of this, declared to himself that he would
not care two straws for Trevelyan in the matter, if he could see his
way without other impediments. But the other impediments were there
in such strength and numbers as to make him feel that it could not
have been intended by Fate that he should take to himself a wife.
Although those letters of his to the Daily Record had been so
pre-eminently successful, he had never yet been able to earn by
writing above twenty-five or thirty pounds a month. If that might be
continued to him he could live upon it himself; but, even with his
moderate views, it would not suffice for himself and family.

He had told Trevelyan that while living as an expectant barrister he
had no means of subsistence. In this, as Trevelyan knew, he was not
strictly correct. There was an allowance of L100 a year coming to him
from the aunt whose residence at Exeter had induced him to devote
himself to the Western Circuit. His father had been a clergyman with
a small living in Devonshire, and had now been dead some fifteen
years. His mother and two sisters were still living in a small
cottage in his late father's parish, on the interest of the money
arising from a life insurance. Some pittance from sixty to seventy
pounds a year was all they had among them. But there was a rich aunt,
Miss Stanbury, to whom had come considerable wealth in a manner most
romantic,--the little tale shall be told before this larger tale
is completed,--and this aunt had undertaken to educate and place
out in the world her nephew Hugh. So Hugh had been sent to Harrow,
and then to Oxford,--where he had much displeased his aunt by not
accomplishing great things,--and then had been set down to make his
fortune as a barrister in London, with an allowance of L100 a year,
his aunt having paid, moreover, certain fees for entrance, tuition,
and the like. The very hour in which Miss Stanbury learned that her
nephew was writing for a penny newspaper she sent off a dispatch to
tell him that he must give up her or the penny paper. He replied by
saying that he felt himself called upon to earn his bread in the only
line from which, as it seemed to him, bread would be forthcoming. By
return of post he got another letter to say that he might draw for
the quarter then becoming due, but that that would be the last. And
it was the last.

Stanbury made an ineffectual effort to induce his aunt to make over
the allowance,--or at least a part of it,--to his mother and sisters,
but the old lady paid no attention whatever to the request. She never
had given, and at that moment did not intend to give, a shilling
to the widow and daughters of her brother. Nor did she intend, or
had she ever intended, to leave a shilling of her money to Hugh
Stanbury,--as she had very often told him. The money was, at her
death, to go back to the people from whom it had come to her.

When Nora Rowley made those comparisons between Mr. Hugh Stanbury and
Mr. Charles Glascock, they were always wound up very much in favour
of the briefless barrister. It was not that he was the handsomer man,
for he was by no means handsome, nor was he the bigger man, for Mr.
Glascock was six feet tall; nor was he better dressed, for Stanbury
was untidy rather than otherwise in his outward person. Nor had
he any air of fashion or special grace to recommend him, for he
was undoubtedly an awkward-mannered man. But there was a glance of
sunshine in his eye, and a sweetness in the curl of his mouth when he
smiled, which made Nora feel that it would have been all up with her
had she not made so very strong a law for her own guidance. Stanbury
was a man about five feet ten, with shoulders more than broad in
proportion, stout limbed, rather awkward of his gait, with large feet
and hands, with soft wavy light hair, with light grey eyes, with a
broad, but by no means ugly, nose. His mouth and lips were large, and
he rarely showed his teeth. He wore no other beard than whiskers,
which he was apt to cut away through heaviness of his hand in
shaving, till Nora longed to bid him be more careful. "He doesn't
care what sort of a guy he makes of himself," she once said to her
sister, almost angrily. "He is a plain man, and he knows it," Emily
had replied. Mr. Trevelyan was doubtless a handsome man, and it was
almost on Nora's tongue to say something ill-natured on the subject.
Hugh Stanbury was reputed to be somewhat hot in spirit and manner. He
would be very sage in argument, pounding down his ideas on politics,
religion, or social life with his fist as well as his voice. He was
quick, perhaps, at making antipathies, and quick, too, in making
friendships; impressionable, demonstrative, eager, rapid in his
movements,--sometimes to the great detriment of his shins and
knuckles; and he possessed the sweetest temper that was ever given
to a man for the blessing of a woman. This was the man between whom
and Mr. Glascock Nora Rowley found it to be impossible not to make
comparisons.

On the very day after Lady Milborough's dinner party Stanbury
overtook Trevelyan in the street, and asked his friend where he was
going eastward. Trevelyan was on his way to call upon his lawyer, and
said so. But he did not say why he was going to his lawyer. He had
sent to his wife by Nora that morning to know whether she would make
to him the promise he required. The only answer which Nora could draw
from her sister was a counter question, demanding whether he would
ask her pardon for the injury he had done her. Nora had been most
eager, most anxious, most conciliatory as a messenger; but no good
had come of these messages, and Trevelyan had gone forth to tell all
his trouble to his family lawyer. Old Mr. Bideawhile had been his
father's ancient and esteemed friend, and he could tell things to
Mr. Bideawhile which he could not bring himself to tell to any
other living man; and he could generally condescend to accept Mr.
Bideawhile's advice, knowing that his father before him had been
guided by the same.

"But you are out of your way for Lincoln's Inn Fields," said
Stanbury.

"I have to call at Twining's. And where are you going?"

"I have been three times round St. James's Park to collect my
thoughts," said Stanbury, "and now I am on my way to the Daily R.,
250, Fleet Street. It is my custom of an afternoon. I am prepared
to instruct the British public of to-morrow on any subject, as per
order, from the downfall of a European compact to the price of a
London mutton chop."

"I suppose there is nothing more to be said about it," said
Trevelyan, after a pause.

"Not another word. How should there be? Aunt Jemima has already drawn
tight the purse strings, and it would soon be the casual ward in
earnest if it were not for the Daily R. God bless the Daily R. Only
think what a thing it is to have all subjects open to one, from the
destinies of France to the profit proper to a butcher."

"If you like it!"

"I do like it. It may not be altogether honest. I don't know what
is. But it's a deal honester than defending thieves and bamboozling
juries. How is your wife?"

"She's pretty well, thank you."

Stanbury knew at once from the tone of his friend's voice that there
was something wrong.

"And Louis the less?" he said, asking after Trevelyan's child.

"He's all right."

"And Miss Rowley? When one begins one's inquiries one is bound to go
through the whole family."

"Miss Rowley is pretty well," said Trevelyan.

Previously to this, Trevelyan when speaking of his sister-in-law to
Stanbury, had always called her Nora, and had been wont to speak
of her as though she were almost as much the friend of one of them
as of the other. The change of tone on this occasion was in truth
occasioned by the sadness of the man's thoughts in reference to his
wife, but Stanbury attributed it to another cause. "He need not be
afraid of me," he said to himself, "and at least he should not show
me that he is." Then they parted, Trevelyan going into Twining's
bank, and Stanbury passing on towards the office of the Daily R.

Stanbury had in truth been altogether mistaken as to the state of his
friend's mind on that morning. Trevelyan, although he had, according
to his custom, put in a word in condemnation of the newspaper line of
life, was at the moment thinking whether he would not tell all his
trouble to Hugh Stanbury. He knew that he should not find anywhere,
not even in Mr. Bideawhile, a more friendly or more trustworthy
listener. When Nora Rowley's name had been mentioned, he had not
thought of her. He had simply repeated the name with the usual
answer. He was at the moment cautioning himself against a confidence
which after all might not be necessary, and which on this occasion
was not made. When one is in trouble it is a great ease to tell one's
trouble to a friend; but then one should always wash one's dirty
linen at home. The latter consideration prevailed, and Trevelyan
allowed his friend to go on without burdening him with the story of
that domestic quarrel. Nor did he on that occasion tell it to Mr.
Bideawhile; for Mr. Bideawhile was not found at his chambers.




CHAPTER V.

SHEWING HOW THE QUARREL PROGRESSED.


Trevelyan got back to his own house at about three, and on going into
the library, found on his table a letter to him addressed in his
wife's handwriting. He opened it quickly, hoping to find that promise
which he had demanded, and resolving that if it were made he would at
once become affectionate, yielding, and gentle to his wife. But there
was not a word written by his wife within the envelope. It contained
simply another letter, already opened, addressed to her. This letter
had been brought up to her during her husband's absence from the
house, and was as follows:--


   Acrobats, Thursday.

   DEAR EMILY,

   I have just come from the Colonial Office. It is all
   settled, and Sir M. has been sent for. Of course, you will
   tell T. now.

   Yours, F. O.


The letter was, of course, from Colonel Osborne, and Mrs. Trevelyan,
when she received it, had had great doubts whether she would enclose
it to her husband opened or unopened. She had hitherto refused to
make the promise which her husband exacted, but nevertheless, she was
minded to obey him. Had he included in his demand any requirement
that she should receive no letter from Colonel Osborne, she would not
have opened this one. But nothing had been said about letters, and
she would not shew herself to be afraid. So she read the note, and
then sent it down to be put on Mr. Trevelyan's table in an envelope
addressed to him.

"If he is not altogether blinded, it will show him how cruelly he has
wronged me," said she to her sister. She was sitting at the time with
her boy in her lap, telling herself that the child's features were in
all respects the very same as his father's, and that, come what come
might, the child should always be taught by her to love and respect
his father. And then there came a horrible thought. What if the child
should be taken away from her? If this quarrel, out of which she saw
no present mode of escape, were to lead to a separation between her
and her husband, would not the law, and the judges, and the courts,
and all the Lady Milboroughs of their joint acquaintance into the
bargain, say that the child should go with his father? The judges,
and the courts, and the Lady Milboroughs would, of course, say that
she was the sinner. And what could she do without her boy? Would not
any humility, any grovelling in the dust be better for her than that?
"It is a very poor thing to be a woman," she said to her sister.

"It is perhaps better than being a dog," said Nora; "but, of course,
we can't compare ourselves to men."

"It would be better to be a dog. One wouldn't be made to suffer so
much. When a puppy is taken away from its mother, she is bad enough
for a few days, but she gets over it in a week." There was a pause
then for a few moments. Nora knew well which way ran the current of
her sister's thoughts, and had nothing at the present moment which
she could say on that subject. "It is very hard for a woman to know
what to do," continued Emily, "but if she is to marry, I think she
had better marry a fool. After all, a fool generally knows that he is
a fool, and will trust some one, though he may not trust his wife."

"I will never wittingly marry a fool," said Nora.

"You will marry Mr. Glascock, of course. I don't say that he is a
fool; but I do not think he has that kind of strength which shows
itself in perversity."

"If he asked me, I should not have him;--and he will never ask me."

"He will ask you, and, of course, you'll take him. Why not? You can't
be otherwise than a woman. And you must marry. And this man is a
gentleman, and will be a peer. There is nothing on earth against him,
except that he does not set the Thames on fire. Louis intends to set
the Thames on fire some day, and see what comes of it."

"All the same, I shall not marry Mr. Glascock. A woman can die, at
any rate," said Nora.

"No, she can't. A woman must be decent; and to die of want is very
indecent. She can't die, and she mustn't be in want, and she oughtn't
to be a burden. I suppose it was thought necessary that every man
should have two to choose from; and therefore there are so many more
of us than the world wants. I wonder whether you'd mind taking that
down-stairs to his table? I don't like to send it by the servant; and
I don't want to go myself."

Then Nora had taken the letter down, and left it where Louis
Trevelyan would be sure to find it.

He did find it, and was sorely disappointed when he perceived that
it contained no word from his wife to himself. He opened Colonel
Osborne's note, and read it, and became, as he did so, almost more
angry than before. Who was this man that he should dare to address
another man's wife as "Dear Emily?" At the moment Trevelyan
remembered well enough that he had heard the man so call his wife,
that it had been done openly in his presence, and had not given him
a thought. But Lady Rowley and Sir Marmaduke had then been present
also; and that man on that occasion had been the old friend of the
old father, and not the would-be young friend of the young daughter.
Trevelyan could hardly reason about it, but felt that whereas the one
was not improper, the other was grossly impertinent, and even wicked.
And then, again, his wife, his Emily, was to show to him, to her
husband, or was not to show to him, the letter which she received
from this man, the letter in which she was addressed as "Dear Emily,"
according to this man's judgment and wish, and not according to his
judgment and wish,--not according to the judgment and wish of him who
was her husband, her lord, and her master! "Of course you will tell
T. now." This was intolerable to him. It made him feel that he was
to be regarded as second, and this man to be regarded as first. And
then he began to recapitulate all the good things he had done for his
wife, and all the causes which he had given her for gratitude. Had
he not taken her to his bosom, and bestowed upon her the half of all
that he had simply for herself, asking for nothing more than her
love? He had possessed money, position, a name,--all that makes life
worth having. He had found her in a remote corner of the world, with
no fortune, with no advantages of family or social standing,--so
circumstanced that any friend would have warned him against such
a marriage; but he had given her his heart, and his hand, and his
house, and had asked for nothing in return but that he should be all
in all to her,--that he should be her one god upon earth. And he had
done more even than this. "Bring your sister," he had said. "The
house shall be big enough for her also, and she shall be my sister as
well as yours." Who had ever done more for a woman, or shown a more
absolute confidence? And now what was the return he received? She was
not contented with her one god upon earth, but must make to herself
other gods,--another god, and that too out of a lump of the basest
clay to be found around her. He thought that he could remember to
have heard it said in early days, long before he himself had had
an idea of marrying, that no man should look for a wife from among
the tropics, that women educated amidst the languors of those sunny
climes rarely came to possess those high ideas of conjugal duty and
feminine truth which a man should regard as the first requisites of a
good wife. As he thought of all this, he almost regretted that he had
ever visited the Mandarins, or ever heard the name of Sir Marmaduke
Rowley.

