XII. MISS STANBURY'S GENEROSITY…

XII. MISS STANBURY'S GENEROSITY

On one Wednesday morning early in June, great preparations were being made at the brick house in the Close at Exeter for an event which can hardly be said to have required any preparation at all. Mrs. Stanbury and her elder daughter were coming into Exeter from Nuncombe Putney to visit Dorothy. The reader may perhaps remember that when Miss Stanbury's invitation was sent to her niece, she was pleased to promise that such visits should be permitted on a Wednesday morning. Such a visit was now to be made, and old Miss Stanbury was quite moved by the occasion. "I shall not see them, you know, Martha," she had said, on the afternoon of the preceding day.

"I suppose not, ma'am."

"Certainly not. Why should I? It would do no good."

"It is not for me to say, ma'am, of course."

"No, Martha, it is not. And I am sure that I am right. It's no good going back and undoing in ten minutes what twenty years have done. She's a poor harmless creature, I believe."

"The most harmless in the world, ma'am."

"But she was as bad as poison to me when she was young, and what's the good of trying to change it now? If I was to tell her that I loved her, I should only be lying."

"Then, ma'am, I would not say it."

"And I don't mean. But you'll take in some wine and cake, you know."

"I don't think they'll care for wine and cake."

"Will you do as I tell you? What matters whether they care for it or not? They need not take it. It will look better for Miss Dorothy. If Dorothy is to remain here I shall choose that she should be respected." And so the question of the cake and wine had been decided overnight. But when the morning came Miss Stanbury was still in a twitter. Half-past ten had been the hour fixed for the visit, in consequence of there being a train in from Lessboro', due at the Exeter station at ten. As Miss Stanbury breakfasted always at half-past eight, there was no need of hurry on account of the expected visit. But, nevertheless, she was in a fuss all the morning; and spoke of the coming period as one in which she must necessarily put herself into solitary confinement.

"Perhaps your mamma will be cold," she said, "and will expect a fire."

"Oh, dear, no, Aunt Stanbury."

"It could be lighted of course. It is a pity they should come just so as to prevent you from going to morning service; is it not?"

"I could go with you, aunt, and be back very nearly in time. They won't mind waiting a quarter of an hour."

"What; and have them here all alone! I wouldn't think of such a thing. I shall go up-stairs. You had better come to me when they are gone. Don't hurry them. I don't want you to hurry them at all; and if you require anything, Martha will wait upon you. I have told the girls to keep out of the way. They are so giddy, there's no knowing what they might be after. Besides,--they've got their work to mind."

All this was very terrible to poor Dorothy, who had not as yet quite recovered from the original fear with which her aunt had inspired her,--so terrible that she was almost sorry that her mother and sister were coming to her. When the knock was heard at the door, precisely as the cathedral clock was striking half-past ten,--to secure which punctuality, and thereby not to offend the owner of the mansion, Mrs. Stanbury and Priscilla had been walking about the Close for the last ten minutes,--Miss Stanbury was still in the parlour.

"There they are!" she exclaimed, jumping up. "They haven't given a body much time to run away, have they, my dear? Half a minute, Martha,--just half a minute!" Then she gathered up her things as though she had been ill-treated in being driven to make so sudden a retreat, and Martha, as soon as the last hem of her mistress's dress had become invisible on the stairs, opened the front door for the visitors.

"Do you mean to say you like it?" said Priscilla, when they had been there about a quarter of an hour.

"H--u--sh," whispered Mrs. Stanbury.

"I don't suppose she's listening at the door," said Priscilla.

"Indeed, she's not," said Dorothy. "There can't be a truer, honester woman, than Aunt Stanbury."

"But is she kind to you, Dolly?" asked the mother.

"Very kind; too kind. Only I don't understand her quite, and then she gets angry with me. I know she thinks I'm a fool, and that's the worst of it."

"Then, if I were you, I would come home," said Priscilla.

"She'll never forgive you if you do," said Mrs. Stanbury.

"And who need care about her forgiveness?" said Priscilla.

"I don't mean to go home yet, at any rate," said Dorothy. Then there was a knock at the door, and Martha entered with the cake and wine. "Miss Stanbury's compliments, ladies, and she hopes you'll take a glass of sherry." Whereupon she filled out the glasses and carried them round.

"Pray give my compliments and thanks to my sister Stanbury," said Dorothy's mother. But Priscilla put down the glass of wine without touching it, and looked her sternest at the maid.

Altogether, the visit was not very successful, and poor Dorothy almost felt that if she chose to remain in the Close she must lose her mother and sister, and that without really making a friend of her aunt. There had as yet been no quarrel,--nothing that had been plainly recognised as disagreeable; but there had not as yet come to be any sympathy, or assured signs of comfortable love. Miss Stanbury had declared more than once that it would do, but had not succeeded in showing in what the success consisted. When she was told that the two ladies were gone, she desired that Dorothy might be sent to her, and immediately began to make anxious inquiries.

"Well, my dear, and what do they think of it?"

"I don't know, aunt, that they think very much."

"And what do they say about it?"

"They didn't say very much, aunt. I was very glad to see mamma and Priscilla. Perhaps I ought to tell you that mamma gave me back the money I sent her."

"What did she do that for?" asked Miss Stanbury very sharply.

"Because she says that Hugh sends her now what she wants." Miss Stanbury, when she heard this, looked very sour. "I thought it best to tell you, you know."

"It will never come to any good, got in that way,--never."

"But, Aunt Stanbury, isn't it good of him to send it?"

"I don't know. I suppose it's better than drinking, and smoking, and gambling. But I dare say he gets enough for that too. When a man, born and bred like a gentleman, condescends to let out his talents and education for such purposes, I dare say they are willing enough to pay him. The devil always does pay high wages. But that only makes it so much the worse. One almost comes to doubt whether any one ought to learn to write at all, when it is used for such vile purposes. I've said what I've got to say, and I don't mean to say anything more. What's the use? But it has been hard upon me,--very. It was my money did it, and I feel I've misused it. It's a disgrace to me which I don't deserve."

For a couple of minutes Dorothy remained quite silent, and Miss Stanbury did not herself say anything further. Nor during that time did she observe her niece, or she would probably have seen that the subject was not to be dropped. Dorothy, though she was silent, was not calm, and was preparing herself for a crusade in her brother's defence.

"Aunt Stanbury, he's my brother, you know."

"Of course he's your brother. I wish he were not."

"I think him the best brother in the world,--and the best son."

"Why does he sell himself to write sedition?"

"He doesn't sell himself to write sedition. I don't see why it should be sedition, or anything wicked, because it's sold for a penny."

"If you are going to cram him down my throat, Dorothy, you and I had better part."

"I don't want to say anything about him, only you ought--not--to abuse him--before me." By this time Dorothy was beginning to sob, but Miss Stanbury's countenance was still very grim and very stern. "He's coming home to Nuncombe Putney, and I want to--see--see him," continued Dorothy.

"Hugh Stanbury coming to Exeter! He won't come here."

"Then I'd rather go home, Aunt Stanbury."

"Very well, very well," said Miss Stanbury, and she got up and left the room.

Dorothy was in dismay, and began to think that there was nothing for her to do but to pack up her clothes and prepare for her departure. She was very sorry for what had occurred, being fully alive to the importance of the aid not only to herself, but to her mother and sister, which was afforded by the present arrangement, and she felt very angry with herself, in that she had already driven her aunt to quarrel with her. But she had found it to be impossible to hear her own brother abused without saying a word on his behalf. She did not see her aunt again till dinner-time, and then there was hardly a word uttered. Once or twice Dorothy made a little effort to speak, but these attempts failed utterly. The old woman would hardly reply even by a monosyllable, but simply muttered something, or shook her head when she was addressed. Jane, who waited at table, was very demure and silent, and Martha, who once came into the room during the meal, merely whispered a word into Miss Stanbury's ear. When the cloth was removed, and two glasses of port had been poured out by Miss Stanbury herself, Dorothy felt that she could endure this treatment no longer. How was it possible that she could drink wine under such circumstances?

"Not for me, Aunt Stanbury," said she, with a deploring tone.

"Why not?"

"I couldn't drink it to-day."

"Why didn't you say so before it was poured out? And why not to-day? Come, drink it. Do as I bid you." And she stood over her niece, as a tragedy queen in a play with a bowl of poison. Dorothy took it and sipped it from mere force of obedience. "You make as many bones about a glass of port wine as though it were senna and salts," said Miss Stanbury. "Now I've got something to say to you." By this time the servant was gone, and the two were seated alone together in the parlour. Dorothy, who had not as yet swallowed above half her wine, at once put the glass down. There was an importance in her aunt's tone which frightened her, and made her feel that some evil was coming. And yet, as she had made up her mind that she must return home, there was no further evil that she need dread. "You didn't write any of those horrid articles?" said Miss Stanbury.

"No, aunt; I didn't write them. I shouldn't know how."

"And I hope you'll never learn. They say women are to vote, and become doctors, and if so, there's no knowing what devil's tricks they mayn't do. But it isn't your fault about that filthy newspaper. How he can let himself down to write stuff that is to be printed on straw is what I can't understand."

"I don't see how it can make a difference as he writes it."

"It would make a great deal of difference to me. And I'm told that what they call ink comes off on your fingers like lamp-black. I never touched one, thank God; but they tell me so. All the same; it isn't your fault."

"I've nothing to do with it, Aunt Stanbury."

"Of course you've not. And as he is your brother it wouldn't be natural that you should like to throw him off. And, my dear, I like you for taking his part. Only you needn't have been so fierce with an old woman."

"Indeed--indeed I didn't mean to be--fierce, Aunt Stanbury."

"I never was taken up so short in my life. But we won't mind that. There; he shall come and see you. I suppose he won't insist on leaving any of his nastiness about."

"But is he to come here, Aunt Stanbury?"

"He may if he pleases."

"Oh, Aunt Stanbury!"

"When he was here last he generally had a pipe in his mouth, and I dare say he never puts it down at all now. Those things grow upon young people so fast. But if he could leave it on the door-step just while he's here I should be obliged to him."

"But, dear aunt, couldn't I see him in the street?"

"Out in the street! No, my dear. All the world is not to know that he's your brother; and he is dressed in such a rapscallion manner that the people would think you were talking to a house-breaker." Dorothy's face became again red as she heard this, and the angry words were very nearly spoken. "The last time I saw him," continued Miss Stanbury, "he had on a short, rough jacket, with enormous buttons, and one of those flipperty-flopperty things on his head, that the butcher-boys wear. And, oh, the smell of tobacco! As he had been up in London I suppose he thought Exeter was no better than a village, and he might do just as he pleased. But he knew that if I'm particular about anything, it is about a gentleman's hat in the streets. And he wanted me--me!--to walk with him across to Mrs. MacHugh's! We should have been hooted about the Close like a pair of mad dogs;--and so I told him."

"All the young men seem to dress like that now, Aunt Stanbury."

"No, they don't. Mr. Gibson doesn't dress like that."

"But he's a clergyman, Aunt Stanbury."

"Perhaps I'm an old fool. I dare say I am, and of course that's what you mean. At any rate I'm too old to change, and I don't mean to try. I like to see a difference between a gentleman and a house-breaker. For the matter of that I'm told that there is a difference, and that the house-breakers all look like gentlemen now. It may be proper to make us all stand on our heads, with our legs sticking up in the air; but I for one don't like being topsy-turvey, and I won't try it. When is he to reach Exeter?"

"He is coming on Tuesday next, by the last train."

"Then you can't see him that night. That's out of the question. No doubt he'll sleep at the Nag's Head, as that's the lowest radical public-house in the city. Martha shall try to find him. She knows more about his doings than I do. If he chooses to come here the following morning before he goes down to Nuncombe Putney, well and good. I shall wait up till Martha comes back from the train on Tuesday night, and hear." Dorothy was of course full of gratitude and thanks; but yet she felt almost disappointed by the result of her aunt's clemency on the matter. She had desired to take her brother's part, and it had seemed to her as though she had done so in a very lukewarm manner. She had listened to an immense number of accusations against him, and had been unable to reply to them because she had been conquered by the promise of a visit. And now it was out of the question that she should speak of going. Her aunt had given way to her, and of course had conquered her.

Late on the Tuesday evening, after ten o'clock, Hugh Stanbury was walking round the Close with his aunt's old servant. He had not put up at that dreadfully radical establishment of which Miss Stanbury was so much afraid, but had taken a bed-room at the Railway Inn. From there he had walked up to the Close with Martha, and now was having a few last words with her before he would allow her to return to the house.

"I suppose she'd as soon see the devil as see me," said Hugh.

"If you speak in that way, Mr. Hugh, I won't listen to you."

"And yet I did everything I could to please her; and I don't think any boy ever loved an old woman better than I did her."

"That was while she used to send you cakes, and ham, and jam to school, Mr. Hugh."

"Of course it was, and while she sent me flannel waistcoats to Oxford. But when I didn't care any longer for cakes or flannel then she got tired of me. It is much better as it is, if she'll only be good to Dorothy."

"She never was bad to anybody, Mr. Hugh. But I don't think an old lady like her ever takes to a young woman as she does to a young man, if only he'll let her have a little more of her own way than you would. It's my belief that you might have had it all for your own some day, if you'd done as you ought."

"That's nonsense, Martha. She means to leave it all to the Burgesses. I've heard her say so."

"Say so; yes. People don't always do what they say. If you'd managed rightly you might have it all;--and so you might now."

"I'll tell you what, old girl; I shan't try. Live for the next twenty years under her apron strings, that I may have the chance at the end of it of cutting some poor devil out of his money! Do you know the meaning of making a score off your own bat, Martha?"

"No, I don't; and if it's anything you're like to do, I don't think I should be the better for learning,--by all accounts. And now if you please, I'll go in."

