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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 tried 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

 

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

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