He should have nourished no such thoughts in his heart. He had,
indeed, been generous to his wife and to his wife's family; but we
may almost say that the man who is really generous in such matters,
is unconscious of his own generosity. The giver who gives the most,
gives, and does not know that he gives. And had not she given too?
In that matter of giving between a man and his wife, if each gives
all, the two are equal, let the things given be what they may! King
Cophetua did nothing for his beggar maid, unless she were to him,
after he had married her, as royal a queen as though he had taken her
from the oldest stock of reigning families then extant. Trevelyan
knew all this himself,--had said so to himself a score of times,
though not probably in spoken words or formed sentences. But, that
all was equal between himself and the wife of his bosom, had been
a thing ascertained by him as a certainty. There was no debt of
gratitude from her to him which he did not acknowledge to exist also
as from him to her. But yet, in his anger, he could not keep himself
from thinking of the gifts he had showered upon her. And he had been,
was, would ever be, if she would only allow it, so true to her! He
had selected no other friend to take her place in his councils! There
was no "dear Mary," or "dear Augusta," with whom he had secrets to
be kept from his wife. When there arose with him any question of
interest,--question of interest such as was this of the return of Sir
Marmaduke to her,--he would show it in all its bearings to his wife.
He had his secrets too, but his secrets had all been made secrets for
her also. There was not a woman in the world in whose company he took
special delight in her absence.

And if there had been, how much less would have been her ground of
complaint? Let a man have any such friendships,--what friendships he
may,--he does not disgrace his wife. He felt himself to be so true of
heart that he desired no such friendships; but for a man indulging in
such friendships there might be excuse. Even though a man be false,
a woman is not shamed and brought unto the dust before all the world.
But the slightest rumour on a woman's name is a load of infamy on
her husband's shoulders. It was not enough for Caesar that his wife
should be true; it was necessary to Caesar that she should not even be
suspected. Trevelyan told himself that he suspected his wife of no
sin. God forbid that it should ever come to that, both for his sake
and for hers; and, above all, for the sake of that boy who was so
dear to them both! But there would be the vile whispers, and dirty
slanders would be dropped from envious tongues into envious ears, and
minds prone to evil would think evil of him and of his. Had not Lady
Milborough already cautioned him? Oh, that he should have lived to
have been cautioned about his wife;--that he should be told that eyes
outside had looked into the sacred shrine of his heart and seen that
things there were fatally amiss! And yet Lady Milborough was quite
right. Had he not in his hand at this moment a document that proved
her to be right? "Dear Emily!" He took this note and crushed it in
his fist, and then pulled it into fragments.

But what should he do? There was, first of all considerations, the
duty which he owed to his wife, and the love which he bore her.
That she was ignorant and innocent he was sure; but then she was so
contumacious that he hardly knew how to take a step in the direction
of guarding her from the effects of her ignorance, and maintaining
for her the advantages of her innocence. He was her master, and she
must know that he was her master. But how was he to proceed when she
refused to obey the plainest and most necessary command which he laid
upon her? Let a man be ever so much his wife's master, he cannot
maintain his masterdom by any power which the law places in his
hands. He had asked his wife for a promise of obedience, and she
would not give it to him! What was he to do next? He could, no
doubt,--at least he thought so,--keep the man from her presence. He
could order the servant not to admit the man, and the servant would
doubtless obey him. But to what a condition would he then have been
brought! Would not the world then be over for him,--over for him as
the husband of a wife whom he could not love unless he respected her?
Better that there should be no such world, than call in the aid of a
servant to guard the conduct of his wife!

As he thought of it all it seemed to him that if she would not obey
him, and give him this promise, they must be separated. He would not
live with her, he would not give her the privileges of his wife, if
she refused to render to him the obedience which was his privilege.
The more he thought of it, the more convinced he was that he ought
not to yield to her. Let her once yield to him, and then his
tenderness should begin, and there should be no limit to it. But he
would not see her till she had yielded. He would not see her; and if
he should find that she did see Colonel Osborne, then he would tell
her that she could no longer dwell under the same roof with him.

His resolution on these points was very strong, and yet there came
over him a feeling that it was his duty to be gentle. There was a
feeling also that that privilege of receiving obedience, which was
so indubitably his own, could only be maintained by certain wise
practices on his part, in which gentleness must predominate.
Wives are bound to obey their husbands, but obedience cannot be
exacted from wives, as it may from servants, by aid of law and
with penalties, or as from a horse, by punishments and manger
curtailments. A man should be master in his own house, but he should
make his mastery palatable, equitable, smooth, soft to the touch,
a thing almost unfelt. How was he to do all this now, when he had
already given an order to which obedience had been refused unless
under certain stipulations,--an agreement with which would be
degradation to him? He had pointed out to his wife her duty, and she
had said she would do her duty as pointed out, on condition that he
would beg her pardon for having pointed it out! This he could not and
would not do. Let the heavens fall,--and the falling of the heavens
in this case was a separation between him and his wife,--but he would
not consent to such injustice as that!

But what was he to do at this moment,--especially with reference to
that note which he had destroyed. At last he resolved to write to his
wife, and he consequently did write and send to her the following
letter:--


   May 4.

   DEAREST EMILY,

   If Colonel Osborne should write to you again, it will
   be better that you should not open his letter. As you
   know his handwriting, you will have no difficulty in so
   arranging. Should any further letter come from Colonel
   Osborne addressed to you, you had better put it under
   cover to me, and take no notice of it yourself.

   I shall dine at the club to-day. We were to have gone to
   Mrs. Peacock's in the evening. You had better write a line
   to say that we shall not be there. I am very sorry that
   Nora should lose her evening. Pray think very carefully
   over what I have asked of you. My request to you is, that
   you shall give me a promise that you will not willingly
   see Colonel Osborne again. Of course you will understand
   that this is not supposed to extend to accidental
   meetings, as to which, should they occur,--and they would
   be sure to occur,--you would find that they would be
   wholly unnoticed by me.

   But I must request that you will comply with my wish in
   this matter. If you will send for me, I will go to you
   instantly, and after one word from you to the desired
   effect, you will find that there will be no recurrence by
   me to a subject so hateful. As I have done, and am doing
   what I think to be right, I cannot stultify myself by
   saying that I think I have been wrong.

   Yours always, dearest Emily,
   With the most thorough love,

   LOUIS TREVELYAN.


This letter he himself put on his wife's dressing-room table, and
then he went out to his club.




CHAPTER VI.

SHEWING HOW RECONCILIATION WAS MADE.


"Look at that," said Mrs. Trevelyan, when her sister came into her
room about an hour before dinner-time. Nora read the letter, and
then asked her sister what she meant to do. "I have written to Mrs.
Peacock. I don't know what else I can do. It is very hard upon
you,--that you should have been kept at home. But I don't suppose Mr.
Glascock would have been at Mrs. Peacock's."

"And what else will you do, Emily?"

"Nothing;--simply live deserted and forlorn till he shall choose to
find his wits again. There is nothing else that a woman can do. If he
chooses to dine at his club every day, I can't help it. We must put
off all the engagements, and that will be hard upon you."

"Don't talk about me. It is too terrible to think that there should
be such a quarrel."

"What can I do? Have I been wrong?"

"Simply do what he tells you, whether it is wrong or right. If it's
right, it ought to be done, and if it's wrong, it will not be your
fault."

"That's very easily said, and it sounds logical; but you must know
it's unreasonable."

"I don't care about reason. He is your husband, and if he wishes it
you should do it. And what will be the harm? You don't mean to see
Colonel Osborne any more. You have already said that he's not to be
admitted."

"I have said that nobody is to be admitted. Louis has driven me
to that. How can I look the servant in the face and tell him that
any special gentleman is not to be admitted to see me? Oh dear! oh
dear! have I done anything to deserve it? Was ever so monstrous an
accusation made against any woman! If it were not for my boy, I would
defy him to do his worst."

On the day following, Nora again became a messenger between the
husband and wife, and before dinner-time a reconciliation had been
effected. Of course the wife gave way at last; and of course she gave
way so cunningly that the husband received none of the gratification
which he had expected in her surrender. "Tell him to come," Nora had
urged. "Of course he can come if he pleases," Emily had replied.
Then Nora had told Louis to come, and Louis had demanded whether,
if he did so, the promise which he had exacted would be given. It
is to be feared that Nora perverted the truth a little; but if ever
such perversion may be forgiven, forgiveness was due to her. If
they could only be brought together, she was sure that there would
be a reconciliation. They were brought together, and there was a
reconciliation.

"Dearest Emily, I am so glad to come to you," said the husband,
walking up to his wife in their bed-room, and taking her in his arms.


   [Illustration: Shewing how reconciliation was made.]


"I have been very unhappy, Louis, for the last two days," said she,
very gravely,--returning his kiss, but returning it somewhat coldly.

"We have both been unhappy, I am sure," said he. Then he paused that
the promise might be made to him. He had certainly understood that
it was to be made without reserve,--as an act on her part which she
had fully consented to perform. But she stood silent, with one hand
on the dressing-table, looking away from him, very beautiful, and
dignified too, in her manner; but not, as far as he could judge,
either repentant or submissive. "Nora said that you would make me the
promise which I ask from you."

"I cannot think, Louis, how you can want such a promise from me."

"I think it right to ask it; I do indeed."

"Can you imagine that I shall ever willingly see this gentleman again
after what has occurred? It will be for you to tell the servant. I
do not know how I can do that. But, as a matter of course, I will
encourage no person to come to your house of whom you disapprove. It
would be exactly the same of any man or of any woman."

"That is all that I ask."

"I am surprised that you should have thought it necessary to make any
formal request in the matter. Your word was quite sufficient. That
you should find cause of complaint in Colonel Osborne's coming here
is of course a different thing."

"Quite a different thing," said he.

"I cannot pretend to understand either your motives or your fears.
I do not understand them. My own self-respect prevents me from
supposing it to be possible that you have attributed an evil thought
to me."

"Indeed, indeed, I never have," said the husband.

"That I can assure you I regard as a matter of course," said the
wife.

"But you know, Emily, the way in which the world talks."

"The world! And do you regard the world, Louis?"

"Lady Milborough, I believe, spoke to yourself."

"Lady Milborough! No, she did not speak to me. She began to do so,
but I was careful to silence her at once. From you, Louis, I am bound
to hear whatever you may choose to say to me; but I will not hear
from any other lips a single word that may be injurious to your
honour." This she said very quietly, with much dignity, and he felt
that he had better not answer her. She had given him the promise
which he had demanded, and he began to fear that if he pushed the
matter further she might go back even from that amount of submission.
So he kissed her again, and had the boy brought into the room, and by
the time that he went to dress for dinner he was able, at any rate,
to seem to be well pleased.

"Richard," he said to the servant, as soon as he was down-stairs,
"when Colonel Osborne calls again, say that your mistress is--not at
home." He gave the order in the most indifferent tone of voice which
he could assume; but as he gave it he felt thoroughly ashamed of it.
Richard, who, with the other servants, had of course known that there
had been a quarrel between his master and mistress for the last two
days, no doubt understood all about it.

While they were sitting at dinner on the next day, a Saturday, there
came another note from Colonel Osborne. The servant brought it to
his mistress, and she, when she had looked at it, put it down by her
plate. Trevelyan knew immediately from whom the letter had come, and
understood how impossible it was for his wife to give it up in the
servant's presence. The letter lay there till the man was out of the
room, and then she handed it to Nora. "Will you give that to Louis?"
she said. "It comes from the man whom he supposes to be my lover."

"Emily!" said he, jumping from his seat, "how can you allow words so
horrible and so untrue to fall from your mouth?"

"If it be not so, why am I to be placed in such a position as this?
The servant knows, of course, from whom the letter comes, and sees
that I have been forbidden to open it." Then the man returned to the
room, and the remainder of the dinner passed off almost in silence.
It was their custom when they dined without company to leave the
dining-room together, but on this evening Trevelyan remained for a
few minutes that he might read Colonel Osborne's letter. He waited,
standing on the rug with his face to the fire-place, till he was
quite alone, and then he opened it. It ran as follows:--


   House of Commons, Saturday.

   DEAR EMILY,--


Trevelyan, as he read this, cursed Colonel Osborne between his teeth.