"Good night, Martha. My love to them both, and say I'll be there to-morrow exactly at half-past nine. You'd better take it. It won't turn to slate-stone. It hasn't come from the old gentleman."

"I don't want anything of that kind, Mr. Hugh;--indeed I don't."

"Nonsense. If you don't take it you'll offend me. I believe you think I'm not much better than a schoolboy still."

"I don't think you're half so good, Mr. Hugh," said the old servant, sticking the sovereign which Hugh had given her in under her glove as she spoke.

On the next morning that other visit was made at the brick house, and Miss Stanbury was again in a fuss. On this occasion, however, she was in a much better humour than before, and was full of little jokes as to the nature of the visitation. Of course, she was not to see her nephew herself, and no message was to be delivered from her, and none was to be given to her from him. But an accurate report was to be made to her as to his appearance, and Dorothy was to be enabled to answer a variety of questions respecting him after he was gone. "Of course, I don't want to know anything about his money," Miss Stanbury said, "only I should like to know how much these people can afford to pay for their penny trash." On this occasion she had left the room and gone up-stairs before the knock came at the door, but she managed, by peeping over the balcony, to catch a glimpse of the "flipperty-flopperty" hat which her nephew certainly had with him on this occasion.

Hugh Stanbury had great news for his sister. The cottage in which Mrs. Stanbury lived at Nuncombe Putney, was the tiniest little dwelling in which a lady and her two daughters ever sheltered themselves. There was, indeed, a sitting-room, two bed-rooms, and a kitchen; but they were all so diminutive in size that the cottage was little more than a cabin. But there was a house in the village, not large indeed, but eminently respectable, three stories high, covered with ivy, having a garden behind it, and generally called the Clock House, because there had once been a clock upon it. This house had been lately vacated, and Hugh informed his sister that he was thinking of taking it for his mother's accommodation. Now, the late occupants of the Clock House, at Nuncombe Putney, had been people with five or six hundred a year. Had other matters been in accordance, the house would almost have entitled them to consider themselves as county people. A gardener had always been kept there,--and a cow!

"The Clock House for mamma!"

"Well, yes. Don't say a word about it as yet to Aunt Stanbury, as she'll think that I've sold myself altogether to the old gentleman."

"But, Hugh, how can mamma live there?"

"The fact is, Dorothy, there is a secret. I can't tell you quite yet. Of course, you'll know it, and everybody will know it, if the thing comes about. But as you won't talk, I will tell you what most concerns ourselves."

"And am I to go back?"

"Certainly not,--if you will take my advice. Stick to your aunt. You don't want to smoke pipes, and wear Tom-and-Jerry hats, and write for the penny newspapers."

Now Hugh Stanbury's secret was this;--that Louis Trevelyan's wife and sister-in-law were to leave the house in Curzon Street, and come and live at Nuncombe Putney, with Mrs. Stanbury and Priscilla. Such, at least, was the plan to be carried out, if Hugh Stanbury should be successful in his present negotiations.

XIII. THE HONOURABLE MR. GLASCOCK

By the end of July Mrs. Trevelyan with her sister was established in the Clock House, at Nuncombe Putney, under the protection of Hugh's mother; but before the reader is made acquainted with any of the circumstances of their life there, a few words must be said of an occurrence which took place before those two ladies left Curzon Street.

As to the quarrel between Trevelyan and his wife things went from bad to worse. Lady Milborough continued to interfere, writing letters to Emily which were full of good sense, but which, as Emily said herself, never really touched the point of dispute. "Am I, who am altogether unconscious of having done anything amiss, to confess that I have been in the wrong? If it were about a small matter, I would not mind, for the sake of peace. But when it concerns my conduct in reference to another man I would rather die first." That had been Mrs. Trevelyan's line of thought and argument in the matter; but then old Lady Milborough in her letters spoke only of the duty of obedience as promised at the altar. "But I didn't promise to tell a lie," said Mrs. Trevelyan. And there were interviews between Lady Milborough and Trevelyan, and interviews between Lady Milborough and Nora Rowley. The poor dear old dowager was exceedingly busy and full of groans, prescribing Naples, prescribing a course of extra prayers, prescribing a general course of letting by-gones be by-gones,--to which, however, Trevelyan would by no means assent without some assurance, which he might regard as a guarantee,--prescribing retirement to a small town in the west of France if Naples would not suffice; but she could effect nothing.

Mrs. Trevelyan, indeed, did a thing which was sure of itself to render any steps taken for a reconciliation ineffectual. In the midst of all this turmoil,--while she and her husband were still living in the same house, but apart because of their absurd quarrel respecting Colonel Osborne, she wrote another letter to that gentleman. The argument by which she justified this to herself, and to her sister after it was done, was the real propriety of her own conduct throughout her whole intimacy with Colonel Osborne. "But that is just what Louis doesn't want you to do," Nora had said, filled with anger and dismay. "Then let Louis give me an order to that effect, and behave to me like a husband, and I will obey him," Emily had answered. And she had gone on to plead that in her present condition she was under no orders from her husband. She was left to judge for herself, and,--judging for herself,--she knew, as she said, that it was best that she should write to Colonel Osborne. Unfortunately there was no ground for hoping that Colonel Osborne was ignorant of this insane jealousy on the part of her husband. It was better, therefore, she said, that she should write to him,--whom on the occasion she took care to name to her sister as "papa's old friend,"--and explain to him what she would wish him to do, and what not to do. Colonel Osborne answered the letter very quickly, throwing much more of demonstrative affection than he should have done into his "Dear Emily," and his "Dearest Friend." Of course Mrs. Trevelyan had burned this answer, and of course Mr. Trevelyan had been told of the correspondence. His wife, indeed, had been especially careful that there should be nothing secret about the matter,--that it should be so known in the house that Mr. Trevelyan should be sure to hear of it. And he had heard of it, and been driven almost mad by it. He had flown off to Lady Milborough, and had reduced his old friend to despair by declaring that, after all, he began to fear that his wife was--was--was--infatuated by that d---- scoundrel. Lady Milborough forgave the language, but protested that he was wrong in his suspicion. "To continue to correspond with him after what I have said to her!" exclaimed Trevelyan. "Take her to Naples at once,"--said Lady Milborough;--"at once!" "And have him after me?" said Trevelyan. Lady Milborough had no answer ready, and not having thought of this looked very blank. "I should find it harder to deal with her there even than here," continued Trevelyan. Then it was that Lady Milborough spoke of the small town in the west of France, urging as her reason that such a man as Colonel Osborne would certainly not follow them there; but Trevelyan had become indignant at this, declaring that if his wife's good name could be preserved in no other manner than that, it would not be worth preserving at all. Then Lady Milborough had begun to cry, and had continued crying for a very long time. She was very unhappy,--as unhappy as her nature would allow her to be. She would have made almost any sacrifice to bring the two young people together;--would have willingly given her time, her money, her labour in the cause;--would probably herself have gone to the little town in the west of France, had her going been of any service. But, nevertheless, after her own fashion, she extracted no small enjoyment out of the circumstances of this miserable quarrel. The Lady Milboroughs of the day hate the Colonel Osbornes from the very bottoms of their warm hearts and pure souls; but they respect the Colonel Osbornes almost as much as they hate them, and find it to be an inestimable privilege to be brought into some contact with these roaring lions.

But there arose to dear Lady Milborough a great trouble out of this quarrel, irrespective of the absolute horror of the separation of a young husband from his young wife. And the excess of her trouble on this head was great proof of the real goodness of her heart. For, in this matter, the welfare of Trevelyan himself was not concerned;--but rather that of the Rowley family. Now the Rowleys had not given Lady Milborough any special reason for loving them. When she had first heard that her dear young friend Louis was going to marry a girl from the Mandarins, she had been almost in despair. It was her opinion that had he properly understood his own position, he would have promoted his welfare by falling in love with the daughter of some English country gentleman,--or some English peer, to which honour, with his advantages, Lady Milborough thought that he might have aspired. Nevertheless, when the girl from the Mandarins had been brought home as Mrs. Trevelyan, Lady Milborough had received her with open arms,--had received even the sister-in-law with arms partly open. Had either of them shown any tendency to regard her as a mother, she would have showered motherly cares upon them. For Lady Milborough was like an old hen, in her capacity for taking many under her wings. The two sisters had hardly done more than bear with her,--Nora, indeed, bearing with her more graciously than Mrs. Trevelyan; and in return, even for this, the old dowager was full of motherly regard. Now she knew well that Mr. Glascock was over head and ears in love with Nora Rowley. It only wanted the slightest management and the easiest discretion to bring him on his knees, with an offer of his hand. And, then, how much that hand contained!--how much, indeed, as compared with that other hand, which was to be given in return, and which was,--to speak the truth,--completely empty! Mr. Glascock was the heir to a peer, was the heir to a rich peer, was the heir to a very, very old peer. He was in Parliament. The world spoke well of him. He was not, so to say, by any means an old man himself. He was good-tempered, reasonable, easily led, and yet by no means despicable. On all subjects connected with land, he held an opinion that was very much respected, and was supposed to be a thoroughly good specimen of an upper-class Englishman. Here was a suitor! But it was not to be supposed that such a man as Mr. Glascock would be so violently in love as to propose to a girl whose nearest known friend and female relation was misbehaving herself.

Only they who have closely watched the natural uneasiness of human hens can understand how great was Lady Milborough's anxiety on this occasion. Marriage to her was a thing always delightful to contemplate. Though she had never been sordidly a match-maker, the course of the world around her had taught her to regard men as fish to be caught, and girls as the anglers who ought to catch them. Or, rather, could her mind have been accurately analysed, it would have been found that the girl was regarded as half-angler and half-bait. Any girl that angled visibly with her own hook, with a manifestly expressed desire to catch a fish, was odious to her. And she was very gentle-hearted in regard to the fishes, thinking that every fish in the river should have the hook and bait presented to him in the mildest, pleasantest form. But still, when the trout was well in the basket, her joy was great; and then came across her unlaborious mind some half-formed idea that a great ordinance of nature was being accomplished in the teeth of difficulties. For,--as she well knew,--there is a difficulty in the catching of fish.

Lady Milborough, in her kind anxiety on Nora's behalf,--that the fish should be landed before Nora might be swept away in her sister's ruin,--hardly knew what step she might safely take. Mrs. Trevelyan would not see her again,--having already declared that any further interview would be painful and useless. She had spoken to Trevelyan, but Trevelyan had declared that he could do nothing. What was there that he could have done? He could not, as he said, overlook the gross improprieties of his wife's conduct, because his wife's sister had, or might possibly have, a lover. And then as to speaking to Mr. Glascock himself,--nobody knew better than Lady Milborough how very apt fish are to be frightened.

But at last Lady Milborough did speak to Mr. Glascock,--making no allusion whatever to the hook prepared for himself, but saying a word or two as to the affairs of that other fish, whose circumstances, as he floundered about in the bucket of matrimony, were not as happy as they might have been. The care, the discretion, nay, the wisdom with which she did this were most excellent. She had become aware that Mr. Glascock had already heard of the unfortunate affair in Curzon Street. Indeed, every one who knew the Trevelyans had heard of it, and a great many who did not know them. No harm, therefore, could be done by mentioning the circumstance. Lady Milborough did mention it, explaining that the only person really in fault was that odious destroyer of the peace of families, Colonel Osborne, of whom Lady Milborough, on that occasion, said some very severe things indeed. Poor dear Mrs. Trevelyan was foolish, obstinate, and self-reliant;--but as innocent as the babe unborn. That things would come right before long no one who knew the affair,--and she knew it from beginning to end,--could for a moment doubt. The real victim would be that sweetest of all girls, Nora Rowley. Mr. Glascock innocently asked why Nora Rowley should be a victim. "Don't you understand, Mr. Glascock, how the most remote connection with a thing of that kind tarnishes a young woman's standing in the world?" Mr. Glascock was almost angry with the well-pleased Countess as he declared that he could not see that Miss Rowley's standing was at all tarnished; and old Lady Milborough, when he got up and left her, felt that she had done a good morning's work. If Nora could have known it all, Nora ought to have been very grateful, for Mr. Glascock got into a cab in Eccleston Square and had himself driven direct to Curzon Street. He himself believed that he was at that moment only doing the thing which he had for some time past resolved that he would do; but we perhaps may be justified in thinking that the actual resolution was first fixed by the discretion of Lady Milborough's communication. At any rate he arrived in Curzon Street with his mind fully resolved, and had spent the minutes in the cab considering how he had better perform the business in hand.

He was at once shown into the drawing-room, where he found the two sisters, and Mrs. Trevelyan, as soon as she saw him, understood the purpose of his coming. There was an air of determination about him, a manifest intention of doing something, an absence of that vagueness which almost always flavours a morning visit. This was so strongly marked that Mrs. Trevelyan felt that she would have been almost justified in getting up and declaring that, as this visit was paid to her sister, she would retire. But any such declaration on her part was unnecessary, as Mr. Glascock had not been in the room three minutes before he asked her to go. By some clever device of his own, he got her into the back room and whispered to her that he wanted to say a few words in private to her sister.

"Oh, certainly," said Mrs. Trevelyan, smiling.

"I dare say you may guess what they are," said he. "I don't know what chance I may have."

"I can tell you nothing about that," she replied, "as I know nothing. But you have my good wishes."

And then she went.