   DEAR EMILY,

   I called this afternoon, but you were out. I am afraid you
   will be disappointed by what I have to tell you, but you
   should rather be glad of it. They say at the C. O. that
   Sir Marmaduke would not receive their letter if sent
   now till the middle of June, and that he could not be
   in London, let him do what he would, till the end of
   July. They hope to have the session over by that time,
   and therefore the committee is to be put off till next
   session. They mean to have Lord Bowles home from Canada,
   and they think that Bowles would like to be here in the
   winter. Sir Marmaduke will be summoned for February next,
   and will of course stretch his stay over the hot months.
   All this will, on the whole, be for the best. Lady Rowley
   could hardly have packed up her things and come away at a
   day's notice, whatever your father might have done. I'll
   call to-morrow at luncheon time.

   Yours always,

   F. O.


There was nothing objectionable in this letter,--excepting always the
"Dear Emily,"--nothing which it was not imperative on Colonel Osborne
to communicate to the person to whom it was addressed. Trevelyan must
now go up-stairs and tell the contents of the letter to his wife.
But he felt that he had created for himself a terrible trouble. He
must tell his wife what was in the letter, but the very telling of
it would be a renewing of the soreness of his wound. And then what
was to be done in reference to the threatened visit for the Sunday
morning? Trevelyan knew very well that were his wife denied at
that hour, Colonel Osborne would understand the whole matter. He
had doubtless in his anger intended that Colonel Osborne should
understand the whole matter; but he was calmer now than he had been
then, and almost wished that the command given by him had not been so
definite and imperious. He remained with his arm on the mantel-piece,
thinking of it, for some ten minutes, and then went up into the
drawing-room. "Emily," he said, walking up to the table at which she
was sitting, "you had better read that letter."

"I would so much rather not," she replied haughtily.

"Then Nora can read it. It concerns you both equally."

Nora, with hesitating hand, took the letter and read it. "They are
not to come after all," said she, "till next February."

"And why not?" asked Mrs. Trevelyan.

"Something about the session. I don't quite understand."

"Lord Bowles is to come from Canada," said Louis, "and they think he
would prefer being here in the winter. I dare say he would."

"But what has that to do with papa?"

"I suppose they must both be here together," said Nora.

"I call that very hard indeed," said Mrs. Trevelyan.

"I can't agree with you there," said her husband. "His coming at all
is so much of a favour that it is almost a job."

"I don't see that it is a job at all," said Mrs. Trevelyan. "Somebody
is wanted, and nobody can know more of the service than papa does.
But as the other man is a lord, I suppose papa must give way. Does he
say anything about mamma, Nora?"

"You had better read the letter yourself," said Trevelyan, who was
desirous that his wife should know of the threatened visit.

"No, Louis, I shall not do that. You must not blow hot and cold too.
Till the other day I should have thought that Colonel Osborne's
letters were as innocent as an old newspaper. As you have supposed
them to be poisoned I will have nothing to do with them."

This speech made him very angry. It seemed that his wife, who
had yielded to him, was determined to take out the value of her
submission in the most disagreeable words which she could utter. Nora
now closed the letter and handed it back to her brother-in-law. He
laid it down on the table beside him, and sat for a while with his
eyes fixed upon his book. At last he spoke again. "Colonel Osborne
says that he will call to-morrow at luncheon time. You can admit him,
if you please, and thank him for the trouble he has taken in this
matter."

"I shall not remain in the room if he be admitted," said Mrs.
Trevelyan.

There was silence again for some minutes, and the cloud upon
Trevelyan's brow became blacker than before. Then he rose from his
chair and walked round to the sofa on which his wife was sitting. "I
presume," said he, "that your wishes and mine in this matter must be
the same."

"I cannot tell what your wishes are," she replied. "I never was more
in the dark on any subject in my life. My wishes at present are
confined to a desire to save you as far as may be possible from the
shame which must be attached to your own suspicions."

"I have never had any suspicions."

"A husband without suspicions does not intercept his wife's letters.
A husband without suspicions does not call in the aid of his servants
to guard his wife. A husband without suspicions--"

"Emily," exclaimed Nora Rowley, "how can you say such things,--on
purpose to provoke him?"

"Yes; on purpose to provoke me," said Trevelyan.

"And have I not been provoked? Have I not been injured? You say now
that you have not suspected me, and yet in what condition do I find
myself? Because an old woman has chosen to talk scandal about me, I
am placed in a position in my own house which is disgraceful to you
and insupportable to myself. This man has been in the habit of coming
here on Sundays, and will, of course, know that we are at home. You
must manage it as you please. If you choose to receive him, I will go
up-stairs."

"Why can't you let him come in and go away, just as usual?" said
Nora.

"Because Louis has made me promise that I will never willingly be
in his company again," said Mrs. Trevelyan. "I would have given the
world to avoid a promise so disgraceful to me; but it was exacted,
and it shall be kept." Having so spoken, she swept out of the room,
and went up-stairs to the nursery. Trevelyan sat for an hour with his
book before him, reading or pretending to read, but his wife did not
come down-stairs. Then Nora went up to her, and he descended to his
solitude below. So far he had hardly gained much by the enforced
obedience of his wife.

On the next morning the three went to church together, and as they
were walking home Trevelyan's heart was filled with returning
gentleness towards his wife. He could not bear to be at wrath with
her after the church service which they had just heard together.
But he was softer-hearted than was she, and knowing this, was
almost afraid to say anything that would again bring forth from her
expressions of scorn. As soon as they were alone within the house he
took her by the hand and led her apart. "Let all this be," said he,
"as though it had never been."

"That will hardly be possible, Louis," she answered. "I cannot forget
that I have been--cautioned."

"But cannot you bring yourself to believe that I have meant it all
for your good?"

"I have never doubted it, Louis;--never for a moment. But it has hurt
me to find that you should think that such caution was needed for my
good."

It was almost on his tongue to beg her pardon, to acknowledge that
he had made a mistake, and to implore her to forget that he had ever
made an objection to Colonel Osborne's visit. He remembered at this
moment the painful odiousness of that "Dear Emily;" but he had to
reconcile himself even to that, telling himself that, after all,
Colonel Osborne was an old man,--a man older even than his wife's
father. If she would only have met him with gentleness, he would have
withdrawn his command, and have acknowledged that he had been wrong.
But she was hard, dignified, obedient, and resentful. "It will, I
think," he said, "be better for both of us that he should be asked in
to lunch to-day."

"You must judge of that," said Emily. "Perhaps, upon the whole, it
will be best. I can only say that I will not be present. I will lunch
up-stairs with baby, and you can make what excuse for me you please."
This was all very bad, but it was in this way that things were
allowed to arrange themselves. Richard was told that Colonel Osborne
was coming to lunch, and when he came something was muttered to him
about Mrs. Trevelyan being not quite well. It was Nora who told the
innocent fib, and though she did not tell it well, she did her very
best. She felt that her brother-in-law was very wretched, and she was
most anxious to relieve him. Colonel Osborne did not stay long, and
then Nora went up-stairs to her sister.

Louis Trevelyan felt that he had disgraced himself. He had meant to
have been strong, and he had, as he knew, been very weak. He had
meant to have acted in a high-minded, honest, manly manner; but
circumstances had been so untoward with him, that on looking at his
own conduct, it seemed to him to have been mean, and almost false
and cowardly. As the order for the exclusion of this hated man from
his house had been given, he should at any rate have stuck to the
order. At the moment of his vacillation he had simply intended to
make things easy for his wife; but she had taken advantage of his
vacillation, and had now clearly conquered him. Perhaps he respected
her more than he had done when he was resolving, three or four days
since, that he would be the master in his own house; but it may be
feared that the tenderness of his love for her had been impaired.

Late in the afternoon his wife and sister-in-law came down dressed
for walking, and, finding Trevelyan in the library, they asked him to
join them,--it was a custom with them to walk in the park on a Sunday
afternoon,--and he at once assented, and went out with them. Emily,
who had had her triumph, was very gracious. There should not be a
word more said by her about Colonel Osborne. She would avoid that
gentleman, never receiving him in Curzon Street, and having as little
to say to him as possible elsewhere; but she would not throw his name
in her husband's teeth, or make any reference to the injury which had
so manifestly been done to her. Unless Louis should be indiscreet,
it should be as though it had been forgotten. As they walked by
Chesterfield House and Stanhope Street into the park, she began to
discuss the sermon they had heard that morning, and when she found
that that subject was not alluring, she spoke of a dinner to which
they were to go at Mrs. Fairfax's house. Louis Trevelyan was quite
aware that he was being treated as a naughty boy, who was to be
forgiven.

They went across Hyde Park into Kensington Gardens, and still the
same thing was going on. Nora found it to be almost impossible to say
a word. Trevelyan answered his wife's questions, but was otherwise
silent. Emily worked very hard at her mission of forgiveness, and
hardly ceased in her efforts at conciliatory conversation. Women
can work so much harder in this way than men find it possible to do!
She never flagged, but continued to be fluent, conciliatory, and
intolerably wearisome. On a sudden they came across two men together,
who, as they all knew, were barely acquainted with each other. These
were Colonel Osborne and Hugh Stanbury.

"I am glad to find you are able to be out," said the Colonel.

"Thanks; yes. I think my seclusion just now was almost as much due to
baby as to anything else. Mr. Stanbury, how is it we never see you
now?"

"It is the D. R., Mrs. Trevelyan;--nothing else. The D. R. is a most
grateful mistress, but somewhat exacting. I am allowed a couple of
hours on Sundays, but otherwise my time is wholly passed in Fleet
Street."

"How very unpleasant."

"Well; yes. The unpleasantness of this world consists chiefly in the
fact that when a man wants wages, he must earn them. The Christian
philosophers have a theory about it. Don't they call it the primeval
fall, original sin, and that kind of thing?"

"Mr. Stanbury, I won't have irreligion. I hope that doesn't come from
writing for the newspapers."

"Certainly not with me, Mrs. Trevelyan. I have never been put on
to take that branch yet. Scrubby does that with us, and does it
excellently. It was he who touched up the Ritualists, and then the
Commission, and then the Low Church bishops, till he didn't leave one
of them a leg to stand upon."

"What is it, then, that the Daily Record upholds?"

"It upholds the Daily Record. Believe in that and you will surely be
saved." Then he turned to Miss Rowley, and they two were soon walking
on together, each manifestly interested in what the other was saying,
though there was no word of tenderness spoken between them.

Colonel Osborne was now between Mr. and Mrs. Trevelyan. She would
have avoided the position had it been possible for her to do so.
While they were falling into their present places, she had made a
little mute appeal to her husband to take her away from the spot, to
give her his arm and return with her, to save her in some way from
remaining in company with the man to whose company for her he had
objected; but he took no such step. It had seemed to him that he
could take no such step without showing his hostility to Colonel
Osborne.

They walked on along the broad path together, and the Colonel was
between them.

"I hope you think it satisfactory,--about Sir Rowley," he said.

"Beggars must not be choosers, you know, Colonel Osborne. I felt a
little disappointed when I found that we were not to see them till
February next."

"They will stay longer then, you know, than they could now."

"I have no doubt when the time comes we shall all believe it to be
better."

"I suppose you think, Emily, that a little pudding to-day is better
than much to-morrow."

Colonel Osborne certainly had a caressing, would-be affectionate mode
of talking to women, which, unless it were reciprocated and enjoyed,
was likely to make itself disagreeable. No possible words could have
been more innocent than those he had now spoken; but he had turned
his face down close to her face, and had almost whispered them. And
then, too, he had again called her by her Christian name. Trevelyan
had not heard the words. He had walked on, making the distance
between him and the other man greater than was necessary, anxious to
show to his wife that he had no jealousy at such a meeting as this.
But his wife was determined that she would put an end to this state
of things, let the cost be what it might. She did not say a word to
Colonel Osborne, but addressed herself at once to her husband.

"Louis," she said, "will you give me your arm? We will go back, if
you please." Then she took her husband's arm, and turned herself and
him abruptly away from their companion.

The thing was done in such a manner that it was impossible that
Colonel Osborne should not perceive that he had been left in anger.
When Trevelyan and his wife had gone back a few yards, he was obliged
to return for Nora. He did so, and then rejoined his wife.

"It was quite unnecessary, Emily," he said, "that you should behave
like that."

"Your suspicions," she said, "have made it almost impossible for me
to behave with propriety."

"You have told him everything now," said Trevelyan.

"And it was requisite that he should be told," said his wife. Then
they walked home without interchanging another word. When they
reached their house, Emily at once went up to her own room, and
Trevelyan to his. They parted as though they had no common interest
which was worthy of a moment's conversation. And she by her step,
and gait, and every movement of her body showed to him that she was
not his wife now in any sense that could bring to him a feeling of
domestic happiness. Her compliance with his command was of no use
to him unless she could be brought to comply in spirit. Unless she
would be soft to him he could not be happy. He walked about his room
uneasily for half-an-hour, trying to shake off his sorrow, and then
he went up to her room. "Emily," he said, "for God's sake let all
this pass away."

"What is to pass away?"

"This feeling of rancour between you and me. What is the world to us
unless we can love one another? At any rate it will be nothing to
me."

"Do you doubt my love?" said she.

"No; certainly not."

"Nor I yours. Without love, Louis, you and I can not be happy. But
love alone will not make us so. There must be trust, and there must
also be forbearance. My feeling of annoyance will pass away in time;
and till it does, I will shew it as little as may be possible."

He felt that he had nothing more to say, and then he left her; but he
had gained nothing by the interview. She was still hard and cold, and
still assumed a tone which seemed to imply that she had manifestly
been the injured person.

Colonel Osborne, when he was left alone, stood for a few moments on
the spot, and then with a whistle, a shake of the head, and a little
low chuckle of laughter, rejoined the crowd.




CHAPTER VII.

MISS JEMIMA STANBURY, OF EXETER.


   [Illustration]

Miss Jemima Stanbury, the aunt of our friend Hugh, was a maiden lady,
very much respected, indeed, in the city of Exeter. It is to be
hoped that no readers of these pages will be so un-English as to be
unable to appreciate the difference between county society and town
society,--the society, that is, of a provincial town, or so ignorant
as not to know also that there may be persons so privileged, that
although they live distinctly within a provincial town, there
is accorded to them, as though by brevet rank, all the merit of
living in the county. In reference to persons so privileged, it is
considered that they have been made free from the contamination of
contiguous bricks and mortar by certain inner gifts, probably of
birth, occasionally of profession, possibly of merit. It is very
rarely, indeed, that money alone will bestow this acknowledged
rank; and in Exeter, which by the stringency and excellence of its
well-defined rules on such matters, may perhaps be said to take the
lead of all English provincial towns, money alone has never availed.
Good blood, especially if it be blood good in Devonshire, is rarely
rejected. Clergymen are allowed within the pale,--though by no means
as certainly as used to be the case; and, indeed, in these days of
literates, clergymen have to pass harder examinations than those ever
imposed upon them by bishops' chaplains, before they are admitted ad
eundem among the chosen ones of the city of Exeter. The wives and
daughters of the old prebendaries see well to that. And, as has been
said, special merit may prevail. Sir Peter Mancrudy, the great Exeter
physician, has won his way in,--not at all by being Sir Peter, which
has stood in his way rather than otherwise,--but by the acknowledged
excellence of his book about saltzes. Sir Peter Mancrudy is supposed
to have quite a metropolitan, almost a European reputation,--and
therefore is acknowledged to belong to the county set, although he
never dines out at any house beyond the limits of the city. Now, let
it be known that no inhabitant of Exeter ever achieved a clearer
right to be regarded as "county," in opposition to "town," than had
Miss Jemima Stanbury. There was not a tradesman in Exeter who was not
aware of it, and who did not touch his hat to her accordingly. The
men who drove the flies, when summoned to take her out at night,
would bring oats with them, knowing how probable it was that they
might have to travel far. A distinct apology was made if she was
asked to drink tea with people who were simply "town." The Noels of
Doddescombe Leigh, the Cliffords of Budleigh Salterton, the Powels of
Haldon, the Cheritons of Alphington,--all county persons, but very
frequently in the city,--were greeted by her, and greeted her, on
terms of equality. Her most intimate friend was old Mrs. MacHugh,
the widow of the last dean but two, who could not have stood higher
had she been the widow of the last bishop. And then, although Miss
Stanbury was intimate with the Frenches of Heavitree, with the
Wrights of Northernhay, with the Apjohns of Helion Villa,--a really
magnificent house, two miles out of the city on the Crediton
Road, and with the Crumbies of Cronstadt House, Saint Ide's,--who
would have been county people, if living in the country made the
difference;--although she was intimate with all these families,
her manner to them was not the same, nor was it expected to be the
same, as with those of her own acknowledged set. These things are
understood in Exeter so well!

Miss Stanbury belonged to the county set, but she lived in a large
brick house, standing in the Close, almost behind the Cathedral.
Indeed it was so close to the eastern end of the edifice that a
carriage could not be brought quite up to her door. It was a large
brick house, very old, with a door in the middle, and five steps
ascending to it between high iron rails. On each side of the door
there were two windows on the ground floor, and above that there
were three tiers of five windows each, and the house was double
throughout, having as many windows looking out behind into a gloomy
courtyard. But the glory of the house consisted in this, that there
was a garden attached to it, a garden with very high walls, over
which the boughs of trees might be seen, giving to the otherwise
gloomy abode a touch of freshness in the summer, and a look of space
in the winter, which no doubt added something to the reputation even
of Miss Stanbury. The fact,--for it was a fact,--that there was
no gloomier or less attractive spot in the whole city than Miss
Stanbury's garden, when seen inside, did not militate against this
advantage. There were but half-a-dozen trees, and a few square yards
of grass that was never green, and a damp ungravelled path on which
no one ever walked. Seen from the inside the garden was not much;
but, from the outside, it gave a distinct character to the house, and
produced an unexpressed acknowledgment that the owner of it ought to
belong to the county set.

The house and all that was in it belonged to Miss Stanbury herself,
as did also many other houses in the neighbourhood. She was the owner
of the "Cock and Bottle," a very decent second class inn on the other
side of the Close, an inn supposed to have clerical tendencies, which
made it quite suitable for a close. The choristers took their beer
there, and the landlord was a retired verger. Nearly the whole of
one side of a dark passage leading out of the Close towards the High
Street belonged to her; and though the passage be narrow and the
houses dark, the locality is known to be good for trade. And she
owned two large houses in the High Street, and a great warehouse
at St. Thomas's, and had been bought out of land by the Railway at
St. David's,--much to her own dissatisfaction, as she was wont to
express herself, but, undoubtedly, at a very high price. It will be
understood therefore, that Miss Stanbury was wealthy, and that she
was bound to the city in which she lived by peculiar ties.

But Miss Stanbury had not been born to this wealth, nor can she
be said to have inherited from her forefathers any of these high
privileges which had been awarded to her. She had achieved them by
the romance of her life and the manner in which she had carried
herself amidst its vicissitudes. Her father had been vicar of
Nuncombe Putney, a parish lying twenty miles west of Exeter, among
the moors. And on her father's death, her brother, also now dead, had
become vicar of the same parish,--her brother, whose only son, Hugh
Stanbury, we already know, working for the "D. R." up in London. When
Miss Stanbury was twenty-one she became engaged to a certain Mr.
Brooke Burgess, the eldest son of a banker in Exeter,--or, it might,
perhaps, be better said, a banker himself; for at the time Mr.
Brooke Burgess was in the firm. It need not here be told how various
misfortunes arose, how Mr. Burgess quarrelled with the Stanbury
family, how Jemima quarrelled with her own family, how, when her
father died, she went out from Nuncombe Putney parsonage, and lived
on the smallest pittance in a city lodging, how her lover was untrue
to her and did not marry her, and how at last he died and left her
every shilling that he possessed.

The Devonshire people, at the time, had been much divided as to the
merits of the Stanbury quarrel. There were many who said that the
brother could not have acted otherwise than he did; and that Miss
Stanbury, though by force of character and force of circumstances
she had weathered the storm, had in truth been very indiscreet. The
results, however, were as have been described. At the period of which
we treat, Miss Stanbury was a very rich lady, living by herself in
Exeter, admitted, without question, to be one of the county set, and
still at variance with her brother's family. Except to Hugh, she had
never spoken a word to one of them since her brother's death. When
the money came into her hands, she at that time being over forty
and her nephew being then just ten years old, she had undertaken to
educate him, and to start him in the world. We know how she had kept
her word, and how and why she had withdrawn herself from any further
responsibility in the matter.

And in regard to this business of starting the young man she had been
careful to let it be known that she would do no more than start him.
In the formal document, by means of which she had made the proposal
to her brother, she had been careful to let it be understood that
simple education was all that she intended to bestow upon him,--"and
that only," she had added, "in the event of my surviving till his
education be completed." And to Hugh himself she had declared that
any allowance which she made him after he was called to the Bar,
was only made in order to give him room for his foot, a spot of
ground from whence to make his first leap. We know how he made that
leap, infinitely to the disgust of his aunt, who, when he refused
obedience to her in the matter of withdrawing from the Daily Record,
immediately withdrew from him, not only her patronage and assistance,
but even her friendship and acquaintance. This was the letter which
she wrote to him--


   I don't think that writing radical stuff for a penny
   newspaper is a respectable occupation for a gentleman, and
   I will have nothing to do with it. If you choose to do
   such work, I cannot help it; but it was not for such that
   I sent you to Harrow and Oxford, nor yet up to London and
   paid L100 a year to Mr. Lambert. I think you are treating
   me badly, but that is nothing to your bad treatment of
   yourself. You need not trouble yourself to answer this,
   unless you are prepared to say that you will not write any
   more stuff for that penny newspaper. Only I wish to be
   understood. I will have no connection that I can help,
   and no acquaintance at all, with radical scribblers and
   incendiaries.

   JEMIMA STANBURY.

   The Close, Exeter, April 15, 186--.


Hugh Stanbury had answered this, thanking his aunt for past favours,
and explaining to her,--or striving to do so,--that he felt it to be
his duty to earn his bread, as a means of earning it had come within
his reach. He might as well have spared himself the trouble. She
simply wrote a few words across his own letter in red ink:--"The
bread of unworthiness should never be earned or eaten;" and then sent
the letter back under a blank envelope to her nephew.

She was a thorough Tory of the old school. Had Hugh taken to writing
for a newspaper that had cost sixpence, or even threepence, for its
copies, she might perhaps have forgiven him. At any rate the offence
would not have been so flagrant. And had the paper been conservative
instead of liberal, she would have had some qualms of conscience
before she gave him up. But to live by writing for a newspaper! and
for a penny newspaper!! and for a penny radical newspaper!!! It was
more than she could endure. Of what nature were the articles which he
contributed it was impossible that she should have any idea, for no
consideration would have induced her to look at a penny newspaper, or
to admit it within her doors. She herself took in the John Bull and
the Herald, and daily groaned deeply at the way in which those once
great organs of true British public feeling were becoming demoralised
and perverted. Had any reduction been made in the price of either of
them, she would at once have stopped her subscription. In the matter
of politics she had long since come to think that everything good was
over. She hated the name of Reform so much that she could not bring
herself to believe in Mr. Disraeli and his bill. For many years she
had believed in Lord Derby. She would fain believe in him still if
she could. It was the great desire of her heart to have some one in
whom she believed. In the bishop of her diocese she did believe, and
annually sent him some little comforting present from her own hand.
And in two or three of the clergymen around her she believed, finding
in them a flavour of the unascetic godliness of ancient days which
was gratifying to her palate. But in politics there was hardly a name
remaining to which she could fix her faith and declare that there
should be her guide. For awhile she thought she would cling to Mr.
Lowe; but, when she made inquiry, she found that there was no base
there of really well-formed conservative granite. The three gentlemen
who had dissevered themselves from Mr. Disraeli when Mr. Disraeli was
passing his Reform bill, were doubtless very good in their way; but
they were not big enough to fill her heart. She tried to make herself
happy with General Peel, but General Peel was after all no more than
a shade to her. But the untruth of others never made her untrue, and
she still talked of the excellence of George III. and the glories of
the subsequent reign. She had a bust of Lord Eldon, before which she
was accustomed to stand with hands closed and to weep,--or to think
that she wept.

She was a little woman, now nearly sixty years of age, with bright
grey eyes, and a strong Roman nose, and thin lips, and a sharp-cut
chin. She wore a head-gear that almost amounted to a mob-cap, and
beneath it her grey hair was always frizzled with the greatest care.
Her dress was invariably of black silk, and she had five gowns,--one
for church, one for evening parties, one for driving out, and one for
evenings at home, and one for mornings. The dress, when new, always
went to church. Nothing, she was wont to say, was too good for the
Lord's house. In the days of crinolines she had protested that she
had never worn one,--a protest, however, which was hardly true; and
now, in these later days, her hatred was especially developed in
reference to the head-dresses of young women. "Chignon" was a word
which she had never been heard to pronounce. She would talk of "those
bandboxes which the sluts wear behind their noddles;" for Miss
Stanbury allowed herself the use of much strong language. She was
very punctilious in all her habits, breakfasting ever at half-past
eight, and dining always at six. Half-past five had been her time,
till the bishop, who, on an occasion, was to be her guest, once
signified to her that such an hour cut up the day and interfered with
clerical work. Her lunch was always of bread and cheese, and they who
lunched with her either eat that,--or the bread without the cheese.
An afternoon "tea" was a thing horrible to her imagination. Tea and
buttered toast at half-past eight in the evening was the great luxury
of her life. She was as strong as a horse, and had never hitherto
known a day's illness. As a consequence of this, she did not believe
in the illness of other people,--especially not in the illness of
women. She did not like a girl who could not drink a glass of beer
with her bread and cheese in the middle of the day, and she thought
that a glass of port after dinner was good for everybody. Indeed, she
had a thorough belief in port wine, thinking that it would go far to
cure most miseries. But she could not put up with the idea that a
woman, young or old, should want the stimulus of a glass of sherry
to support her at any odd time of the day. Hot concoctions of strong
drink at Christmas she would allow to everybody, and was very strong
in recommending such comforts to ladies blessed, or about to be
blessed, with babies. She took the sacrament every month, and gave
away exactly a tenth of her income to the poor. She believed that
there was a special holiness in a tithe of a thing, and attributed
the commencement of the downfall of the Church of England to rent
charges, and the commutation of clergymen's incomes. Since Judas,
there had never been, to her thinking, a traitor so base, or an
apostate so sinful, as Colenso; and yet, of the nature of Colenso's
teaching she was as ignorant as the towers of the cathedral opposite
to her.