It may be presumed that gradually some idea of Mr. Glascock's intention had made its way into Nora's mind by the time that she found herself alone with that gentleman. Why else had he brought into the room with him that manifest air of a purpose? Why else had he taken the very strong step of sending the lady of the house out of her own drawing-room? Nora, beginning to understand this, put herself into an attitude of defence. She had never told herself that she would refuse Mr. Glascock. She had never acknowledged to herself that there was another man whom she liked better than she liked Mr. Glascock. But had she ever encouraged any wish for such an interview, her feelings at this moment would have been very different from what they were. As it was, she would have given much to postpone it, so that she might have asked herself questions, and have discovered whether she could reconcile herself to do that which, no doubt, all her friends would commend her for doing. Of course, it was clear enough to the mind of the girl that she had her fortune to make, and that her beauty and youth were the capital on which she had to found it. She had not lived so far from all taint of corruption as to feel any actual horror at the idea of a girl giving herself to a man,--not because the man had already, by his own capacities in that direction, forced her heart from her,--but because he was one likely to be at all points a good husband. Had all this affair concerned any other girl, any friend of her own, and had she known all the circumstances of the case, she would have had no hesitation in recommending that other girl to marry Mr. Glascock. A girl thrown out upon the world without a shilling must make her hay while the sun shines. But, nevertheless, there was something within her bosom which made her long for a better thing than this. She had dreamed, if she had not thought, of being able to worship a man; but she could hardly worship Mr. Glascock. She had dreamed, if she had not thought, of leaning upon a man all through life with her whole weight, as though that man had been specially made to be her staff, her prop, her support, her wall of comfort and protection. She knew that if she were to marry Mr. Glascock and become Lady Peterborough, in due course she must stand a good deal by her own strength, and live without that comfortable leaning. Nevertheless, when she found herself alone with the man, she by no means knew whether she would refuse him or not. But she knew that she must pluck up courage for an important moment, and she collected herself, braced her muscles, as it were, for a fight, and threw her mind into an attitude of contest.

Mr. Glascock, as soon as the door was shut behind Mrs. Trevelyan's back, took a chair and placed it close beside the head of the sofa on which Nora was sitting. "Miss Rowley," he said, "you and I have known each other now for some months, and I hope you have learned to regard me as a friend."

"Oh, yes, indeed," said Nora, with some spirit.

"It has seemed to me that we have met as friends, and I can most truly say for myself, that I have taken the greatest possible pleasure in your acquaintance. It is not only that I admire you very much,"--he looked straight before him as he said this, and moved about the point of the stick which he was holding in both his hands,--"it is not only that,--perhaps not chiefly that, though I do admire you very much; but the truth is, that I like everything about you."

Nora smiled, but she said nothing. It was better, she thought, to let him tell his story; but his mode of telling it was not without its efficacy. It was not the simple praise which made its way with her but a certain tone in the words which seemed to convince her that they were true. If he had really found her, or fancied her to be what he said, there was a manliness in his telling her so in the plainest words that pleased her much.

"I know," continued he, "that this is a very bald way of telling--of pleading--my cause; but I don't know whether a bald way may not be the best, if it can only make itself understood to be true. Of course, Miss Rowley, you know what I mean. As I said before, you have all those things which not only make me love you, but which make me like you also. If you think that you can love me, say so; and, as long as I live, I will do my best to make you happy as my wife."

There was a clearness of expression in this, and a downright surrender of himself, which so flattered her and so fluttered her that she was almost reduced to the giving of herself up because she could not reply to such an appeal in language less courteous than that of agreement. After a moment or two she found herself remaining silent, with a growing feeling that silence would be taken as conveying consent. There floated quickly across her brain an idea of the hardness of a woman's lot, in that she should be called upon to decide her future fate for life in half a minute. He had had weeks to think of this,--weeks in which it would have been almost unmaidenly in her so to think of it as to have made up her mind to accept the man. Had she so made up her mind, and had he not come to her, where would she have been then? But he had come to her. There he was, still poking about with his stick, waiting for her, and she must answer him. And he was the eldest son of a peer,--an enormous match for her, very proper in all respects; such a man, that if she should accept him, everybody around her would regard her fortune in life as miraculously successful. He was not such a man that any one would point at her and say,--"There; see another of them who has sold herself for money and a title!" Mr. Glascock was not an Apollo, not an admirable Crichton; but he was a man whom any girl might have learned to love. Now he had asked her to be his wife, and it was necessary that she should answer him. He sat there waiting for her very patiently, still poking about the point of his stick.

Did she really love him? Though she was so pressed by consideration of time, she did find a moment in which to ask herself the question. With a quick turn of an eye she glanced at him, to see what he was like. Up to this moment, though she knew him well, she could have given no details of his personal appearance. He was a better-looking man than Hugh Stanbury,--so she told herself with a passing thought; but he lacked--he lacked; what was it that he lacked? Was it youth, or spirit, or strength; or was it some outward sign of an inward gift of mind? Was it that he was heavy while Hugh was light? Was it that she could find no fire in his eye, while Hugh's eyes were full of flashing? Or was it that for her, especially for her, Hugh was the appointed staff and appropriate wall of protection? Be all that as it might, she knew at the moment that she did love, not this man, but that other who was writing articles for the Daily Record. She must refuse the offer that was so brilliant, and give up the idea of reigning as queen at Monkhams.

"Oh, Mr. Glascock," she said, "I ought to answer you more quickly."

"No, dearest; not more quickly than suits you. Nothing ever in this world can be more important both to you and to me. If you want more time to think of it, take more time."

"No, Mr. Glascock; I do not. I don't know why I should have paused. Is not the truth best?"

"Yes,--certainly the truth is best."

"I do not--love you. Pray, pray understand me."

"I understand it too well, Miss Rowley." The stick was still going, and the eyes more intently fixed than ever on something opposite.

"I do like you; I like you very much. And I am so grateful! I cannot understand why such a man as you should want to make me your wife."

"Because I love you better than all the others; simply that. That reason, and that only, justifies a man in wanting to marry a girl." What a good fellow he was, and how flattering were his words! Did he not deserve what he wanted, even though it could not be given without a sacrifice? But yet she did not love him. As she looked at him again she could not there recognise her staff. As she looked at him she was more than ever convinced that that other staff ought to be her staff. "May I come again,--after a month, say?" he asked, when there had been another short period of silence.

"No, no. Why should you trouble yourself? I am not worth it."

"It is for me to judge of that, Miss Rowley."

"All the same, I know that I am not worth it. And I could not tell you to do that."

"Then I will wait, and come again without your telling me."

"Oh, Mr. Glascock, I did not mean that; indeed I did not. Pray do not think that. Take what I say as final. I like you more than I can say; and I feel a gratitude to you that I cannot express,--which I shall never forget. I have never known any one who has seemed to be so good as you. But-- It is just what I said before." And then she fairly burst into tears.

"Miss Rowley," he said, very slowly, "pray do not think that I want to ask any question which it might embarrass you to answer. But my happiness is so greatly at stake; and, if you will allow me to say so, your happiness, too, is so greatly concerned, that it is most important that we should not come to a conclusion too quickly. If I thought that your heart were vacant I would wait patiently. I have been thinking of you as my possible wife for weeks past,--for months past. Of course you have not had such thoughts about me." As he said this she almost loved him for his considerate goodness. "It has sometimes seemed to me odd that girls should love men in such a hurry. If your heart be free, I will wait. And if you esteem me, you can see, and try whether you cannot learn to love me."

"I do esteem you."

"It depends on that question, then?" he said, slowly.

She sat silent for fully a minute, with her hands clasped; and then she answered him in a whisper. "I do not know," she said.

He also was silent for a while before he spoke again. He ceased to poke with his stick, and got up from his chair, and stood a little apart from her, not looking at her even yet.

"I see," he said at last. "I understand. Well, Miss Rowley, I quite perceive that I cannot press my suit any further now. But I shall not despair altogether. I know this, that if I might possibly succeed, I should be a very happy man. Good-bye, Miss Rowley."

She took his offered hand and pressed it so warmly, that had he not been manly and big-hearted, he would have taken such pressure as a sign that she wished him to ask her again. But such was his nature.

"God bless you," he said, "and make you happy, whatever you may choose to do."

Then he left her, and she heard him walk down the stairs with heavy slow steps, and she thought that she could perceive from the sound that he was sad at heart, but that he was resolved not to show his sadness outwardly.

When she was alone she began to think in earnest of what she had done. If the reader were told that she regretted the decision which she had been forced to make so rapidly, a wrong impression would be given of the condition of her thoughts. But there came upon her suddenly a strange capacity for counting up and making a mental inventory of all that might have been hers. She knew,--and where is the girl so placed that does not know?--that it is a great thing to be an English peeress. Now, as she stood there thinking of it all, she was Nora Rowley without a shilling in the world, and without a prospect of a shilling. She had often heard her mother speak fearful words of future possible days, when colonial governing should no longer be within the capacity of Sir Marmaduke. She had been taught from a very early age that all the material prosperity of her life must depend on matrimony. She could never be comfortably disposed of in the world, unless some fitting man who possessed those things of which she was so bare, should wish to make her his wife. Now there had come a man so thoroughly fitting, so marvellously endowed, that no worldly blessing would have been wanting. Mr. Glascock had more than once spoken to her of the glories of Monkhams. She thought of Monkhams now more than she had ever thought of the place before. It would have been a great privilege to be the mistress of an old time-honoured mansion, to call oaks and elms her own, to know that acres of gardens were submitted to her caprices, to look at herds of cows and oxen, and be aware that they lowed on her own pastures. And to have been the mother of a future peer of England, to have the nursing, and sweet custody and very making of a future senator,--would not that have been much? And the man himself who would have been her husband was such a one that any woman might have trusted herself to him with perfect confidence. Now that he was gone she almost fancied that she did love him. Then she thought of Hugh Stanbury, sitting as he had described himself, in a little dark closet at the office of the "D. R.," in a very old inky shooting-coat, with a tarnished square-cut cloth cap upon his head, with a short pipe in his mouth, writing at midnight for the next morning's impression, this or that article according to the order of his master, "the tallow-chandler;"--for the editor of the Daily Record was a gentleman whose father happened to be a grocer in the City, and Hugh had been accustomed thus to describe the family trade. And she might certainly have had the peer, and the acres of garden, and the big house, and the senatorial honours; whereas the tallow-chandler's journeyman had never been so out-spoken. She told herself from moment to moment that she had done right; that she would do the same a dozen times, if a dozen times the experiment could be repeated; but still, still, there was the remembrance of all that she had lost. How would her mother look at her, her anxious, heavily-laden mother, when the story should be told of all that had been offered to her and all that had been refused?

As she was thinking of this Mrs. Trevelyan came into the room. Nora felt that though she might dread to meet her mother, she could be bold enough on such an occasion before her sister. Emily had not done so well with her own affairs, as to enable her to preach with advantage about marriage.

"He has gone?" said Mrs. Trevelyan, as she opened the door.

"Yes, he has gone."

"Well? Do not pretend, Nora, that you will not tell me."

"There is nothing worth the telling, Emily."

"What do you mean? I am sure he has proposed. He told me in so many words that it was his intention."

"Whatever has happened, dear, you may be quite sure that I shall never be Mrs. Glascock."

"Then you have refused him,--because of Hugh Stanbury!"

"I have refused him, Emily, because I did not love him. Pray let that be enough."

Then she walked out of the room with something of stateliness in her gait,--as might become a girl who had had it in her power to be the future Lady Peterborough; but as soon as she reached the sacredness of her own chamber, she gave way to an agony of tears. It would, indeed, be much to be a Lady Peterborough. And she had, in truth, refused it all because of Hugh Stanbury! Was Hugh Stanbury worth so great a sacrifice?

XIV. THE CLOCK HOUSE AT NUNCOMBE PUTNEY

It was not till a fortnight had passed after the transaction recorded in the last chapter, that Mrs. Trevelyan and Nora Rowley first heard the proposition that they should go to live at Nuncombe Putney. From bad to worse the quarrel between the husband and the wife had gone on, till Trevelyan had at last told his friend Lady Milborough that he had made up his mind that they must live apart. "She is so self-willed,--and perhaps I am the same," he had said, "that it is impossible that we should live together." Lady Milborough had implored and called to witness all testimonies, profane and sacred, against such a step,--had almost gone down on her knees. Go to Naples,--why not Naples? Or to the quiet town in the west of France, which was so dull that a wicked roaring lion, fond of cities and gambling, and eating and drinking, could not live in such a place! Oh, why not go to the quiet town in the west of France? Was not anything better than this flying in the face of God and man? Perhaps Trevelyan did not himself like the idea of the quiet dull French town. Perhaps he thought that the flying in the face of God and man was all done by his wife, not by him; and that it was right that his wife should feel the consequences. After many such entreaties, many such arguments, it was at last decided that the house in Curzon Street should be given up, and that he and his wife live apart.

"And what about Nora Rowley?" asked Lady Milborough, who had become aware by this time of Nora's insane folly in having refused Mr. Glascock.

"She will go with her sister, I suppose."

"And who will maintain her? Dear, dear, dear! It does seem as though some young people were bent upon cutting their own throats, and all their family's."

Poor Lady Milborough just at this time went as near to disliking the Rowleys as was compatible with her nature. It was not possible to her to hate anybody. She thought that she hated the Colonel Osbornes; but even that was a mistake. She was very angry, however, with both Mrs. Trevelyan and her sister, and was disposed to speak of them as though they had been born to create trouble and vexation.