She believed in Exeter, thinking that there was no other provincial
town in England in which a maiden lady could live safely and
decently. London to her was an abode of sin; and though, as we have
seen, she delighted to call herself one of the county set, she did
not love the fields and lanes. And in Exeter the only place for a
lady was the Close. Southernhay and Northernhay might be very well,
and there was doubtless a respectable neighbourhood on the Heavitree
side of the town; but for the new streets, and especially for the
suburban villas, she had no endurance. She liked to deal at dear
shops; but would leave any shop, either dear or cheap, in regard to
which a printed advertisement should reach her eye. She paid all her
bills at the end of each six months, and almost took a delight in
high prices. She would rejoice that bread should be cheap, and grieve
that meat should be dear, because of the poor; but in regard to other
matters no reduction in the cost of an article ever pleased her.
She had houses as to which she was told by her agent that the rents
should be raised; but she would not raise them. She had others which
it was difficult to let without lowering the rents, but she would not
lower them. All change was to her hateful and unnecessary.

She kept three maid-servants, and a man came in every day to clean
the knives and boots. Service with her was well requited, and much
labour was never exacted. But it was not every young woman who could
live with her. A rigidity as to hours, as to religious exercises,
and as to dress, was exacted, under which many poor girls altogether
broke down; but they who could stand this rigidity came to know that
their places were very valuable. No one belonging to them need want
for aught, when once the good opinion of Miss Stanbury had been
earned. When once she believed in her servant there was nobody like
that servant. There was not a man in Exeter could clean a boot except
Giles Hickbody,--and if not in Exeter, then where else? And her own
maid Martha, who had lived with her now for twenty years, and who had
come with her to the brick house when she first inhabited it, was
such a woman that no other servant anywhere was fit to hold a candle
to her. But then Martha had great gifts,--was never ill, and really
liked having sermons read to her.

Such was Miss Stanbury, who had now discarded her nephew Hugh. She
had never been tenderly affectionate to Hugh, or she would hardly
have asked him to live in London on a hundred a year. She had never
really been kind to him since he was a boy, for although she had paid
for him, she had been almost penurious in her manner of doing so,
and had repeatedly given him to understand, that in the event of her
death not a shilling would be left to him. Indeed, as to that matter
of bequeathing her money, it was understood that it was her purpose
to let it all go back to the Burgess family. With the Burgess family
she had kept up no sustained connection, it being quite understood
that she was never to be asked to meet the only one of them now left
in Exeter. Nor was it as yet known to any one in what manner the
money was to go back, how it was to be divided, or who were to be the
recipients. But she had declared that it should go back, explaining
that she had conceived it to be a duty to let her own relations know
that they would not inherit her wealth at her death.

About a week after she had sent back poor Hugh's letter with the
endorsement on it as to unworthy bread, she summoned Martha to the
back parlour in which she was accustomed to write her letters. It was
one of the theories of her life that different rooms should be used
only for the purposes for which they were intended. She never allowed
pens and ink up into the bed-rooms, and had she ever heard that any
guest in her house was reading in bed, she would have made an instant
personal attack upon that guest, whether male or female, which would
have surprised that guest. Poor Hugh would have got on better with
her had he not been discovered once smoking in the garden. Nor would
she have writing materials in the drawing-room or dining-room. There
was a chamber behind the dining-room in which there was an inkbottle,
and if there was a letter to be written, let the writer go there
and write it. In the writing of many letters, however, she put no
confidence, and regarded penny postage as one of the strongest
evidences of the coming ruin.

"Martha," she said, "I want to speak to you. Sit down. I think I am
going to do something." Martha sat down, but did not speak a word.
There had been no question asked of her, and the time for speaking
had not come. "I am writing to Mrs. Stanbury, at Nuncombe Putney; and
what do you think I am saying to her?"

Now the question had been asked, and it was Martha's duty to reply.

"Writing to Mrs. Stanbury, ma'am?"

"Yes, to Mrs. Stanbury."

"It ain't possible for me to say, ma'am, unless it's to put Mr. Hugh
from going on with the newspapers."

"When my nephew won't be controlled by me, I shan't go elsewhere
to look for control over him; you may be sure of that, Martha. And
remember, Martha, I don't want to have his name mentioned again in
the house. You will tell them all so, if you please."

"He was a very nice gentleman, ma'am."

"Martha, I won't have it; and there's an end of it. I won't have it.
Perhaps I know what goes to the making of a nice gentleman as well as
you do."

"Mr. Hugh, ma'am,--"

"I won't have it, Martha. And when I say so, let there be an end
of it." As she said this, she got up from her chair, and shook her
head, and took a turn about the room. "If I'm not mistress here, I'm
nobody."

"Of course you're mistress here, ma'am."

"And if I don't know what's fit to be done, and what's not fit, I'm
too old to learn; and, what's more, I won't be taught. I'm not going
to have my house crammed with radical incendiary stuff, printed with
ink that stinks, on paper made out of straw. If I can't live without
penny literature, at any rate I'll die without it. Now listen to me."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I have asked Mrs. Stanbury to send one of the girls over here."

"To live, ma'am?" Martha's tone as she asked the question, showed how
deeply she felt its importance.

"Yes, Martha; to live."

"You'll never like it, ma'am."

"I don't suppose I shall."

"You'll never get on with it, ma'am; never. The young lady'll be out
of the house in a week; or if she ain't, somebody else will."

"You mean yourself."

"I'm only a servant, ma'am, and it don't signify about me."

"You're a fool."

"That's true, ma'am, I don't doubt."

"I've sent for her, and we must do the best we can. Perhaps she won't
come."

"She'll come fast enough," said Martha. "But whether she'll stay,
that's a different thing. I don't see how it's possible she's to
stay. I'm told they're feckless, idle young ladies. She'll be so
soft, ma'am, and you,--"

"Well; what of me?"

"You'll be so hard, ma'am!"

"I'm not a bit harder than you, Martha; nor yet so hard. I'll do my
duty, or at least I'll try. Now you know all about it, and you may go
away. There's the letter, and I mean to go out and post it myself."




CHAPTER VIII.

"I KNOW IT WILL DO."


Miss Stanbury carried her letter all the way to the chief post-office
in the city, having no faith whatever in those little subsidiary
receiving houses which are established in different parts of the
city. As for the iron pillar boxes which had been erected of late
years for the receipt of letters, one of which,--a most hateful thing
to her,--stood almost close to her own hall door, she had not the
faintest belief that any letter put into one of them would ever reach
its destination. She could not understand why people should not walk
with their letters to a respectable post-office instead of chucking
them into an iron stump,--as she called it,--out in the middle of the
street with nobody to look after it. Positive orders had been given
that no letter from her house should ever be put into the iron post.
Her epistle to her sister-in-law, of whom she never spoke otherwise
than as Mrs. Stanbury, was as follows:--


   The Close, Exeter, 22nd April, 186--.

   MY DEAR SISTER STANBURY,

   Your son, Hugh, has taken to courses of which I do not
   approve, and therefore I have put an end to my connection
   with him. I shall be happy to entertain your daughter
   Dorothy in my house if you and she approve of such a plan.
   Should you agree to this, she will be welcome to receive
   you or her sister,--_not her brother_,--in my house any
   Wednesday morning between half-past nine and half-past
   twelve. I will endeavour to make my house pleasant to her
   and useful, and will make her an allowance of L25 per
   annum for her clothes as long as she may remain with me. I
   shall expect her to be regular at meals, to be constant in
   going to church, and not to read modern novels.

   I intend the arrangement to be permanent, but of course I
   must retain the power of closing it if, and when, I shall
   see fit. Its permanence must be contingent on my life. I
   have no power of providing for any one _after my death_.

   Yours truly,

   JEMIMA STANBURY.

   I hope the young lady does not have any false hair about
   her.


When this note was received at Nuncombe Putney the amazement which it
occasioned was extreme. Mrs. Stanbury, the widow of the late vicar,
lived in a little morsel of a cottage on the outskirts of the
village, with her two daughters, Priscilla and Dorothy. Their whole
income, out of which it was necessary that they should pay rent for
their cottage, was less than L70 per annum. During the last few
months a five-pound note now and again had found its way to Nuncombe
Putney out of the coffers of the "D. R.;" but the ladies there were
most unwilling to be so relieved, thinking that their brother's
career was of infinitely more importance than their comforts or even
than their living. They were very poor, but they were accustomed
to poverty. The elder sister was older than Hugh, but Dorothy, the
younger, to whom this strange invitation was now made, was two years
younger than her brother, and was now nearly twenty-six. How they had
lived, and dressed themselves, and had continued to be called ladies
by the inhabitants of the village was, and is, and will be a mystery
to those who have had the spending of much larger incomes, but have
still been always poor. But they had lived, had gone to church every
Sunday in decent apparel, and had kept up friendly relations with the
family of the present vicar, and with one or two other neighbours.

When the letter had been read first by the mother, and then aloud,
and then by each of them separately, in the little sitting-room in
the cottage, there was silence among them,--for neither of them
desired to be the first to express an opinion. Nothing could be more
natural than the proposed arrangement, had it not been made unnatural
by a quarrel existing nearly throughout the whole life of the person
most nearly concerned. Priscilla, the elder daughter, was the one of
the family who was generally the ruler, and she at last expressed an
opinion adverse to the arrangement. "My dear, you would never be able
to bear it," said Priscilla.

"I suppose not," said Mrs. Stanbury, plaintively.

"I could try," said Dorothy.

"My dear, you don't know that woman," said Priscilla.

"Of course I don't know her," said Dorothy.

"She has always been very good to Hugh," said Mrs. Stanbury.

"I don't think she has been good to him at all," said Priscilla.

"But think what a saving it would be," said Dorothy. "And I could
send home half of what Aunt Stanbury says she would give me."

"You must not think of that," said Priscilla, "because she expects
you to be dressed."

"I should like to try," she said, before the morning was over,--"if
you and mamma don't think it would be wrong."

The conference that day ended in a written request to Aunt Stanbury
that a week might be allowed for consideration,--the letter being
written by Priscilla, but signed with her mother's name,--and with a
very long epistle to Hugh, in which each of the ladies took a part,
and in which advice and decision were demanded. It was very evident
to Hugh that his mother and Dorothy were for compliance, and that
Priscilla was for refusal. But he never doubted for a moment. "Of
course she will go," he said in his answer to Priscilla; "and she
must understand that Aunt Stanbury is a most excellent woman, as true
as the sun, thoroughly honest, with no fault but this, that she likes
her own way. Of course Dolly can go back again if she finds the house
too hard for her." Then he sent another five-pound note, observing
that Dolly's journey to Exeter would cost money, and that her
wardrobe would want some improvement.

"I'm very glad that it isn't me," said Priscilla, who, however, did
not attempt to oppose the decision of the man of the family. Dorothy
was greatly gratified by the excitement of the proposed change in
her life, and the following letter, the product of the wisdom of the
family, was written by Mrs. Stanbury:--


   Nuncombe Putney, 1st May, 186--.

   MY DEAR SISTER STANBURY,

   We are all very thankful for the kindness of your offer,
   which my daughter Dorothy will accept with feelings of
   affectionate gratitude. I think you will find her docile,
   good-tempered, and amiable; but a mother, of course,
   speaks well of her own child. She will endeavour to comply
   with your wishes in all things reasonable. She, of course,
   understands that should the arrangement not suit, she will
   come back home on the expression of your wish that it
   should be so. And she will, of course, do the same, if she
   should find that living in Exeter does not suit herself.
   [This sentence was inserted at the instance of Priscilla,
   after much urgent expostulation.] Dorothy will be ready
   to go to you on any day you may fix after the 7th of this
   month.

   Believe me to remain,
   Your affectionate sister-in-law,

   P. STANBURY.


"She's going to come," said Miss Stanbury to Martha, holding the
letter in her hand.

"I never doubted her coming, ma'am," said Martha.

"And I mean her to stay, unless it's her own fault. She'll have the
small room up-stairs, looking out front, next to mine. And you must
go and fetch her."

"Go and fetch her, ma'am?"