Trevelyan had not given any direct answer to that question about Nora Rowley's maintenance, but he was quite prepared to bear all necessary expense in that direction, at any rate till Sir Marmaduke should have arrived. At first there had been an idea that the two sisters should go to the house of their aunt, Mrs. Outhouse. Mrs. Outhouse was the wife,--as the reader may perhaps remember,--of a clergyman living in the east of London. St. Diddulph's-in-the-East was very much in the east indeed. It was a parish outside the City, lying near the river, very populous, very poor, very low in character, and very uncomfortable. There was a rectory-house, queerly situated at the end of a little blind lane, with a gate of its own, and a so-called garden about twenty yards square. But the rectory of St. Diddulph's cannot be said to have been a comfortable abode. The neighbourhood was certainly not alluring. Of visiting society within a distance of three or four miles there was none but what was afforded by the families of other East-end clergymen. And then Mr. Outhouse himself was a somewhat singular man. He was very religious, devoted to his work, most kind to the poor; but he was unfortunately a strongly-biased man, and at the same time very obstinate withal. He had never allied himself very cordially with his wife's brother, Sir Marmaduke, allowing himself to be carried away by a prejudice that people living at the West-end, who frequented clubs, and were connected in any way with fashion, could not be appropriate companions for himself. The very title which Sir Marmaduke had acquired was repulsive to him, and had induced him to tell his wife more than once that Sir this or Sir that could not be fitting associates for a poor East-end clergyman. Then his wife's niece had married a man of fashion,--a man supposed at St. Diddulph's to be very closely allied to fashion; and Mr. Outhouse had never been induced even to dine in the house in Curzon Street. When, therefore, he heard that Mr. and Mrs. Trevelyan were to be separated within two years of their marriage, it could not be expected that he should be very eager to lend to the two sisters the use of his rectory.

There had been interviews between Mr. Outhouse and Trevelyan, and between Mrs. Outhouse and her niece; and then there was an interview between Mr. Outhouse and Emily, in which it was decided that Mrs. Trevelyan would not go to the parsonage of St. Diddulph's. She had been very outspoken to her uncle, declaring that she by no means intended to carry herself as a disgraced woman. Mr. Outhouse had quoted St. Paul to her; "Wives, obey your husbands." Then she had got up and had spoken very angrily. "I look for support from you," she said, "as the man who is the nearest to me, till my father shall come." "But I cannot support you in what is wrong," said the clergyman. Then Mrs. Trevelyan had left the room, and would not see her uncle again.

She carried things altogether with a high hand at this time. When old Mr. Bideawhile called upon her, her husband's ancient family lawyer, she told that gentleman that if it was her husband's will that they should live apart, it must be so. She could not force him to remain with her. She could not compel him to keep up the house in Curzon Street. She had certain rights, she believed. She spoke then, she said, of pecuniary rights,--not of those other rights which her husband was determined, and was no doubt able, to ignore. She did not really know what those pecuniary rights might be, nor was she careful to learn their exact extent. She would thank Mr. Bideawhile to see that things were properly arranged. But of this her husband, and Mr. Bideawhile, might be quite sure;--she would take nothing as a favour. She would not go to her uncle's house. She declined to tell Mr. Bideawhile why she had so decided; but she had decided. She was ready to listen to any suggestion that her husband might make as to her residence, but she must claim to have some choice in the matter. As to her sister, of course she intended to give Nora a home as long as such a home might be wanted. It would be very sad for Nora, but in existing circumstances such an arrangement would be expedient. She would not go into details as to expense. Her husband was driving her away from him, and it was for him to say what proportion of his income he would choose to give for her maintenance,--for hers and for that of their child. She was not desirous of anything beyond the means of decent living, but of course she must for the present find a home for her sister as well as for herself. When speaking of her baby she had striven hard so to speak that Mr. Bideawhile should find no trace of doubt in the tones of her voice. And yet she had been full of doubt,--full of fear. As Mr. Bideawhile had uttered nothing antagonistic to her wishes in this matter,--had seemed to agree that wherever the mother went thither the child would go also,--Mrs. Trevelyan had considered herself to be successful in this interview.

The idea of a residence at Nuncombe Putney had occurred first to Trevelyan himself, and he had spoken of it to Hugh Stanbury. There had been some difficulty in this, because he had snubbed Stanbury grievously when his friend had attempted to do some work of gentle interference between him and his wife; and when he began the conversation, he took the trouble of stating, in the first instance, that the separation was a thing fixed,--so that nothing might be urged on that subject. "It is to be. You will understand that," he said; "and if you think that your mother would agree to the arrangement, it would be satisfactory to me, and might, I think, be made pleasant to her. Of course, your mother would be made to understand that the only fault with which my wife is charged is that of indomitable disobedience to my wishes."

"Incompatibility of temper," suggested Stanbury.

"You may call it that if you please;--though I must say for myself that I do not think that I have displayed any temper to which a woman has a right to object." Then he had gone on to explain what he was prepared to do about money. He would pay, through Stanbury's hands, so much for maintenance and so much for house rent, on the understanding that the money was not to go into his wife's hands. "I shall prefer," he said, "to make myself, on her behalf, what disbursements may be necessary. I will take care that she receives a proper sum quarterly through Mr. Bideawhile for her own clothes,--and for those of our poor boy." Then Stanbury had told him of the Clock House, and there had been an agreement made between them;--an agreement which was then, of course, subject to the approval of the ladies at Nuncombe Putney. When the suggestion was made to Mrs. Trevelyan,--with a proposition that the Clock House should be taken for one year, and that for that year, at least, her boy should remain with her,--she assented to it. She did so with all the calmness that she was able to assume; but, in truth, almost everything seemed to have been gained, when she found that she was not to be separated from her baby. "I have no objection to living in Devonshire if Mr. Trevelyan wishes it," she said, in her most stately manner; "and certainly no objection to living with Mr. Stanbury's mother." Then Mr. Bideawhile explained to her that Nuncombe Putney was not a large town,--was, in fact, a very small and a very remote village. "That will make no difference whatsoever as far as I am concerned," she answered; "and as for my sister, she must put up with it till my father and my mother are here. I believe the scenery at Nuncombe Putney is very pretty." "Lovely!" said Mr. Bideawhile, who had a general idea that Devonshire is supposed to be a picturesque county. "With such a life before me as I must lead," continued Mrs. Trevelyan, "an ugly neighbourhood, one that would itself have had no interest for a stranger, would certainly have been an additional sorrow." So it had been settled, and by the end of July, Mrs. Trevelyan, with her sister and baby, was established at the Clock House, under the protection of Mrs. Stanbury. Mrs. Trevelyan had brought down her own maid and her own nurse, and had found that the arrangements made by her husband had, in truth, been liberal. The house in Curzon Street had been given up, the furniture had been sent to a warehouse, and Mr. Trevelyan had gone into lodgings. "There never were two young people so insane since the world began," said Lady Milborough to her old friend, Mrs. Fairfax, when the thing was done.

"They will be together again before next April," Mrs. Fairfax had replied. But Mrs. Fairfax was a jolly dame who made the best of everything. Lady Milborough raised her hands in despair, and shook her head. "I don't suppose, though, that Mr. Glascock will go to Devonshire after his lady love," said Mrs. Fairfax. Lady Milborough again raised her hands, and again shook her head.

Mrs. Stanbury had given an easy assent when her son proposed to her this new mode of life, but Priscilla had had her doubts. Like all women, she thought that when a man was to be separated from his wife, the woman must be in the wrong. And though it must be doubtless comfortable to go from the cottage to the Clock House, it would, she said, with much prudence, be very uncomfortable to go back from the Clock House to the cottage. Hugh replied very cavalierly,--generously, that is, rashly, and somewhat impetuously,--that he would guarantee them against any such degradation.

"We don't want to be a burden upon you, my dear," said the mother.

"You would be a great burden on me," he replied, "if you were living uncomfortably while I am able to make you comfortable."

Mrs. Stanbury was soon won over by Mrs. Trevelyan, by Nora, and especially by the baby; and even Priscilla, after a week or two, began to feel that she liked their company. Priscilla was a young woman who read a great deal, and even had some gifts of understanding what she read. She borrowed books from the clergyman, and paid a penny a week to the landlady of the Stag and Antlers for the hire during half a day of the weekly newspaper. But now there came a box of books from Exeter, and a daily paper from London, and,--to improve all this,--both the new comers were able to talk with her about the things she read. She soon declared to her mother that she liked Miss Rowley much the best of the two. Mrs. Trevelyan was too fond of having her own way. She began to understand, she would say to her mother, that a man might find it difficult to live with Mrs. Trevelyan. "She hardly ever yields about anything," said Priscilla. As Miss Priscilla Stanbury was also very fond of having her own way, it was not surprising that she should object to that quality in this lady, who had come to live under the same roof with her.

The country about Nuncombe Putney is perhaps as pretty as any in England. It is beyond the river Teign, between that and Dartmoor, and is so lovely in all its variations of rivers, rivulets, broken ground, hills and dales, old broken, battered, time-worn timber, green knolls, rich pastures, and heathy common, that the wonder is that English lovers of scenery know so little of it. At the Stag and Antlers old Mrs. Crocket, than whom no old woman in the public line was ever more generous, more peppery, or more kind, kept two clean bed-rooms, and could cook a leg of Dartmoor mutton and make an apple pie against any woman in Devonshire. "Drat your fish!" she would say, when some self-indulgent and exacting traveller would wish for more than these accustomed viands. "Cock you up with dainties! If you can't eat your victuals without fish, you must go to Exeter. And then you'll get it stinking mayhap." Now Priscilla Stanbury and Mrs. Crocket were great friends, and there had been times of deep want, in which Mrs. Crocket's friendship had been very serviceable to the ladies at the cottage. The three young women had been to the inn one morning to ask after a conveyance from Nuncombe Putney to Princetown, and had found that a four-wheeled open carriage with an old horse and a very young driver could be hired there. "We have never dreamed of such a thing," Priscilla Stanbury had said, "and the only time I was at Princetown I walked there and back." So they had called at the Stag and Antlers, and Mrs. Crocket had told them her mind upon several matters.

"What a dear old woman!" said Nora, as they came away, having made their bargain for the open carriage.

"I think she takes quite enough upon herself, you know," said Mrs. Trevelyan.

"She is a dear old woman," said Priscilla, not attending at all to the last words that had been spoken. "She is one of the best friends I have in the world. If I were to say the best out of my own family, perhaps I should not be wrong."

"But she uses such very odd language for a woman," said Mrs. Trevelyan. Now Mrs. Crocket had certainly "dratted" and "darned" the boy, who wouldn't come as fast as she had wished, and had laughed at Mrs. Trevelyan very contemptuously, when that lady had suggested that the urchin, who was at last brought forth, might not be a safe charioteer down some of the hills.

"I suppose I'm used to it," said Priscilla. "At any rate I know I like it. And I like her."

"I dare say she's a good sort of woman," said Mrs. Trevelyan, "only--"

"I am not saying anything about her being a good woman now," said Priscilla, interrupting the other with some vehemence, "but only that she is my friend."

"I liked her of all things," said Nora. "Has she lived here always?"

"Yes; all her life. The house belonged to her father and to her grandfather before her, and I think she says she has never slept out of it a dozen times in her life. Her husband is dead, and her daughters are married away, and she has the great grief and trouble of a ne'er-do-well son. He's away now, and she's all alone." Then after a pause, she continued; "I dare say it seems odd to you, Mrs. Trevelyan, that we should speak of the innkeeper as a dear friend; but you must remember that we have been poor among the poorest--and are so indeed now. We only came into our present house to receive you. That is where we used to live," and she pointed to the tiny cottage, which now that it was dismantled and desolate, looked to be doubly poor. "There have been times when we should have gone to bed very hungry if it had not been for Mrs. Crocket."

Later in the day Mrs. Trevelyan, finding Priscilla alone, had apologized for what she had said about the old woman. "I was very thoughtless and forgetful, but I hope you will not be angry with me. I will be ever so fond of her if you will forgive me."

"Very well," said Priscilla, smiling; "on those conditions I will forgive you." And from that time there sprang up something like a feeling of friendship between Priscilla and Mrs. Trevelyan. Nevertheless Priscilla was still of opinion that the Clock House arrangement was dangerous, and should never have been made; and Mrs. Stanbury, always timid of her own nature, began to fear that it must be so, as soon as she was removed from the influence of her son. She did not see much even of the few neighbours who lived around her, but she fancied that people looked at her in church as though she had done that which she ought not to have done, in taking herself to a big and comfortable house for the sake of lending her protection to a lady who was separated from her husband. It was not that she believed that Mrs. Trevelyan had been wrong; but that, knowing herself to be weak, she fancied that she and her daughter would be enveloped in the danger and suspicion which could not but attach themselves to the lady's condition, instead of raising the lady out of the cloud,--as would have been the case had she herself been strong. Mrs. Trevelyan, who was sharpsighted and clear-witted, soon saw that it was so, and spoke to Priscilla on the subject before she had been a fortnight in the house. "I am afraid your mother does not like our being here," she said.

"How am I to answer that?" Priscilla replied.

"Just tell the truth."

"The truth is so uncivil. At first I did not like it. I disliked it very much."

"Why did you give way?"

"I didn't give way. Hugh talked my mother over. Mamma does what I tell her, except when Hugh tells her something else. I was afraid, because, down here, knowing nothing of the world, I didn't wish that we, little people, should be mixed up in the quarrels and disagreements of those who are so much bigger."

"I don't know who it is that is big in this matter."

"You are big,--at any rate by comparison. But now it must go on. The house has been taken, and my fears are over as regards you. What you observe in mamma is only the effect, not yet quite worn out, of what I said before you came. You may be quite sure of this,--that we neither of us believe a word against you. Your position is a very unfortunate one; but if it can be remedied by your staying here with us, pray stay with us."

"It cannot be remedied," said Emily; "but we could not be anywhere more comfortable than we are here."

XV. WHAT THEY SAID ABOUT IT IN THE CLOSE

When Miss Stanbury, in the Close at Exeter, was first told of the arrangement that had been made at Nuncombe Putney, she said some very hard words as to the thing that had been done. She was quite sure that Mrs. Trevelyan was no better than she should be. Ladies who were separated from their husbands never were any better than they should be. And what was to be thought of any woman, who, when separated from her husband, would put herself under the protection of such a Paladin as Hugh Stanbury? She heard the tidings of course from Dorothy, and spoke her mind even to Dorothy plainly enough; but it was to Martha that she expressed herself with her fullest vehemence.