"Yes. If you won't, I must."

"She ain't a child, ma'am. She's twenty-five years old, and surely
she can come to Exeter by herself, with a railroad all the way from
Lessboro'."

"There's no place a young woman is insulted in so bad as those
railway carriages, and I won't have her come by herself. If she is to
live with me, she shall begin decently at any rate."

Martha argued the matter, but was of course beaten, and on the day
fixed started early in the morning for Nuncombe Putney, and returned
in the afternoon to the Close with her charge. By the time that she
had reached the house she had in some degree reconciled herself to
the dangerous step that her mistress had taken, partly by perceiving
that in face Dorothy Stanbury was very like her brother Hugh, and
partly, perhaps, by finding that the young woman's manner to herself
was both gentle and sprightly. She knew well that gentleness alone,
without some back-bone of strength under it, would not long succeed
with Miss Stanbury. "As far as I can judge, ma'am, she's a sweet
young lady," said Martha, when she reported her arrival to her
mistress, who had retired up-stairs to her own room, in order that
she might thus hear a word of tidings from her lieutenant, before she
showed herself on the field of action.

"Sweet! I hate your sweets," said Miss Stanbury.

"Then why did you send for her, ma'am?"

"Because I was an old fool. But I must go down and receive her, I
suppose."

Then Miss Stanbury went down, almost trembling as she went. The
matter to her was one of vital importance. She was going to change
the whole tenour of her life for the sake,--as she told herself,--of
doing her duty by a relative whom she did not even know. But we may
fairly suppose that there had in truth been a feeling beyond that,
which taught her to desire to have some one near her to whom she
might not only do her duty as guardian, but whom she might also love.
She had tried this with her nephew; but her nephew had been too
strong for her, too far from her, too unlike to herself. When he came
to see her he had smoked a short pipe,--which had been shocking to
her,--and he had spoken of Reform, and Trades' Unions, and meetings
in the parks, as though they had not been Devil's ordinances. And he
was very shy of going to church,--utterly refusing to be taken there
twice on the same Sunday. And he had told his aunt that owing to a
peculiar and unfortunate weakness in his constitution he could not
listen to the reading of sermons. And then she was almost certain
that he had once kissed one of the maids! She had found it impossible
to manage him in any way; and when he positively declared himself as
permanently devoted to the degrading iniquities of penny newspapers,
she had thought it best to cast him off altogether. Now, thus late in
life, she was going to make another venture, to try an altogether new
mode of living,--in order, as she said to herself, that she might be
of some use to somebody,--but, no doubt, with a further unexpressed
hope in her bosom, that the solitude of her life might be relieved by
the companionship of some one whom she might love. She had arrayed
herself in a clean cap and her evening gown, and she went down-stairs
looking sternly, with a fully-developed idea that she must initiate
her new duties by assuming a mastery at once. But inwardly she
trembled, and was intensely anxious as to the first appearance of
her niece. Of course there would be a little morsel of a bonnet.
She hated those vile patches,--dirty flat daubs of millinery as
she called them; but they had become too general for her to refuse
admittance for such a thing within her doors. But a chignon, a
bandbox behind the noddle,--she would not endure. And then there were
other details of feminine gear, which shall not be specified, as to
which she was painfully anxious,--almost forgetting in her anxiety
that the dress of this young woman whom she was about to see must
have ever been regulated by the closest possible economy.

The first thing she saw on entering the room was a dark straw hat,
a straw hat with a strong penthouse flap to it, and her heart was
immediately softened.

"My dear," she said, "I am glad to see you."

Dorothy, who, on her part, was trembling also, whose position was one
to justify most intense anxiety, murmured some reply.

"Take off your hat," said the aunt, "and let me give you a kiss."

The hat was taken off and the kiss was given. There was certainly no
chignon there. Dorothy Stanbury was light haired, with almost flaxen
ringlets, worn after the old-fashioned way which we used to think so
pretty when we were young. She had very soft grey eyes, which ever
seemed to beseech you to do something when they looked at you, and
her mouth was a beseeching mouth. There are women who, even amidst
their strongest efforts at giving assistance to others, always look
as though they were asking aid themselves, and such a one was Dorothy
Stanbury. Her complexion was pale, but there was always present in
it a tint of pink running here and there, changing with every word
she spoke, changing indeed with every pulse of her heart. Nothing
ever was softer than her cheek; but her hands were thin and hard,
and almost fibrous with the working of the thread upon them. She
was rather tall than otherwise, but that extreme look of feminine
dependence which always accompanied her, took away something even
from the appearance of her height.

"These are all real, at any rate," said her aunt, taking hold of the
curls, "and won't be hurt by a little cold water."

Dorothy smiled but said nothing, and was then taken up to her
bed-room. Indeed, when the aunt and niece sat down to dinner together
Dorothy had hardly spoken. But Miss Stanbury had spoken, and things
upon the whole had gone very well.

"I hope you like roast chicken, my dear?" said Miss Stanbury.

"Oh, thank you."

"And bread sauce? Jane, I do hope the bread sauce is hot."

If the reader thinks that Miss Stanbury was indifferent to
considerations of the table, the reader is altogether ignorant of
Miss Stanbury's character. When Miss Stanbury gave her niece the
liver-wing, and picked out from the attendant sausages one that had
been well browned and properly broken in the frying, she meant to do
a real kindness.

"And now, my dear, there are mashed potatoes and bread sauce. As for
green vegetables, I don't know what has become of them. They tell me
I may have green peas from France at a shilling a quart; but if I
can't have English green peas, I won't have any."

Miss Stanbury was standing up as she said this,--as she always did on
such occasions, liking to have a full mastery over the dish.

"I hope you like it, my dear?"

"Everything is so very nice."

"That's right. I like to see a young woman with an appetite. Remember
that God sends the good things for us to eat; and as long as we
don't take more than our share, and give away something to those who
haven't a fair share of their own, I for one think it quite right to
enjoy my victuals. Jane, this bread sauce isn't hot. It never is hot.
Don't tell me; I know what hot is!"

Dorothy thought that her aunt was very angry; but Jane knew Miss
Stanbury better, and bore the scolding without shaking in her shoes.

"And now, my dear, you must take a glass of port wine. It will do you
good after your journey."

Dorothy attempted to explain that she never did drink any wine, but
her aunt talked down her scruples at once.

"One glass of port wine never did anybody any harm, and as there is
port wine, it must be intended that somebody should drink it."

Miss Stanbury, as she sipped hers out very slowly, seemed to enjoy it
much. Although May had come, there was a fire in the grate, and she
sat with her toes on the fender, and her silk dress folded up above
her knees. She sat quite silent in this position for a quarter of an
hour, every now and then raising her glass to her lips. Dorothy sat
silent also. To her, in the newness of her condition, speech was
impossible.

"I think it will do," said Miss Stanbury at last.

As Dorothy had no idea what would do, she could make no reply to
this.

"I'm sure it will do," said Miss Stanbury, after another short
interval. "You're as like my poor sister as two eggs. You don't have
headaches, do you?"

Dorothy said that she was not ordinarily affected in that way.

"When girls have headaches it comes from tight-lacing, and not
walking enough, and carrying all manner of nasty smells about with
them. I know what headaches mean. How is a woman not to have a
headache, when she carries a thing on the back of her poll as big
as a gardener's wheel-barrow? Come, it's a fine evening, and we'll
go out and look at the towers. You've never even seen them yet, I
suppose?"

So they went out, and finding the verger at the Cathedral door, he
being a great friend of Miss Stanbury's, they walked up and down the
aisles, and Dorothy was instructed as to what would be expected from
her in regard to the outward forms of religion. She was to go to the
Cathedral service on the morning of every week-day, and on Sundays in
the afternoon. On Sunday mornings she was to attend the little church
of St. Margaret. On Sunday evenings it was the practice of Miss
Stanbury to read a sermon in the dining-room to all of whom her
household consisted. Did Dorothy like daily services? Dorothy, who
was more patient than her brother, and whose life had been much less
energetic, said that she had no objection to going to church every
day when there was not too much to do.

"There never need be too much to do to attend the Lord's house," said
Miss Stanbury, somewhat angrily.

"Only if you've got to make the beds," said Dorothy.

"My dear, I beg your pardon," said Miss Stanbury. "I beg your pardon,
heartily. I'm a thoughtless old woman, I know. Never mind. Now, we'll
go in."

Later in the evening, when she gave her niece a candlestick to go to
bed, she repeated what she had said before.

"It'll do very well, my dear. I'm sure it'll do. But if you read in
bed either night or morning, I'll never forgive you."

This last caution was uttered with so much energy, that Dorothy gave
a little jump as she promised obedience.




CHAPTER IX.

SHEWING HOW THE QUARREL PROGRESSED AGAIN.


On one Sunday morning, when the month of May was nearly over, Hugh
Stanbury met Colonel Osborne in Curzon Street, not many yards from
Trevelyan's door. Colonel Osborne had just come from the house, and
Stanbury was going to it. Hugh had not spoken to Osborne since the
day, now a fortnight since, on which both of them had witnessed
the scene in the park; but on that occasion they had been left
together, and it had been impossible for them not to say a few words
about their mutual friends. Osborne had expressed his sorrow that
there should be any misunderstanding, and had called Trevelyan a
"confounded fool." Stanbury had suggested that there was something in
it which they two probably did not understand, and that matters would
be sure to come all right. "The truth is Trevelyan bullies her," said
Osborne; "and if he goes on with that he'll be sure to get the worst
of it." Now,--on this present occasion,--Stanbury asked whether he
would find the ladies at home. "Yes, they are both there," said
Osborne. "Trevelyan has just gone out in a huff. She'll never be able
to go on living with him. Anybody can see that with half an eye."
Then he had passed on, and Hugh Stanbury knocked at the door.

He was shown up into the drawing-room, and found both the sisters
there; but he could see that Mrs. Trevelyan had been in tears. The
avowed purpose of his visit,--that is, the purpose which he had
avowed to himself,--was to talk about his sister Dorothy. He had told
Miss Rowley, while walking in the park with her, how Dorothy had been
invited over to Exeter by her aunt, and how he had counselled his
sister to accept the invitation. Nora had expressed herself very
interested as to Dorothy's fate, and had said how much she wished
that she knew Dorothy. We all understand how sweet it is, when two
such persons as Hugh Stanbury and Nora Rowley cannot speak of their
love for each other, to say these tender things in regard to some
one else. Nora had been quite anxious to know how Dorothy had been
received by that old conservative warrior, as Hugh Stanbury had
called his aunt, and Hugh had now come to Curzon Street with a letter
from Dorothy in his pocket. But when he saw that there had been some
cause for trouble, he hardly knew how to introduce his subject.

"Trevelyan is not at home?" he asked.

"No," said Emily, with her face turned away. "He went out and left us
a quarter of an hour since. Did you meet Colonel Osborne?"

"I was speaking to him in the street not a moment since." As he
answered he could see that Nora was making some sign to her sister.
Nora was most anxious that Emily should not speak of what had just
occurred, but her signs were all thrown away. "Somebody must tell
him," said Mrs. Trevelyan, "and I don't know who can do so better
than so old a friend as Mr. Stanbury."

"Tell what, and to whom?" he asked.

"No, no, no," said Nora.

"Then I must tell him myself," said she, "that is all. As for
standing this kind of life, it is out of the question. I should
either destroy myself or go mad."

"If I could do any good I should be so happy," said Stanbury.

"Nobody can do any good between a man and his wife," said Nora.

Then Mrs. Trevelyan began to tell her story, putting aside, with an
impatient motion of her hands, the efforts which her sister made to
stop her. She was very angry, and as she told it, standing up, all
trace of sobbing soon disappeared from her voice. "The fact is," she
said, "he does not know his own mind, or what to fear or what not to
fear. He told me that I was never to see Colonel Osborne again."

"What is the use, Emily, of your repeating that to Mr. Stanbury?"

"Why should I not repeat it? Colonel Osborne is papa's oldest friend,
and mine too. He is a man I like very much,--who is a real friend to
me. As he is old enough to be my father, one would have thought that
my husband could have found no objection."

"I don't know much about his age," said Stanbury.

"It does make a difference. It must make a difference. I should not
think of becoming so intimate with a younger man. But, however, when
my husband told me that I was to see him no more,--though the insult
nearly killed me, I determined to obey him. An order was given that
Colonel Osborne should not be admitted. You may imagine how painful
it was; but it was given, and I was prepared to bear it."

"But he had been lunching with you on that Sunday."

"Yes; that is just it. As soon as it was given Louis would rescind
it, because he was ashamed of what he had done. He was so jealous
that he did not want me to see the man; and yet he was so afraid that
it should be known that he ordered me to see him. He ordered him into
the house at last, and I,--I went away up-stairs."

"That was on the Sunday that we met you in the park?" asked Stanbury.

"What is the use of going back to all that?" said Nora.