"We always knew," she said, "that my brother had married an addle-pated, silly woman, one of the most unsuited to be the mistress of a clergyman's house that ever a man set eyes on; but I didn't think she'd allow herself to be led into such a stupid thing as this."

"I don't suppose the lady has done anything amiss,--any more than combing her husband's hair, and the like of that," said Martha.

"Don't tell me! Why, by their own story, she has got a lover."

"But he ain't to come after her down here, I suppose. And as for lovers, ma'am, I'm told that the most of 'em have 'em up in London. But it don't mean much, only just idle talking and gallivanting."

"When women can't keep themselves from idle talking with strange gentlemen, they are very far gone on the road to the devil. That's my notion. And that was everybody's notion a few years ago. But now, what with divorce bills, and women's rights, and penny papers, and false hair, and married women being just like giggling girls, and giggling girls knowing just as much as married women, when a woman has been married a year or two she begins to think whether she mayn't have more fun for her money by living apart from her husband."

"Miss Dorothy says--"

"Oh, bother what Miss Dorothy says! Miss Dorothy only knows what it has suited that scamp, her brother, to tell her. I understand this woman has come away because of a lover; and if that's so, my sister-in-law is very wrong to receive her. The temptation of the Clock House has been too much for her. It's not my doing; that's all."

That evening Miss Stanbury and Dorothy went out to tea at the house of Mrs. MacHugh, and there the matter was very much discussed. The family of the Trevelyans was known by name in these parts, and the fact of Mrs. Trevelyan having been sent to live in a Devonshire village, with Devonshire ladies who had a relation in Exeter so well esteemed as Miss Stanbury of the Close, were circumstances of themselves sufficient to ensure a considerable amount of prestige at the city tea-table for the tidings of this unfortunate family quarrel. Some reticence was of course necessary because of the presence of Miss Stanbury and of Dorothy. To Miss Stanbury herself Mrs. MacHugh and Mrs. Crumbie, of Cronstadt House, did not scruple to express themselves very plainly, and to whisper a question as to what was to be done should the lover make his appearance at Nuncombe Putney; but they who spoke of the matter before Dorothy, were at first more charitable, or, at least, more forbearing. Mr. Gibson, who was one of the minor canons, and the two Miss Frenches from Heavitree, who had the reputation of hunting unmarried clergymen in couples, seemed to have heard all about it. When Mrs. MacHugh and Miss Stanbury, with Mr. and Mrs. Crumbie, had seated themselves at their whist-table, the younger people were able to express their opinions without danger of interruption or of rebuke. It was known to all Exeter by this time, that Dorothy Stanbury's mother had gone to the Clock House, and that she had done so in order that Mrs. Trevelyan might have a home. But it was not yet known whether anybody had called upon them. There was Mrs. Merton, the wife of the present parson of Nuncombe, who had known the Stanburys for the last twenty years; and there was Mrs. Ellison of Lessboro', who lived only four miles from Nuncombe, and who kept a pony-carriage. It would be a great thing to know how these ladies had behaved in so difficult and embarrassing a position. Mrs. Trevelyan and her sister had now been at Nuncombe Putney for more than a fortnight, and something in that matter of calling must have been done,--or have been left undone. In answer to an ingeniously-framed question asked by Camilla French, Dorothy at once set the matter at rest. "Mrs. Merton," said Camilla French, "must find it a great thing to have two new ladies come to the village, especially now that she has lost you, Miss Stanbury?"

"Mamma tells me," said Dorothy, "that Mrs. Trevelyan and Miss Rowley do not mean to know anybody. They have given it out quite plainly, so that there should be no mistake."

"Dear, dear," said Camilla French.

"I dare say it's for the best," said Arabella French, who was the elder, and who looked very meek and soft. Miss French almost always looked meek and soft.

"I'm afraid it will make it very dull for your mother,--not seeing her old friends," said Mr. Gibson.

"Mamma won't feel that at all," said Dorothy.

"Mrs. Stanbury, I suppose, will see her own friends at her own house just the same," said Camilla.

"There would be great difficulty in that, when there is a lady who is to remain unknown," said Arabella. "Don't you think so, Mr. Gibson?" Mr. Gibson replied that perhaps there might be a difficulty, but he wasn't sure. The difficulty, he thought, might be got over if the ladies did not always occupy the same room.

"You have never seen Mrs. Trevelyan, have you, Miss Stanbury?" asked Camilla.

"Never."

"She is not an old family friend, then,--or anything of that sort?"

"Oh, dear, no."

"Because," said Arabella, "it is so odd how different people get together sometimes." Then Dorothy explained that Mr. Trevelyan and her brother Hugh had long been friends.

"Oh!--of Mr. Trevelyan," said Camilla. "Then it is he that has sent his wife to Nuncombe, not she that has come there?"

"I suppose there has been some agreement," said Dorothy.

"Just so; just so," said Arabella, the meek. "I should like to see her. They say that she is very beautiful; don't they?"

"My brother says that she is handsome."

"Exceedingly lovely, I'm told," said Camilla. "I should like to see her,--shouldn't you, Mr. Gibson?"

"I always like to see a pretty woman," said Mr. Gibson, with a polite bow, which the sisters shared between them.

"I suppose she'll go to church," said Camilla.

"Very likely not," said Arabella. "Ladies of that sort very often don't go to church. I dare say you'll find that she'll never stir out of the place at all, and that not a soul in Nuncombe will ever see her except the gardener. It is such a thing for a woman to be separated from her husband! Don't you think so, Mr. Gibson?"

"Of course it is," said he, with a shake of his head, which was intended to imply that the censure of the church must of course attend any sundering of those whom the church had bound together; but which implied also by the absence from it of any intense clerical severity, that as the separated wife was allowed to live with so very respectable a lady as Mrs. Stanbury, there must probably be some mitigating circumstances attending this special separation.

"I wonder what he is like?" said Camilla, after a pause.

"Who?" asked Arabella.

"The gentleman," said Camilla.

"What gentleman?" demanded Arabella.

"I don't mean Mr. Trevelyan," said Camilla.

"I don't believe there really is,--eh,--is there?" said Mr. Gibson, very timidly.

"Oh, dear, yes," said Arabella.

"I'm afraid there's something of the kind," said Camilla. "I've heard that there is, and I've heard his name." Then she whispered very closely into the ear of Mr. Gibson the words, "Colonel Osborne," as though her lips were by far too pure to mention aloud any sound so full of iniquity.

"Indeed!" said Mr. Gibson.

"But he's quite an old man," said Dorothy, "and knew her father intimately before she was born. And, as far as I can understand, her husband does not suspect her in the least. And it's only because there's a misunderstanding between them, and not at all because of the gentleman."

"Oh!" exclaimed Camilla.

"Ah!" exclaimed Arabella.

"That would make a difference," said Mr. Gibson.

"But for a married woman to have her name mentioned at all with a gentleman,--it is so bad; is it not, Mr. Gibson?" And then Arabella also had her whisper into the clergyman's ear,--very closely. "I'm afraid there's not a doubt about the Colonel. I'm afraid not. I am indeed."

"Two by honours and the odd, and it's my deal," said Miss Stanbury, briskly, and the sharp click with which she put the markers down upon the table was heard all through the room. "I don't want anybody to tell me," she said, "that when a young woman is parted from her husband, the chances are ten to one that she has been very foolish."

"But what's a woman to do, if her husband beats her?" said Mrs. Crumbie.

"Beat him again," said Mrs. MacHugh.

"And the husband will be sure to have the worst of it," said Mr. Crumbie. "Well, I declare, if you haven't turned up an honour again, Miss Stanbury!"

"It was your wife that cut it to me, Mr. Crumbie." Then they were again at once immersed in the play, and the name neither of Trevelyan nor Osborne was heard till Miss Stanbury was marking her double under the candlestick; but during all pauses in the game the conversation went back to the same topic, and when the rubber was over they who had been playing it lost themselves for ten minutes in the allurements of the interesting subject. It was so singular a coincidence that the lady should have gone to Nuncombe Putney of all villages in England, and to the house of Mrs. Stanbury of all ladies in England. And then was she innocent, or was she guilty; and if guilty, in what degree? That she had been allowed to bring her baby with her was considered to be a great point in her favour. Mr. Crumbie's opinion was that it was "only a few words." Mrs. Crumbie was afraid that she had been a little light. Mrs. MacHugh said that there was never fire without smoke. And Miss Stanbury, as she took her departure, declared that the young women of the present day didn't know what they were after. "They think that the world should be all frolic and dancing, and they have no more idea of doing their duty and earning their bread than a boy home for the holidays has of doing lessons."

Then, as she went home with Dorothy across the Close, she spoke a word which she intended to be very serious. "I don't mean to say anything against your mother for what she has done as yet. Somebody must take the woman in, and perhaps it was natural. But if that Colonel What's-his-name makes his way down to Nuncombe Putney, your mother must send her packing, if she has any respect either for herself or for Priscilla."

XVI. DARTMOOR

The well-weighed decision of Miss Stanbury respecting the Stanbury-Trevelyan arrangement at Nuncombe Putney had been communicated to Dorothy as the two walked home at night across the Close from Mrs. MacHugh's house, and it was accepted by Dorothy as being wise and proper. It amounted to this. If Mrs. Trevelyan should behave herself with propriety in her retirement at the Clock House, no further blame in the matter should be attributed to Mrs. Stanbury for receiving her,--at any rate in Dorothy's hearing. The existing scheme, whether wise or foolish, should be regarded as an accepted scheme. But if Mrs. Trevelyan should be indiscreet,--if, for instance, Colonel Osborne should show himself at Nuncombe Putney,--then, for the sake of the family, Miss Stanbury would speak out, and would speak out very loudly. All this Dorothy understood, and she could perceive that her aunt had strong suspicion that there would be indiscretion.

"I never knew one like her," said Miss Stanbury, "who, when she'd got away from one man, didn't want to have another dangling after her."

A week had hardly passed after the party at Mrs. MacHugh's, and Mrs. Trevelyan had hardly been three weeks at Nuncombe Putney, before the tidings which Miss Stanbury almost expected reached her ears.

"The Colonel's been at the Clock House, ma'am," said Martha.

Now, it was quite understood in the Close by this time that "the Colonel" meant Colonel Osborne.

"No!"

"I'm told he has though, ma'am, for sure and certain."

"Who says so?"

"Giles Hickbody was down at Lessboro', and see'd him hisself,--a portly, middle-aged man,--not one of your young scampish-like lovers."

"That's the man."

"Oh, yes. He went over to Nuncombe Putney, as sure as anything;--hired Mrs. Clegg's chaise and pair, and asked for Mrs. Trevelyan's house as open as anything. When Giles asked in the yard, they told him as how that was the married lady's young man."

"I'd like to be at his tail,--so I would,--with a mop-handle," said Miss Stanbury, whose hatred for those sins by which the comfort and respectability of the world are destroyed, was not only sincere, but intense. "Well; and what then?"

"He came back and slept at Mrs. Clegg's that night,--at least, that was what he said he should do."

Miss Stanbury, however, was not so precipitate or uncharitable as to act strongly upon information such as this. Before she even said a word to Dorothy, she made further inquiry. She made very minute inquiry, writing even to her very old and intimate friend Mrs. Ellison, of Lessboro',--writing to that lady a most cautious and guarded letter. At last it became a fact proved to her mind that Colonel Osborne had been at the Clock House, had been received there, and had remained there for hours,--had been allowed access to Mrs. Trevelyan, and had slept the night at the inn at Lessboro'. The thing was so terrible to Miss Stanbury's mind, that even false hair, Dr. Colenso, and penny newspapers did not account for it.

"I shall begin to believe that the Evil One has been allowed to come among us in person because of our sins," she said to Martha;--and she meant it.

In the meantime, Mrs. Trevelyan, as may be remembered, had hired Mrs. Crocket's open carriage, and the three young women, Mrs. Trevelyan, Nora, and Priscilla, made a little excursion to Princetown, somewhat after the fashion of a picnic. At Princetown, in the middle of Dartmoor, about nine miles from Nuncombe Putney, is the prison establishment at which are kept convicts undergoing penal servitude. It is regarded by all the country round with great interest, chiefly because the prisoners now and again escape, and then there comes a period of interesting excitement until the escaped felon shall have been again taken. How can you tell where he may be, or whether it may not suit him to find his rest in your own cupboard, or under your own bed? And then, as escape without notice will of course be the felon's object, to attain that he will probably cut your throat, and the throat of everybody belonging to you. All which considerations give an interest to Princetown, and excite in the hearts of the Devonians of these parts a strong affection for the Dartmoor prison. Of those who visit Princetown comparatively few effect an entrance within the walls of the gaol. They look at the gloomy place with a mysterious interest, feeling something akin to envy for the prisoners who have enjoyed the privilege of solving the mysteries of prison life, and who know how men feel when they have their hair cut short, and are free from moral responsibility for their own conduct, and are moved about in gangs, and treated like wild beasts.

But the journey to Princetown, from whatever side it is approached, has the charm of wild and beautiful scenery. The spot itself is ugly enough; but you can go not thither without breathing the sweetest, freshest air, and encountering that delightful sense of romance which moorland scenery always produces. The idea of our three friends was to see the Moor rather than the prison, to learn something of the country around, and to enjoy the excitement of eating a sandwich sitting on a hillock, in exchange for the ordinary comforts of a good dinner with chairs and tables. A bottle of sherry and water and a paper of sandwiches contained their whole banquet; for ladies, though they like good things at picnics, and, indeed, at other times, almost as well as men like them, very seldom prepare dainties for themselves alone. Men are wiser and more thoughtful, and are careful to have the good things, even if they are to be enjoyed without companionship.

Mrs. Crocket's boy, though he was only about three feet high, was a miracle of skill and discretion. He used the machine, as the patent drag is called, in going down the hills with the utmost care. He never forced the beast beyond a walk if there was the slightest rise in the ground; and as there was always a rise, the journey was slow. But the three ladies enjoyed it thoroughly, and Mrs. Trevelyan was in better spirits than she herself had thought to be possible for her in her present condition. Most of us have recognised the fact that a dram of spirits will create,--that a so-called nip of brandy will create hilarity, or, at least, alacrity, and that a glass of sherry will often "pick up" and set in order the prostrate animal and mental faculties of the drinker. But we are not sufficiently alive to the fact that copious draughts of fresh air,--of air fresh and unaccustomed,--will have precisely the same effect. We do know that now and again it is very essential to "change the air;" but we generally consider that to do that with any chance of advantage, it is necessary to go far afield; and we think also that such change of the air is only needful when sickness of the body has come upon us, or when it threatens to come. We are seldom aware that we may imbibe long potations of pleasure and healthy excitement without perhaps going out of our own county; that such potations are within a day's journey of most of us; and that they are to be had for half-a-crown a head, all expenses told. Mrs. Trevelyan probably did not know that the cloud was lifted off her mind, and the load of her sorrow made light to her, by the special vigour of the air of the Moor; but she did know that she was enjoying herself, and that the world was pleasanter to her than it had been for months past.

When they had sat upon their hillocks, and eaten their sandwiches,--regretting that the basket of provisions had not been bigger,--and had drunk their sherry and water out of the little horn mug which Mrs. Crocket had lent them, Nora started off across the moorland alone. The horse had been left to be fed in Princetown, and they had walked back to a bush under which they had rashly left their basket of provender concealed. It happened, however, that on that day there was no escaped felon about to watch what they had done, and the food and the drink had been found secure. Nora had gone off, and as her sister and Priscilla sat leaning against their hillocks with their backs to the road, she could be seen standing now on one little eminence and now on another, thinking, doubtless, as she stood on the one how good it would be to be Lady Peterborough, and, as she stood on the other, how much better to be Mrs. Hugh Stanbury. Only,--before she could be Mrs. Hugh Stanbury it would be necessary that Mr. Hugh Stanbury should share her opinion,--and necessary also that he should be able to maintain a wife. "I should never do to be a very poor man's wife," she said to herself; and remembered as she said it, that in reference to the prospect of her being Lady Peterborough, the man who was to be Lord Peterborough was at any rate ready to make her his wife, and on that side there were none of those difficulties about house, and money, and position which stood in the way of the Hugh Stanbury side of the question. She was not, she thought, fit to be the wife of a very poor man; but she conceived of herself that she would do very well as a future Lady Peterborough in the drawing-rooms of Monkhams. She was so far vain as to fancy that she could look, and speak, and move, and have her being after the fashion which is approved for the Lady Peterboroughs of the world. It was not clear to her that Nature had not expressly intended her to be a Lady Peterborough; whereas, as far as she could see, Nature had not intended her to be a Mrs. Hugh Stanbury, with a precarious income of perhaps ten guineas a week when journalism was doing well. So she moved on to another little eminence to think of it there. It was clear to her that if she should accept Mr. Glascock she would sell herself, and not give herself away; and she had told herself scores of times before this, that a young woman should give herself away, and not sell herself;--should either give herself away, or keep herself to herself as circumstances might go. She had been quite sure that she would never sell herself. But this was a lesson which she had taught herself when she was very young, before she had come to understand the world and its hard necessities. Nothing, she now told herself, could be worse than to hang like a mill-stone round the neck of a poor man. It might be a very good thing to give herself away for love,--but it would not be a good thing to be the means of ruining the man she loved, even if that man were willing to be so ruined. And then she thought that she could also love that other man a little,--could love him sufficiently for comfortable domestic purposes. And it would undoubtedly be very pleasant to have all the troubles of her life settled for her. If she were Mrs. Glascock, known to the world as the future Lady Peterborough, would it not be within her power to bring her sister and her sister's husband again together? The tribute of the Monkhams' authority and influence to her sister's side of the question would be most salutary. She tried to make herself believe that in this way she would be doing a good deed. Upon the whole, she thought that if Mr. Glascock should give her another chance she would accept him. And he had distinctly promised that he would give her another chance. It might be that this unfortunate quarrel in the Trevelyan family would deter him. People do not wish to ally themselves with family quarrels. But if the chance came in her way she would accept it. She had made up her mind to that, when she turned round from off the last knoll on which she had stood, to return to her sister and Priscilla Stanbury.

They two had sat still under the shade of a thorn bush, looking at Nora as she was wandering about, and talking together more freely than they had ever done before on the circumstances that had brought them together. "How pretty she looks," Priscilla had said, as Nora was standing with her figure clearly marked by the light.

"Yes; she is very pretty, and has been much admired. This terrible affair of mine is a cruel blow to her."

"You mean that it is bad for her to come and live here--without society."

"Not exactly that,--though of course it would be better for her to go out. And I don't know how a girl is ever to get settled in the world unless she goes out. But it is always an injury to be connected in any way with a woman who is separated from her husband. It must be bad for you."

"It won't hurt me," said Priscilla. "Nothing of that kind can hurt me."

"I mean that people say such ill-natured things."

"I stand alone, and can take care of myself," said Priscilla. "I defy the evil tongues of all the world to hurt me. My personal cares are limited to an old gown and bread and cheese. I like a pair of gloves to go to church with, but that is only the remnant of a prejudice. The world has so very little to give me, that I am pretty nearly sure that it will take nothing away."

"And you are contented?"

"Well, no; I can't say that I am contented. I hardly think that anybody ought to be contented. Should my mother die and Dorothy remain with my aunt, or get married, I should be utterly alone in the world. Providence, or whatever you call it, has made me a lady after a fashion, so that I can't live with the ploughmen's wives, and at the same time has so used me in other respects, that I can't live with anybody else."

"Why should not you get married, as well as Dorothy?"

"Who would have me? And if I had a husband I should want a good one,--a man with a head on his shoulders, and a heart. Even if I were young and good-looking, or rich, I doubt whether I could please myself. As it is I am as likely to be taken bodily to heaven, as to become any man's wife."

"I suppose most women think so of themselves at some time, and yet they are married."

"I am not fit to marry. I am often cross, and I like my own way, and I have a distaste for men. I never in my life saw a man whom I wished even to make my intimate friend. I should think any man an idiot who began to make soft speeches to me, and I should tell him so."

"Ah; you might find it different when he went on with it."

"But I think," said Priscilla, "that when a woman is married there is nothing to which she should not submit on behalf of her husband."

"You mean that for me."

"Of course I mean it for you. How should I not be thinking of you, living as you are under the same roof with us? And I am thinking of Louey." Louey was the baby. "What are you to do when after a year or two his father shall send for him to have him under his own care?"

"Nothing shall separate me from my child," said Mrs. Trevelyan eagerly.

"That is easily said; but I suppose the power of doing as he pleased would be with him."

"Why should it be with him? I do not at all know that it would be with him. I have not left his house. It is he that has turned me out."

"There can, I think, be very little doubt what you should do," said Priscilla, after a pause, during which she had got up from her seat under the thorn bush.

"What should I do?" asked Mrs. Trevelyan.

"Go back to him."

"I will to-morrow if he will write and ask me. Nay; how could I help myself? I am his creature, and must go or come as he bids me. I am here only because he has sent me."

"You should write and ask him to take you."

"Ask him to forgive me because he has ill-treated me?"

"Never mind about that," said Priscilla, standing over her companion, who was still lying under the bush. "All that is twopenny-halfpenny pride, which should be thrown to the winds. The more right you have been hitherto the better you can afford to go on being right. What is it that we all live upon but self-esteem? When we want praise it is only because praise enables us to think well of ourselves. Every one to himself is the centre and pivot of all the world."

"It's a very poor world that goes round upon my pivot," said Mrs. Trevelyan.

"I don't know how this quarrel came up," exclaimed Priscilla, "and I don't care to know. But it seems a trumpery quarrel,--as to who should beg each other's pardon first, and all that kind of thing. Sheer and simple nonsense! Ask him to let it all be forgotten. I suppose he loves you?"

"How can I know? He did once."

"And you love him?"

"Yes. I love him certainly."

"I don't see how you can have a doubt. Here is Jack with the carriage, and if we don't mind he'll pass us by without seeing us."

Then Mrs. Trevelyan got up, and when they had succeeded in diverting Jack's attention for a moment from the horse, they called to Nora, who was still moving about from one knoll to another, and who showed no desire to abandon the contemplations in which she had been engaged.

It had been mid-day before they left home in the morning, and they were due to be at home in time for tea,--which is an epoch in the day generally allowed to be more elastic than some others. When Mrs. Stanbury lived in the cottage her hour for tea had been six; this had been stretched to half-past seven when she received Mrs. Trevelyan at the Clock House; and it was half-past eight before Jack landed them at their door. It was manifest to them all as they entered the house that there was an air of mystery in the face of the girl who had opened the door for them. She did not speak, however, till they were all within the passage. Then she uttered a few words very solemnly. "There be a gentleman come," she said.

"A gentleman!" said Mrs. Trevelyan, thinking in the first moment of her husband, and in the second of Colonel Osborne.

"He be for you, miss," said the girl, bobbing her head at Nora.

Upon hearing this Nora sank speechless into the chair which stood in the passage.

XVII. A GENTLEMAN COMES TO NUNCOMBE PUTNEY

It soon became known to them all as they remained clustered in the hall that Mr. Glascock was in the house. Mrs. Stanbury came out to them and informed them that he had been at Nuncombe Putney for the last five hours, and that he had asked for Mrs. Trevelyan when he called. It became evident as the affairs of the evening went on, that Mrs. Stanbury had for a few minutes been thrown into a terrible state of amazement, thinking that "the Colonel" had appeared. The strange gentleman, however, having obtained admittance, explained who he was, saying that he was very desirous of seeing Mrs. Trevelyan,--and Miss Rowley. It may be presumed that a glimmer of light did make its way into Mrs. Stanbury's mind on the subject; but up to the moment at which the three travellers arrived, she had been in doubt on the subject. Mr. Glascock had declared that he would take a walk, and in the course of the afternoon had expressed high approval of Mrs. Crocket's culinary skill. When Mrs. Crocket heard that she had entertained the son of a lord, she was very loud in her praise of the manner in which he had eaten two mutton chops and called for a third. He had thought it no disgrace to apply himself to the second half of an apple pie, and had professed himself to be an ardent admirer of Devonshire cream. "It's them counter-skippers as turns up their little noses at the victuals as is set before them," said Mrs. Crocket.

After his dinner Mr. Glascock had returned to the Clock House, and had been sitting there for an hour with Mrs. Stanbury, not much to her delight or to his, when the carriage was driven up to the door.

"He is to go back to Lessboro' to-night," said Mrs. Stanbury in a whisper.

"Of course you must see him before he goes," said Mrs. Trevelyan to her sister. There had, as was natural, been very much said between the two sisters about Mr. Glascock. Nora had abstained from asserting in any decided way that she disliked the man, and had always absolutely refused to allow Hugh Stanbury's name to be mixed up with the question. Whatever might be her own thoughts about Hugh Stanbury she had kept them even from her sister. When her sister had told her that she had refused Mr. Glascock because of Hugh, she had shown herself to be indignant, and had since that said one or two fine things as to her capacity to refuse a brilliant offer simply because the man who had made it was indifferent to her. Mrs. Trevelyan had learned from her that her suitor had declared his intention to persevere; and here was perseverance with a vengeance! "Of course you must see him,--at once," said Mrs. Trevelyan. Nora for a few seconds had remained silent, and then had run up to her room. Her sister followed her instantly.

"What is the meaning of it all?" said Priscilla to her mother.

"I suppose he is in love with Miss Rowley," said Mrs. Stanbury.

"But who is he?"

Then Mrs. Stanbury told all that she knew. She had seen from his card that he was an Honourable Mr. Glascock. She had collected from what he had said that he was an old friend of the two ladies. Her conviction was strong in Mr. Glascock's favour,--thinking, as she expressed herself, that everything was right and proper,--but she could hardly explain why she thought so.

"I do wish that they had never come," said Priscilla, who could not rid herself of an idea that there must be danger in having to do with women who had men running after them.

"Of course I'll see him," said Nora to her sister. "I have not refused to see him. Why do you scold me?"

"I have not scolded you, Nora; but I do want you to think how immensely important this is."

"Of course it is important."

"And so much the more so because of my misfortunes! Think how good he must be, how strong must be his attachment, when he comes down here after you in this way."

"But I have to think of my own feelings."

"You know you like him. You have told me so. And only fancy what mamma will feel! Such a position! And the man so excellent! Everybody says that he hasn't a fault in any way."

"I hate people without faults."

"Oh, Nora, Nora, that is foolish! There, there; you must go down. Pray,--pray do not let any absurd fancy stand in your way, and destroy everything. It will never come again, Nora. And, only think; it is all now your own, if you will only whisper one word."

"Ah!--one word,--and that a falsehood!"

"No,--no. Say you will try to love him, and that will be enough. And you do love him?"

"Do I?"

"Yes, you do. It is only the opposition of your nature that makes you fight against him. Will you go now?"

"Let me be for two minutes by myself," said Nora, "and then I'll come down. Tell him that I'm coming." Mrs. Trevelyan stooped over her, kissed her, and then left her.