"Then I met him by chance in the park," continued Mrs. Trevelyan,
"and because he said a word which I knew would anger my husband, I
left him abruptly. Since that my husband has begged that things might
go on as they were before. He could not bear that Colonel Osborne
himself should think that he was jealous. Well; I gave way, and the
man has been here as before. And now there has been a scene which has
been disgraceful to us all. I cannot stand it, and I won't. If he
does not behave himself with more manliness,--I will leave him."

"But what can I do?"

"Nothing, Mr. Stanbury," said Nora.

"Yes; you can do this. You can go to him from me, and can tell him
that I have chosen you as a messenger because you are his friend.
You can tell him that I am willing to obey him in anything. If he
chooses, I will consent that Colonel Osborne shall be asked never
to come into my presence again. It will be very absurd; but if he
chooses, I will consent. Or I will let things go on as they are, and
continue to receive my father's old friend when he comes. But if I
do, I will not put up with an imputation on my conduct because he
does not like the way in which the gentleman thinks fit to address
me. I take upon myself to say that if any man alive spoke to me as
he ought not to speak, I should know how to resent it myself. But I
cannot fly into a passion with an old gentleman for calling me by my
Christian name, when he has done so habitually for years."

From all this it will appear that the great godsend of a rich
marriage, with all manner of attendant comforts, which had come in
the way of the Rowley family as they were living at the Mandarins,
had not turned out to be an unmixed blessing. In the matter of the
quarrel, as it had hitherto progressed, the husband had perhaps been
more in the wrong than his wife; but the wife, in spite of all her
promises of perfect obedience, had proved herself to be a woman very
hard to manage. Had she been earnest in her desire to please her lord
and master in this matter of Colonel Osborne's visits,--to please
him even after he had so vacillated in his own behests,--she might
probably have so received the man as to have quelled all feeling of
jealousy in her husband's bosom. But instead of doing so she had
told herself that as she was innocent, and as her innocence had been
acknowledged, and as she had been specially instructed to receive
this man whom she had before been specially instructed not to
receive, she would now fall back exactly into her old manner with
him. She had told Colonel Osborne never to allude to that meeting
in the park, and to ask no creature as to what had occasioned her
conduct on that Sunday; thus having a mystery with him, which of
course he understood as well as she did. And then she had again taken
to writing notes to him and receiving notes from him,--none of which
she showed to her husband. She was more intimate with him than ever,
and yet she hardly ever mentioned his name to her husband. Trevelyan,
acknowledging to himself that he had done no good by his former
interference, feeling that he had put himself in the wrong on that
occasion, and that his wife had got the better of him, had borne with
all this, with soreness and a moody savageness of general conduct,
but still without further words of anger with reference to the man
himself. But now, on this Sunday, when his wife had been closeted
with Colonel Osborne in the back drawing-room, leaving him with his
sister-in-law, his temper had become too hot for him, and he had
suddenly left the house, declaring that he would not walk with the
two women on that day. "Why not, Louis?" his wife had said, coming up
to him. "Never mind why not, but I shall not," he had answered; and
then he left the room.

"What is the matter with him?" Colonel Osborne had asked.

"It is impossible to say what is the matter with him," Mrs. Trevelyan
had replied. After that she had at once gone up-stairs to her child,
telling herself that she was doing all that the strictest propriety
could require in leaving the man's society as soon as her husband
was gone. Then there was an awkward minute or two between Nora and
Colonel Osborne, and he took his leave.

Stanbury at last promised that he would see Trevelyan, repeating,
however, very frequently that often-used assertion, that no task
is so hopeless as that of interfering between a man and his wife.
Nevertheless he promised, and undertook to look for Trevelyan at
the Acrobats on that afternoon. At last he got a moment in which
to produce the letter from his sister, and was able to turn the
conversation for a few minutes to his own affairs. Dorothy's letter
was read and discussed by both the ladies with much zeal. "It is
quite a strange world to me," said Dorothy, "but I am beginning to
find myself more at my ease than I was at first. Aunt Stanbury is
very good-natured, and when I know what she wants, I think I shall be
able to please her. What you said of her disposition is not so bad to
me, as of course a girl in my position does not expect to have her
own way."

"Why shouldn't she have her share of her own way as well as anybody
else?" said Mrs. Trevelyan.

"Poor Dorothy would never want to have her own way," said Hugh.

"She ought to want it," said Mrs. Trevelyan.

"She has spirit enough to turn if she's trodden on," said Hugh.

"That's more than what most women have," said Mrs. Trevelyan.

Then he went on with the letter. "She is very generous, and has given
me L6 5_s._ in advance of my allowance. When I said I would send part
of it home to mamma, she seemed to be angry, and said that she wanted
me always to look nice about my clothes. She told me afterwards to do
as I pleased, and that I might try my own way for the first quarter.
So I was frightened, and only sent thirty shillings. We went out
the other evening to drink tea with Mrs. MacHugh, an old lady whose
husband was once dean. I had to go, and it was all very nice. There
were a great many clergymen there, but many of them were young men."
"Poor Dorothy," exclaimed Nora. "One of them was the minor canon who
chants the service every morning. He is a bachelor--" "Then there is
a hope for her," said Nora--"and he always talks a little as though
he were singing the Litany." "That's very bad," said Nora; "fancy
having a husband to sing the Litany to you always." "Better that,
perhaps, than having him always singing something else," said Mrs.
Trevelyan.

It was decided between them that Dorothy's state might on the whole
be considered as flourishing, but that Hugh was bound as a brother
to go down to Exeter and look after her. He explained, however, that
he was expressly debarred from calling on his sister, even between
the hours of half-past nine and half-past twelve on Wednesday
mornings, and that he could not see her at all unless he did so
surreptitiously.

"If I were you I would see my sister in spite of all the old viragos
in Exeter," said Mrs. Trevelyan. "I have no idea of anybody taking so
much upon themselves."

"You must remember, Mrs. Trevelyan, that she has taken upon herself
much also in the way of kindness, in doing what perhaps I ought to
call charity. I wonder what I should have been doing now if it were
not for my Aunt Stanbury."

He took his leave, and went at once from Curzon Street to Trevelyan's
club, and found that Trevelyan had not been there as yet. In another
hour he called again, and was about to give it up, when he met the
man whom he was seeking on the steps.

"I was looking for you," he said.

"Well, here I am."

It was impossible not to see in the look of Trevelyan's face, and not
to hear in the tone of his voice, that he was, at the moment, in an
angry and unhappy frame of mind. He did not move as though he were
willing to accompany his friend, and seemed almost to know beforehand
that the approaching interview was to be an unpleasant one.

"I want to speak to you, and perhaps you wouldn't mind taking a turn
with me," said Stanbury.

But Trevelyan objected to this, and led the way into the club
waiting-room. A club waiting-room is always a gloomy, unpromising
place for a confidential conversation, and so Stanbury felt it to be
on the present occasion. But he had no alternative. There they were
together, and he must do as he had promised. Trevelyan kept on his
hat and did not sit down, and looked very gloomy. Stanbury having
to commence without any assistance from outward auxiliaries, almost
forgot what it was that he had promised to do.

"I have just come from Curzon Street," he said.

"Well!"

"At least I was there about two hours ago."

"It doesn't matter, I suppose, whether it was two hours or two
minutes," said Trevelyan.

"Not in the least. The fact is this; I happened to come upon the two
girls there, when they were very unhappy, and your wife asked me to
come and say a word or two to you."

"Was Colonel Osborne there?"

"No; I had met him in the street a minute or two before."

"Well, now; look here, Stanbury. If you'll take my advice, you'll
keep your hands out of this. It is not but that I regard you as being
as good a friend as I have in the world; but, to own the truth, I
cannot put up with interference between myself and my wife."

"Of course you understand that I only come as a messenger."


   [Illustration: "I only come as a messenger."]


"You had better not be a messenger in such a cause. If she has
anything to say she can say it to myself."

"Am I to understand that you will not listen to me?"

"I had rather not."

"I think you are wrong," said Stanbury.

"In that matter you must allow me to judge for myself. I can easily
understand that a young woman like her, especially with her sister to
back her, should induce such a one as you to take her part."

"I am taking nobody's part. You wrong your wife, and you especially
wrong Miss Rowley."

"If you please, Stanbury, we will say nothing more about it." This
Trevelyan said holding the door of the room half open in his hand, so
that the other was obliged to pass out through it.

"Good evening," said Stanbury, with much anger.

"Good evening," said Trevelyan, with an assumption of indifference.

Stanbury went away in absolute wrath, though the trouble which he had
had in the interview was much less than he had anticipated, and the
result quite as favourable. He had known that no good would come of
his visit. And yet he was now full of anger against Trevelyan, and
had become a partisan in the matter,--which was exactly that which he
had resolutely determined that he would not become. "I believe that
no woman on earth could live with him," he said to himself as he
walked away. "It was always the same with him,--a desire for mastery,
which he did not know how to use when he had obtained it. If it were
Nora, instead of the other sister, he would break her sweet heart
within a month."

Trevelyan dined at his club, and hardly spoke a word to any one
during the evening. At about eleven he started to walk home, but
went by no means straight thither, taking a long turn through St.
James's Park, and by Pimlico. It was necessary that he should make
up his mind as to what he would do. He had sternly refused the
interference of a friend, and he must be prepared to act on his own
responsibility. He knew well that he could not begin again with his
wife on the next day as though nothing had happened. Stanbury's visit
to him, if it had done nothing else, had made this impossible. He
determined that he would not go to her room to-night, but would see
her as early as possible in the morning;--and would then talk to her
with all the wisdom of which he was master.

How many husbands have come to the same resolution; and how few of
them have found the words of wisdom to be efficacious!




CHAPTER X.

HARD WORDS.


   [Illustration]

It is to be feared that men in general do not regret as they should
do any temporary ill-feeling, or irritating jealousy between husbands
and wives, of which they themselves have been the cause. The author
is not speaking now of actual love-makings, of intrigues and devilish
villany, either perpetrated or imagined; but rather of those passing
gusts of short-lived and unfounded suspicion to which, as to other
accidents, very well-regulated families may occasionally be liable.
When such suspicion rises in the bosom of a wife, some woman
intervening or being believed to intervene between her and the man
who is her own, that woman who has intervened or been supposed to
intervene, will either glory in her position or bewail it bitterly,
according to the circumstances of the case. We will charitably
suppose that, in a great majority of such instances, she will bewail
it. But when such painful jealous doubts annoy the husband, the
man who is in the way will almost always feel himself justified in
extracting a slightly pleasurable sensation from the transaction.
He will say to himself probably, unconsciously indeed, and with
no formed words, that the husband is an ass, an ass if he be in
a twitter either for that which he has kept or for that which he
has been unable to keep, that the lady has shewn a good deal of
appreciation, and that he himself is--is--is--quite a Captain bold
of Halifax. All the while he will not have the slightest intention
of wronging the husband's honour, and will have received no greater
favour from the intimacy accorded to him than the privilege of
running on one day to Marshall and Snellgrove's, the haberdashers,
and on another to Handcocks', the jewellers. If he be allowed to buy
a present or two, or to pay a few shillings here or there, he has
achieved much. Terrible things now and again do occur, even here in
England; but women, with us, are slow to burn their household gods.
It happens, however, occasionally, as we are all aware, that the
outward garments of a domestic deity will be a little scorched; and
when this occurs, the man who is the interloper, will generally find
a gentle consolation in his position, let its interest be ever so
flaccid and unreal, and its troubles in running about, and the like,
ever so considerable and time-destructive.

It was so certainly with Colonel Osborne when he became aware that
his intimacy with Mrs. Trevelyan had caused her husband uneasiness.
He was not especially a vicious man, and had now, as we know, reached
a time of life when such vice as that in question might be supposed
to have lost its charm for him. A gentleman over fifty, popular
in London, with a seat in Parliament, fond of good dinners, and
possessed of everything which the world has to give, could hardly
have wished to run away with his neighbour's wife, or to have
destroyed the happiness of his old friend's daughter. Such wickedness
had never come into his head; but he had a certain pleasure in being
the confidential friend of a very pretty woman; and when he heard
that that pretty woman's husband was jealous, the pleasure was
enhanced rather than otherwise. On that Sunday, as he had left the
house in Curzon Street, he had told Stanbury that Trevelyan had just
gone off in a huff, which was true enough, and he had walked from
thence down Clarges Street, and across Piccadilly to St. James's
Street, with a jauntier step than usual, because he was aware that he
himself had been the occasion of that trouble. This was very wrong;
but there is reason to believe that many such men as Colonel Osborne,
who are bachelors at fifty, are equally malicious.

He thought a good deal about it on that evening, and was still
thinking about it on the following morning. He had promised to go up
to Curzon Street on the Monday,--really on some most trivial mission,
on a matter of business which no man could have taken in hand whose
time was of the slightest value to himself or any one else. But now
that mission assumed an importance in his eyes, and seemed to require
either a special observance or a special excuse. There was no real
reason why he should not have stayed away from Curzon Street for the
next fortnight; and had he done so he need have made no excuse to
Mrs. Trevelyan when he met her. But the opportunity for a little
excitement was not to be missed, and instead of going he wrote to her
the following note:--


   Albany, Monday.

   DEAR EMILY,

   What was it all about yesterday? I was to have come up
   with the words of that opera, but perhaps it will be
   better to send it. If it be not wicked, do tell me whether
   I am to consider myself as a banished man. I thought that
   our little meetings were so innocent,--and so pleasant!
   The green-eyed monster is of all monsters the most
   monstrous,--and the most unreasonable. Pray let me have a
   line, if it be not forbidden.

   Yours always heartily,

   F. O.

   Putting aside all joking, I beg you to remember that I
   consider myself always entitled to be regarded by you as
   your most sincere friend.


When this was brought to Mrs. Trevelyan, about twelve o'clock in
the day, she had already undergone the infliction of those words
of wisdom which her husband had prepared for her, and which were
threatened at the close of the last chapter. Her husband had come
up to her while she was yet in her bed-room, and had striven hard
to prevail against her. But his success had been very doubtful. In
regard to the number of words, Mrs. Trevelyan certainly had had
the best of it. As far as any understanding, one of another, was
concerned, the conversation had been useless. She believed herself to
be injured and aggrieved, and would continue so to assert, let him
implore her to listen to him as loudly as he might. "Yes;--I will
listen, and I will obey you," she had said, "but I will not endure
such insults without telling you that I feel them." Then he had left
her, fully conscious that he had failed, and went forth out of his
house into the City, to his club, to wander about the streets, not
knowing what he had best do to bring back that state of tranquillity
at home which he felt to be so desirable.

Mrs. Trevelyan was alone when Colonel Osborne's note was brought to
her, and was at that moment struggling with herself in anger against
her husband. If he laid any command upon her, she would execute it;
but she would never cease to tell him that he had ill-used her. She
would din it into his ears, let him come to her as often as he might
with his wise words. Wise words! What was the use of wise words when
a man was such a fool in nature? And as for Colonel Osborne,--she
would see him if he came to her three times a day, unless her husband
gave some clearly intelligible order to the contrary. She was
fortifying her mind with this resolution when Colonel Osborne's
letter was brought to her. She asked whether any servant was waiting
for an answer. No,--the servant, who had left it, had gone at once.
She read the note, and sat working, with it before her, for a quarter
of an hour; and then walked over to her desk and answered it.


   MY DEAR COLONEL OSBORNE,

   It will be best to say nothing whatever about the
   occurrence of yesterday; and if possible, not to
   think of it. As far as I am concerned, I wish for no
   change;--except that people should be more reasonable.
   You can call of course whenever you please; and I am very
   grateful for your expression of friendship.

   Yours most sincerely,

   EMILY TREVELYAN.

   Thanks for the words of the opera.


When she had written this, being determined that all should be open
and above board, she put a penny stamp on the envelope, and desired
that the letter should be posted. But she destroyed that which she
had received from Colonel Osborne. In all things she would act as she
would have done if her husband had not been so foolish, and there
could have been no reason why she should have kept so unimportant a
communication.

In the course of the day Trevelyan passed through the hall to the
room which he himself was accustomed to occupy behind the parlour,
and as he did so saw the note lying ready to be posted, took it up,
and read the address. He held it for a moment in his hand, then
replaced it on the hall table, and passed on. When he reached his own
table he sat down hurriedly, and took up in his hand some Review that
was lying ready for him to read. But he was quite unable to fix his
mind upon the words before him. He had spoken to his wife on that
morning in the strongest language he could use as to the unseemliness
of her intimacy with Colonel Osborne; and then, the first thing she
had done when his back was turned was to write to this very Colonel
Osborne, and tell him, no doubt, what had occurred between her and
her husband. He sat thinking of it all for many minutes. He would
probably have declared himself that he had thought of it for an hour
as he sat there. Then he got up, went up-stairs and walked slowly
into the drawing-room. There he found his wife sitting with her
sister. "Nora," he said, "I want to speak to Emily. Will you forgive
me, if I ask you to leave us for a few minutes?" Nora, with an
anxious look at Emily, got up and left the room.

"Why do you send her away?" said Mrs. Trevelyan.

"Because I wish to be alone with you for a few minutes. Since what I
said to you this morning, you have written to Colonel Osborne."

"Yes;--I have. I do not know how you have found it out; but I suppose
you keep a watch on me."

"I keep no watch on you. As I came into the house, I saw your letter
lying in the hall."

"Very well. You could have read it if you pleased."

"Emily, this matter is becoming very serious, and I strongly advise
you to be on your guard in what you say. I will bear much for you,
and much for our boy; but I will not bear to have my name made a
reproach."

"Sir, if you think your name is shamed by me, we had better part,"
said Mrs. Trevelyan, rising from her chair, and confronting him with
a look before which his own almost quailed.

"It may be that we had better part," he said, slowly. "But in the
first place I wish you to tell me what were the contents of that
letter."

"If it was there when you came in, no doubt it is there still. Go and
look at it."

"That is no answer to me. I have desired you to tell me what are its
contents."

"I shall not tell you. I will not demean myself by repeating anything
so insignificant in my own justification. If you suspect me of
writing what I should not write, you will suspect me also of lying to
conceal it."

"Have you heard from Colonel Osborne this morning?"

"I have."

"And where is his letter?"

"I have destroyed it."

Again he paused, trying to think what he had better do, trying to be
calm. And she stood still opposite to him, confronting him with the
scorn of her bright angry eyes. Of course, he was not calm. He was
the very reverse of calm. "And you refuse to tell me what you wrote,"
he said.

"The letter is there," she answered, pointing away towards the door.
"If you want to play the spy, go and look at it for yourself."

"Do you call me a spy?"

"And what have you called me? Because you are a husband, is the
privilege of vituperation to be all on your side?"

"It is impossible that I should put up with this," he said;--"quite
impossible. This would kill me. Anything is better than this. My
present orders to you are not to see Colonel Osborne, not to write
to him or have any communication with him, and to put under cover to
me, unopened, any letter that may come from him. I shall expect your
implicit obedience to these orders."

"Well;--go on."

"Have I your promise?"

"No;--no. You have no promise. I will make no promise exacted from me
in so disgraceful a manner."

"You refuse to obey me?"

"I will refuse nothing, and will promise nothing."

"Then we must part;--that is all. I will take care that you shall
hear from me before to-morrow morning."

So saying, he left the room, and, passing through the hall, saw that
the letter had been taken away.




CHAPTER XI.

LADY MILBOROUGH AS AMBASSADOR.


"Of course, I know you are right," said Nora to her sister;--"right
as far as Colonel Osborne is concerned; but nevertheless you ought to
give way."

"And be trampled upon?" said Mrs. Trevelyan.

"Yes; and be trampled upon, if he should trample on you;--which,
however, he is the last man in the world to do."

"And to endure any insult and any names? You yourself--you would be a
Griselda, I suppose."

"I don't want to talk about myself," said Nora, "nor about Griselda.
But I know that, however unreasonable it may seem, you had better
give way to him now and tell him what there was in the note to
Colonel Osborne."

"Never! He has ordered me not to see him or to write to him, or to
open his letters,--having, mind you, ordered just the reverse a day
or two before; and I will obey him. Absurd as it is, I will obey him.
But as for submitting to him, and letting him suppose that I think
he is right;--never! I should be lying to him then, and I will never
lie to him. He has said that we must part, and I suppose it will be
better so. How can a woman live with a man that suspects her? He
cannot take my baby from me."

There were many such conversations as the above between the two
sisters before Mrs. Trevelyan received from her husband the
communication with which she had been threatened. And Nora, acting on
her own judgment in the matter, made an attempt to see Mr. Trevelyan,
writing to him a pretty little note, and beseeching him to be kind to
her. But he declined to see her, and the two women sat at home, with
the baby between them, holding such pleasant conversations as that
above narrated. When such tempests occur in a family, a woman will
generally suffer the least during the thick of the tempest. While
the hurricane is at the fiercest, she will be sustained by the most
thorough conviction that the right is on her side, that she is
aggrieved, that there is nothing for her to acknowledge, and no
position that she need surrender. Whereas her husband will desire a
compromise, even amidst the violence of the storm. But afterwards,
when the wind has lulled, but while the heavens around are still all
black and murky, then the woman's sufferings begin. When passion
gives way to thought and memory, she feels the loneliness of her
position,--the loneliness, and the possible degradation. It is all
very well for a man to talk about his name and his honour; but it is
the woman's honour and the woman's name that are, in truth, placed in
jeopardy. Let the woman do what she will, the man can, in truth, show
his face in the world;--and, after awhile, does show his face. But
the woman may be compelled to veil hers, either by her own fault, or
by his. Mrs. Trevelyan was now told that she was to be separated from
her husband, and she did not, at any rate, believe that she had done
any harm. But, if such separation did come, where could she live,
what could she do, what position in the world would she possess?
Would not her face be, in truth, veiled as effectually as though she
had disgraced herself and her husband?

And then there was that terrible question about the child. Mrs.
Trevelyan had said a dozen times to her sister that her husband could
not take the boy away from her. Nora, however, had never assented to
this, partly from a conviction of her own ignorance, not knowing what
might be the power of a husband in such a matter, and partly thinking
that any argument would be good and fair by which she could induce
her sister to avoid a catastrophe so terrible as that which was now
threatened.

"I suppose he could take him, if he chose," she said at last.

"I don't believe he is wicked like that," said Mrs. Trevelyan. "He
would not wish to kill me."

"But he will say that he loves baby as well as you do."

"He will never take my child from me. He could never be so bad as
that."

"And you will never be so bad as to leave him," said Nora after a
pause. "I will not believe that it can come to that. You know that he
is good at heart,--that nobody on earth loves you as he does."

So they went on for two days, and on the evening of the second day
there came a letter from Trevelyan to his wife. They had neither of
them seen him, although he had been in and out of the house. And
on the afternoon of the Sunday a new grievance, a very terrible
grievance, was added to those which Mrs. Trevelyan was made to bear.
Her husband had told one of the servants in the house that Colonel
Osborne was not to be admitted. And the servant to whom he had given
this order was the--cook. There is no reason why a cook should be
less trustworthy in such a matter than any other servant; and in
Mr. Trevelyan's household there was a reason why she should be more
so,--as she, and she alone, was what we generally call an old family
domestic. She had lived with her master's mother, and had known her
master when he was a boy. Looking about him, therefore, for some one
in his house to whom he could speak,--feeling that he was bound to
convey the order through some medium,--he called to him the ancient
cook, and imparted to her so much of his trouble as was necessary
to make the order intelligible. This he did with various ill-worded
assurances to Mrs. Prodgers that there really was nothing amiss. But
when Mrs. Trevelyan heard what had been done,--which she did from
Mrs. Prodgers herself, Mrs. Prodgers having been desired by her
master to make the communication,--she declared to her sister that
everything was now over. She could never again live with a husband
who had disgraced his wife by desiring her own cook to keep a guard
upon her. Had the footman been instructed not to admit Colonel
Osborne, there would have been in such instruction some apparent
adherence to the recognised usages of society. If you do not desire
either your friend or your enemy to be received into your house, you
communicate your desire to the person who has charge of the door. But
the cook!

"And now, Nora, if it were you, do you mean to say that you would
remain with him?" asked Mrs. Trevelyan.

Nora simply replied that anything under any circumstances would be
better than a separation.

On the morning of the third day there came the following letter:--


   Wednesday, June 1, 12 midnight.

   DEAREST EMILY,

   You will readily believe me when I say that I never in my
   life was so wretched as I have been during the last two
   days. That you and I should be in the same house together
   and not able to speak to each other is in itself a misery,
   but this is terribly enhanced by the dread lest this state
   of things should be made to continue.

   I want you to understand that I do not in the least
   suspect you of having as yet done anything wrong,--or
   having even said anything injurious either to my position
   as your husband, or to your position as my wife. But I
   cannot but perceive that you are allowing yourself to be
   entrapped into an intimacy with Colonel Osborne which if
   it be not checked, will be destructive to my happiness and
   your own. After what had passed before, you cannot have
   thought it right to receive letters from him which I was
   not to see, or to write letters to him of which I was
   not to know the contents. It must be manifest to you that
   such conduct on your part is wrong as judged by any of
   the rules by which a wife's conduct can be measured.
   And yet you have refused even to say that this shall be
   discontinued! I need hardly explain to you that if you
   persist in this refusal you and I cannot continue to live
   together as man and wife. All my hopes and prospects in
   life will be blighted by such a separation. I have not as
   yet been able to think what I should do in such wretched
   circumstances. And for you, as also for Nora, such a
   catastrophe would be most lamentable. Do, therefore, think
   of it well, and write me such a letter as may bring me
   back to your side.

   There is only one friend in the world to whom I could
   endure to talk of this great grief, and I have been to
   her and told her everything. You will know that I mean
   Lady Milborough. After much difficult conversati

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