Nora, as soon as she was alone, stood upright in the middle of the room and held her hands up to her forehead. She had been far from thinking, when she was considering the matter easily among the hillocks, that the necessity for an absolute decision would come upon her so instantaneously. She had told herself only this morning that it would be wise to accept the man, if he should ever ask a second time;--and he had come already. He had been waiting for her in the village while she had been thinking whether he would ever come across her path again. She thought that it would have been easier for her now to have gone down with a "yes" in her mouth, if her sister had not pressed her so hard to say that "yes." The very pressure from her sister seemed to imply that such pressure ought to be resisted. Why should there have been pressure, unless there were reasons against her marrying him? And yet, if she chose to take him, who would have a right to complain of her? Hugh Stanbury had never spoken to her a word that would justify her in even supposing that he would consider himself to be ill-used. All others of her friends would certainly rejoice, would applaud her, pat her on the back, cover her with caresses, and tell her that she had been born under a happy star. And she did like the man. Nay;--she thought she loved him. She withdrew her hands from her brow, assured herself that her lot in life was cast, and with hurrying fingers attempted to smooth her hair and to arrange her ribbons before the glass. She would go to the encounter boldly and accept him honestly. It was her duty to do so. What might she not do for brothers and sisters as the wife of Lord Peterborough of Monkhams? She saw that that arrangement before the glass could be of no service, and she stepped quickly to the door. If he did not like her as she was, he need not ask her. Her mind was made up, and she would do it. But as she went down the stairs to the room in which she knew that he was waiting for her, there came over her a cold feeling of self-accusation,--almost of disgrace. "I do not care," she said. "I know that I'm right." She opened the door quickly, that there might be no further doubt, and found that she was alone with him.

"Miss Rowley," he said, "I am afraid you will think that I am persecuting you."

"I have no right to think that," she answered.

"I'll tell you why I have come. My dear father, who has always been my best friend, is very ill. He is at Naples, and I must go to him. He is very old, you know,--over eighty; and will never live to come back to England. From what I hear, I think it probable that I may remain with him till everything is over."

"I did not know that he was so old as that."

"They say that he can hardly live above a month or two. He will never see my wife,--if I can have a wife; but I should like to tell him, if it were possible,--that,--that--"

"I understand you, Mr. Glascock."

"I told you that I should come to you again, and as I may possibly linger at Naples all the winter, I could not go without seeing you. Miss Rowley, may I hope that you can love me?"

She did not answer him a word, but stood looking away from him with her hands clasped together. Had he asked her whether she would be his wife, it is possible that the answer which she had prepared would have been spoken. But he had put the question in another form. Did she love him? If she could only bring herself to say that she could love him, she might be lady of Monkhams before the next summer had come round.

"Nora," he said, "do you think that you can love me?"

"No," she said, and there was something almost of fierceness in the tone of her voice as she answered him.

"And must that be your final answer to me?"

"Mr. Glascock, what can I say?" she replied. "I will tell you the honest truth:--I will tell you everything. I came into this room determined to accept you. But you are so good, and so kind, and so upright, that I cannot tell you a falsehood. I do not love you. I ought not to take what you offer me. If I did, it would be because you are rich, and a lord; and not because I love you. I love some one else. There;--pray, pray do not tell of me; but I do." Then she flung away from him and hid her face in a corner of the sofa out of the light.

Her lover stood silent, not knowing how to go on with the conversation, not knowing how to bring it to an end. After what she had now said to him it was impossible that he should press her further. It was almost impossible that he should wish to do so. When a lady is frank enough to declare that her heart is not her own to give, a man can hardly wish to make further prayer for the gift. "If so," he said, "of course I have nothing to hope."

She was sobbing, and could not answer him. She was half repentant, partly proud of what she had done,--half repentant in that she had lost what had seemed to her to be so good, and full of remorse in that she had so unnecessarily told her secret.

"Perhaps," said he, "I ought to assure you that what you have told me shall never be repeated by my lips."

She thanked him for this by a motion of her head and hand, not by words;--and then he was gone. How he managed to bid adieu to Mrs. Stanbury and her sister, or whether he saw them as he left the house, she never knew. In her corner of the sofa, weeping in the dark, partly proud and partly repentant, she remained till her sister came to her. "Emily," she said, jumping up, "say nothing about it; not a word. It is of no use. The thing is done and over, and let it altogether be forgotten."

"It is done and over, certainly," said Mrs. Trevelyan.

"Exactly;--and I suppose a girl may do what she likes with herself in that way. If I choose to decline to take anything that is pleasant, and nice, and comfortable, nobody has a right to scold me. And I won't be scolded."

"But, my child, who is scolding you?"

"You mean to scold me. But it is of no use. The man has gone, and there is an end of it. Nothing that you can say or I can think will bring him back again. I don't want anybody to tell me that it would be better to be Lady Peterborough, with everything that the world has to give, than to live here without a soul to speak to, and to have to go back to those horrible islands next year. You can't think that I am very comfortable."

"But what did you say to him, Nora?"

"What did I say to him? What could I say to him? Why didn't he ask me to be his wife without saying anything about love? He asked me if I loved him. Of course I don't love him. I would have said I did, but it stuck in my throat. I am willing enough, I believe, to sell myself to the devil, but I don't know how to do it. Never mind. It's done, and now I'll go to bed."

She did go to bed, and Mrs. Trevelyan explained to the two ladies as much as was necessary of what had occurred. When Mrs. Stanbury came to understand that the gentleman who had been closeted with her would, probably, in a few months be a lord himself, that he was a very rich man, a member of Parliament, and one of those who are decidedly born with gold spoons in their mouths, and understood also that Nora Rowley had refused him, she was lost in amazement. Mr. Glascock was about forty years of age, and appeared to Nora Rowley, who was nearly twenty years his junior, to be almost an old man. But to Mrs. Stanbury, who was over sixty, Mr. Glascock seemed to be quite in the flower of his age. The bald place at the top of his head simply showed that he had passed his boyhood, and the grey hairs at the back of his whiskers were no more than outward signs of manly discretion. She could not understand why any girl should refuse such an offer, unless the man were himself bad in morals, or in temper. But Mrs. Trevelyan had told her while Nora and Mr. Glascock were closeted together, that he was believed by them all to be good and gentle. Nevertheless she felt a considerable increase of respect for a young lady who had refused the eldest son of a lord. Priscilla, when she heard what had occurred, expressed to her mother a moderated approval. According to her views a girl would much more often be right to refuse an offer of marriage than to accept it, let him who made the offer be who he might. And the fact of the man having been sent away with a refusal somewhat softened Priscilla's anger at his coming there at all.

"I suppose he is a goose," said she to her mother, "and I hope there won't be any more of this kind running after them while they are with us."

Nora, when she was alone, wept till her heart was almost broken. It was done, and the man was gone, and the thing was over. She had quite sufficient knowledge of the world to realise perfectly the difference between such a position as that which had been offered to her, and the position which in all probability she would now be called upon to fill. She had had her chance, and Fortune had placed great things at her disposal. It must be said of her also that the great things which Fortune had offered to her were treasures very valuable in her eyes. Whether it be right and wise to covet or to despise wealth and rank, there was no doubt but that she coveted them. She had been instructed to believe in them, and she did believe in them. In some mysterious manner of which she herself knew nothing, taught by some preceptor the nobility of whose lessons she had not recognised though she had accepted them, she had learned other things also,--to revere truth and love, and to be ambitious as regarded herself of conferring the gift of her whole heart upon some one whom she could worship as a hero. She had spoken the simple truth when she had told her sister that she had been willing to sell herself to the devil, but that she had failed in her attempt to execute the contract. But now as she lay weeping on her bed, tearing herself with remorse, picturing to herself in the most vivid colours all that she had thrown away, telling herself of all that she might have done and all that she might have been, had she not allowed the insane folly of a moment to get the better of her, she received little or no comfort from the reflection that she had been true to her better instincts. She had told the man that she had refused him because she loved Hugh Stanbury;--at least, as far as she could remember what had passed, she had so told him. And how mean it was of her to allow herself to be actuated by an insane passion for a man who had never spoken to her of love, and how silly of her afterwards to confess it! Of what service could such a passion be to her life? Even were it returned, she could not marry such a one as Hugh Stanbury. She knew enough of herself to be quite sure that were he to ask her to do so to-morrow, she would refuse him. Better go and be scorched, and bored to death, and buried at the Mandarins, than attempt to regulate a poor household which, as soon as she made one of its number, would be on the sure road to ruin!

For a moment there came upon her, not a thought, hardly an idea,--something of a waking dream that she would write to Mr. Glascock and withdraw all that she had said. Were she to do so he would probably despise her, and tell her that he despised her;--but there might be a chance. It was possible that such a declaration would bring him back to her;--and did it not bring him back to her she would only be where she was, a poor lost, shipwrecked creature, who had flung herself upon the rocks and thrown away her only chance of a prosperous voyage across the ocean of life; her only chance, for she was not like other girls, who at any rate remain on the scene of action, and may refit their spars and still win their way. For there were to be no more seasons in London, no more living in Curzon Street, no renewed power of entering the ball-rooms and crowded staircases in which high-born wealthy lovers can be conquered. A great prospect had been given to her, and she had flung it aside! That letter of retractation was, however, quite out of the question. The reader must not suppose that she had ever thought that she could write it. She thought of nothing but of coming misery and remorse. In her wretchedness she fancied that she had absolutely disclosed to the man who loved her the name of him whom she had been mad enough to say that she loved. But what did it matter? Let it be as it might, she was destroyed.

The next morning she came down to breakfast pale as a ghost; and they who saw her knew at once that she had done that which had made her a wretched woman.

XVIII. THE STANBURY CORRESPONDENCE

Half an hour after the proper time, when the others had finished their tea and bread and butter, Nora Rowley came down among them pale as a ghost. Her sister had gone to her while she was dressing, but she had declared that she would prefer to be alone. She would be down directly, she had said, and had completed her toilet without even the assistance of her maid. She drank her cup of tea and pretended to eat her toast; and then sat herself down, very wretchedly, to think of it all again. It had been all within her grasp,--all of which she had ever dreamed! And now it was gone! Each of her three companions strove from time to time to draw her into conversation, but she seemed to be resolute in her refusal. At first, till her utter prostration had become a fact plainly recognised by them all, she made some little attempt at an answer when a direct question was asked of her; but after a while she only shook her head, and was silent, giving way to absolute despair.

Late in the evening she went out into the garden, and Priscilla followed her. It was now the end of July, and the summer was in its glory. The ladies, during the day, would remain in the drawing-room with the windows open and the blinds down, and would sit in the evening reading and working, or perhaps pretending to read and work, under the shade of a cedar which stood upon the lawn. No retirement could possibly be more secluded than was that of the garden of the Clock House. No stranger could see into it, or hear sounds from out of it. Though it was not extensive, it was so well furnished with those charming garden shrubs which, in congenial soils, become large trees, that one party of wanderers might seem to be lost from another amidst its walls. On this evening Mrs. Stanbury and Mrs. Trevelyan had gone out as usual, but Priscilla had remained with Nora Rowley. After a while Nora also got up and went through the window all alone. Priscilla, having waited for a few minutes, followed her; and caught her in a long green walk that led round the bottom of the orchard.

"What makes you so wretched?" she said.

"Why do you say I am wretched?"

"Because it's so visible. How is one to go on living with you all day and not notice it?"

"I wish you wouldn't notice it. I don't think it kind of you to notice it. If I wanted to talk of it, I would say so."

"It is better generally to speak of a trouble than to keep it to oneself," said Priscilla.

"All the same, I would prefer not to speak of mine," said Nora.

Then they parted, one going one way and one the other, and Priscilla was certainly angry at the reception which had been given to the sympathy which she had proffered. The next day passed almost without a word spoken between the two. Mrs. Stanbury had not ventured as yet to mention to her guest the subject of the rejected lover, and had not even said much on the subject to Mrs. Trevelyan. Between the two sisters there had been, of course, some discussion on the matter. It was impossible that it should be allowed to pass without it; but such discussions always resulted in an assertion on the part of Nora that she would not be scolded. Mrs. Trevelyan was very tender with her, and made no attempt to scold her,--tried, at last, simply to console her; but Nora was so continually at work scolding herself, that every word spoken to her on the subject of Mr. Glascock's visit seemed to her to carry with it a rebuke.

But on the second day she herself accosted Priscilla Stanbury. "Come into the garden," she said, when they two were for a moment alone together; "I want to speak to you." Priscilla, without answering, folded up her work and put on her hat. "Come down to the green walk," said Nora. "I was savage to you last night, and I want to beg your pardon."

"You were savage," said Priscilla, smiling, "and you shall have my pardon. Who would not pardon you any offence, if you asked it?"

"I am so miserable!" she said.

"But why?"

"I don't know. I can't tell. And it is of no use talking about it now, for it is all over. But I ought not to have been cross to you, and I am very sorry."

"That does not signify a straw; only so far, that when I have been cross, and have begged a person's pardon,--which I don't do as often as I ought,--I always feel that it begets kindness. If I could help you in your trouble I would."

"You can't fetch him back again."

"You mean Mr. Glascock. Shall I go and try?"

Nora smiled and shook her head. "I wonder what he would say if you asked him. But if he came I should do the same thing."

"I do not in the least know what you have done, my dear. I only see that you mope about, and are more down in the mouth than any one ought to be, unless some great trouble has come."

"A great trouble has come."

"I suppose you have had your choice,--either to accept your lover or to reject him."

"No; I have not had my choice."

"It seems to me that no one has dictated to you; or, at least, that you have obeyed no dictation."

"Of course, I can't explain it to you. It is impossible that I should."

"If you mean that you regret what you have done because you have been false to the man, I can sympathise with you. No one has ever a right to be false, and if you are repenting a falsehood, I will willingly help you to eat your ashes and to wear your sackcloth. But if you are repenting a truth--"

"I am."

"Then you must eat your ashes by yourself, for me; and I do not think that you will ever be able to digest them."

"I do not want anybody to help me," said Nora proudly.

"Nobody can help you, if I understand the matter rightly. You have got to get the better of your own covetousness and evil desires, and you are in the fair way to get the better of them if you have already refused to be this man's wife because you could not bring yourself to commit the sin of marrying him when you did not love him. I suppose that is about the truth of it; and indeed, indeed, I do sympathise with you. If you have done that, though it is no more than the plainest duty, I will love you for it. One finds so few people that will do any duty that taxes their self-indulgence."

"But he did not ask me to marry him."

"Then I do not understand anything about it."

"He asked me to love him."

"But he meant you to be his wife?"

"Oh yes;--he meant that of course."

"And what did you say?" asked Priscilla.

"That I didn't love him," replied Nora.

"And that was the truth?"

"Yes;--it was the truth."

"And what do you regret?--that you didn't tell him a lie?"

"No;--not that," said Nora slowly.

"What then? You cannot regret that you have not basely deceived a man who has treated you with a loving generosity?" They walked on silent for a few yards, and then Priscilla repeated her question. "You cannot mean that you are sorry that you did not persuade yourself to do evil?"

"I don't want to go back to the islands, and to lose myself there, and to be nobody;--that is what I mean. And I might have been so much! Could one step from the very highest rung of the ladder to the very lowest and not feel it?"

"But you have gone up the ladder,--if you only knew it," said Priscilla. "There was a choice given to you between the foulest mire of the clay of the world, and the sun-light of the very God. You have chosen the sun-light, and you are crying after the clay! I cannot pity you; but I can esteem you, and love you, and believe in you. And I do. You'll get yourself right at last, and there's my hand on it, if you'll take it." Nora took the hand that was offered to her, held it in her own for some seconds, and then walked back to the house and up to her own room in silence.

The post used to come into Nuncombe Putney at about eight in the morning, carried thither by a wooden-legged man who rode a donkey. There is a general understanding that the wooden-legged men in country parishes should be employed as postmen, owing to the great steadiness of demeanour which a wooden leg is generally found to produce. It may be that such men are slower in their operations than would be biped postmen; but as all private employers of labour demand labourers with two legs, it is well that the lame and halt should find a refuge in the less exacting service of the government. The one-legged man who rode his donkey into Nuncombe Putney would reach his post-office not above half an hour after his proper time; but he was very slow in stumping round the village, and seldom reached the Clock House much before ten. On a certain morning two or three days after the conversation just recorded it was past ten when he brought two letters to the door, one for Mrs. Trevelyan, and one for Mrs. Stanbury. The ladies had finished their breakfast, and were seated together at an open window. As was usual, the letters were given into Priscilla's hands, and the newspaper which accompanied them into those of Mrs. Trevelyan, its undoubted owner. When her letter was handed to her, she looked at the address closely and then walked away with it into her own room.

"I think it's from Louis," said Nora, as soon as the door was closed. "If so, he is telling her to come back."

"Mamma, this is for you," said Priscilla. "It is from Aunt Stanbury. I know her handwriting."

"From your aunt? What can she be writing about? There is something wrong with Dorothy." Mrs. Stanbury held the letter but did not open it. "You had better read it, my dear. If she is ill, pray let her come home."

But the letter spoke of nothing amiss as regarded Dorothy, and did not indeed even mention Dorothy's name. Luckily Priscilla read the letter in silence, for it was an angry letter. "What is it, Priscilla? Why don't you tell me? Is anything wrong?" said Mrs. Stanbury.

"Nothing is wrong, mamma,--except that my aunt is a silly woman."

"Goodness me! what is it?"

"It is a family matter," said Nora smiling, "and I will go."

"What can it be?" demanded Mrs. Stanbury again as soon as Nora had left the room.

"You shall hear what it can be. I will read it you," said Priscilla. "It seems to me that of all the women that ever lived my Aunt Stanbury is the most prejudiced, the most unjust, and the most given to evil thinking of her neighbours. This is what she has thought fit to write to you, mamma." Then Priscilla read her aunt's letter, which was as follows:--

The Close, Exeter, July 31, 186--.

DEAR SISTER STANBURY,

I am informed that the lady who is living with you because she could not continue to live under the same roof with her lawful husband, has received a visit at your house from a gentleman who was named as her lover before she left her own. I am given to understand that it was because of this gentleman's visits to her in London, and because she would not give up seeing him, that her husband would not live with her any longer.

"But the man has never been here at all," said Mrs. Stanbury, in dismay.

"Of course he has not been here. But let me go on."

I have got nothing to do with your visitors, [continued the letter] and I should not interfere but for the credit of the family. There ought to be somebody to explain to you that much of the abominable disgrace of the whole proceeding will rest upon you, if you permit such goings on in your house. I suppose it is your house. At any rate you are regarded as the mistress of the establishment, and it is for you to tell the lady that she must go elsewhere. I do hope that you have done so, or at least that you will do so now. It is intolerable that the widow of my brother,--a clergyman,--should harbour a lady who is separated from her husband and who receives visits from a gentleman who is reputed to be her lover. I wonder much that your eldest daughter should countenance such a proceeding.

Yours truly,

JEMIMA STANBURY.

Mrs. Stanbury, when the letter had been read to her, held up both her hands in despair. "Dear, dear," she exclaimed. "Oh, dear!"

"She had such pleasure in writing it," said Priscilla, "that one ought hardly to begrudge it her." The blackest spot in the character of Priscilla Stanbury was her hatred for her aunt in Exeter. She knew that her aunt had high qualities, and yet she hated her aunt. She was well aware that her aunt was regarded as a shining light by very many good people in the county, and yet she hated her aunt. She could not but acknowledge that her aunt had been generous to her brother, and was now very generous to her sister, and yet she hated her aunt. It was now a triumph to her that her aunt had fallen into so terrible a quagmire, and she was by no means disposed to let the sinning old woman easily out of it.

"It is as pretty a specimen," she said, "as I ever knew of malice and eaves-dropping combined."

"Don't use such hard words, my dear."

"Look at her words to us," said Priscilla. "What business has she to talk to you about the credit of the family and abominable disgrace? You have held your head up in poverty, while she has been rolling in money."

"She has been very good to Hugh,--and now to Dorothy."

"If I were Dorothy I would have none of her goodness. She likes some one to trample on,--some one of the name to patronise. She shan't trample on you and me, mamma."

Then there was a discussion as to what should be done; or rather a discourse in which Priscilla explained what she thought fit to do. Nothing, she decided, should be said to Mrs. Trevelyan on the subject; but an answer should be sent to Aunt Stanbury. Priscilla herself would write this answer, and herself would sign it. There was some difference of opinion on this point, as Mrs. Stanbury thought that if she might be allowed to put her name to it, even though Priscilla should write it, the wording of it would be made, in some degree, mild,--to suit her own character. But her daughter was imperative, and she gave way.

"It shall be mild enough in words," said Priscilla, "and very short."

Then she wrote her letter as follows:--

Nuncombe Putney, August 1, 186--.

DEAR AUNT STANBURY,

You have found a mare's nest. The gentleman you speak of has never been here at all, and the people who bring you news have probably hoaxed you. I don't think that mamma has ever disgraced the family, and you can have no reason for thinking that she ever will. You should, at any rate, be sure of what you are saying before you make such cruel accusations.

Yours truly,

PRISCILLA STANBURY.

P.S.--Another gentleman did call here,--not to see Mrs. Trevelyan; but I suppose mamma's house need not be closed against all visitors.

Poor Dorothy had passed evil hours from the moment in which her aunt had so far certified herself as to Colonel Osborne's visit to Nuncombe as to make her feel it to be incumbent on her to interfere. After much consideration Miss Stanbury had told her niece the dreadful news, and had told also what she intended to do. Dorothy, who was in truth horrified at the iniquity of the fact which was related, and who never dreamed of doubting the truth of her aunt's information, hardly knew how to interpose. "I am sure mamma won't let there be anything wrong," she had said.

"And you don't call this wrong?" said Miss Stanbury, in a tone of indignation.

"But perhaps mamma will tell them to go."

"I hope she will. I hope she has. But he was allowed to be there for hours. And now three days have passed and there is no sign of anything being done. He came and went and may come again when he pleases." Still Dorothy pleaded. "I shall do my duty," said Miss Stanbury.

"I am quite sure mamma will do nothing wrong," said Dorothy. But the letter was written and sent, and the answer to the letter reached the house in the Close in due time.

When Miss Stanbury had read and re-read the very short reply which her niece had written, she became at first pale with dismay, and then red with renewed vigour and obstinacy. She had made herself, as she thought, quite certain of her facts before she had acted on her information. There was some equivocation, some most unworthy deceit in Priscilla's letter. Or could it be possible that she herself had been mistaken? Another gentleman had been there;--not, however, with the object of seeing Mrs. Trevelyan! So said Priscilla. But she had made herself sure that the man in question was a man from London, a middle-aged man from London, who had specially asked for Mrs. Trevelyan, and who had at once been known to Mrs. Clegg, at the Lessboro' inn, to be Mrs. Trevelyan's lover. Miss Stanbury was very unhappy, and at last sent for Giles Hickbody. Giles Hickbody had never pretended to know the name. He had seen the man and had described him, "Quite a swell, ma'am; and a Lon'oner, and one as'd be up to anything; but not a young 'un; no, not just a young 'un, zartainly." He was cross-examined again now, and said that all he knew about the man's name was that there was a handle to it. This was ended by Miss Stanbury sending him down to Lessboro' to learn the very name of the gentleman, and by his coming back with that of the Honourable George Glascock written on a piece of paper. "They says now as he was arter the other young 'ooman," said Giles Hickbody. Then was the confusion of Miss Stanbury complete.

It was late when Giles returned from Lessboro', and nothing could be done that night. It was too late to write a letter for the next morning's post. Miss Stanbury, who was as proud of her own discrimination as she was just and true, felt that a day of humiliation had indeed come for her. She hated Priscilla almost as vigorously as Priscilla hated her. To Priscilla she would not write to own her fault; but it was incumbent on her to confess it to Mrs. Stanbury. It was incumbent on her also to confess it to Dorothy. All that night she did not sleep, and the next morning she went about abashed, wretched, hardly mistress of her own maids. She must confess it also to Martha, and Martha would be very stern to her. Martha had pooh-poohed the whole story of the lover, seeming to think that there could be no reasonable objection to a lover past fifty.

"Dorothy," she said at last, about noon, "I have been over hasty about your mother and this man. I am sorry for it, and must--beg--everybody's--pardon."

"I knew mamma would do nothing wrong," said Dorothy.

"To do wrong is human, and she, I suppose, is not more free than others; but in this matter I was misinformed. I shall write and beg her pardon; and now I beg your pardon."

"Not mine, Aunt Stanbury."

"Yes, yours and your mother's, and the lady's also,--for against her has the fault been most grievous. I shall write to your mother and express my contrition." She put off the evil hour of writing as long as she could, but before dinner the painful letter had been written, and carried by herself to the post. It was as follows:--

The Close, August 3, 186--.

DEAR SISTER STANBURY,

I have now learned that the information was false on which my former letter was based. I am heartily sorry for any annoyance I may have given you. I can only inform you that my intentions were good and upright. Nevertheless, I humbly beg your pardon.

Yours truly,

JEMIMA STANBURY.

Mrs. Stanbury, when she received this, was inclined to let the matter drop. That her sister-in-law should express such abject contrition was to her such a lowering of the great ones of the earth, that the apology conveyed to her more pain than pleasure. She could not hinder herself from sympathising with all that her sister-in-law had felt when she had found herself called upon to humiliate herself. But it was not so with Priscilla. Mrs. Stanbury did not observe that her daughter's name was scrupulously avoided in the apology; but Priscilla observed it. She would not let the matter drop, without an attempt at the last word. She therefore wrote back again as follows;--

Nuncombe Putney, August 4, 186--.

DEAR AUNT STANBURY,

I am glad you have satisfied yourself about the gentleman who has so much disquieted you. I do not know that the whole affair would be worth a moment's consideration, were it not that mamma and I, living as we do so secluded a life, are peculiarly apt to feel any attack upon our good name,--which is pretty nearly all that is left to us. If ever there were women who should be free from attack, at any rate from those of their own family, we are such women. We never interfere with you, or with anybody; and I think you might abstain from harassing us by accusations.

Pray do not write to mamma in such a strain again, unless you are quite sure of your ground.

Yours truly,

PRISCILLA STANBURY.

"Impudent!" said Miss Stanbury to Martha, when she had read the letter. "Ill-conditioned, impudent vixen!"

"She was provoked, miss," said Martha.

"Well; yes; yes;--and I suppose it is right that you should tell me of it. I dare say it is part of what I ought to bear for being an old fool, and too cautious about my own flesh and blood. I will bear it. There. I was wrong, and I will say that I have been justly punished. There,--there!"

How very much would Miss Stanbury's tone have been changed had she known that at that very moment Colonel Osborne was eating his breakfast at Mrs. Crocket's inn, in Nuncombe Putney!

XIX. BOZZLE, THE EX-POLICEMAN

When Mr. Trevelyan had gone through the miserable task of breaking up his establishment in Curzon Street, and had seen all his furniture packed, including his books, his pictures, and his pet Italian ornaments, it was necessary that he should go and live somewhere. He was very wretched at this time,--so wretched that life was a burden to him. He was a man who loved his wife;--to whom his child was very dear; and he was one too to whom the ordinary comforts of domestic life were attractive and necessary. There are men to whom release from the constraint imposed by family ties will be, at any rate for a time, felt as a release. But he was not such a man. There was no delight to him in being able to dine at his club, and being free to go whither he pleased in the evening. As it was, it pleased him to go no whither in the evenings; and his mornings were equally blank to him. He went so often to Mr. Bideawhile, that the poor old lawyer became quite tired of the Trevelyan family quarrel. Even Lady Milborough, with all her power of sympathising, began to feel that she would almost prefer on any morning that her dear young friend, Louis Trevelyan, should not be announced. Nevertheless, she always saw him when he came, and administered comfort according to her light. Of course he would have his wife back before long. That was the only consolation she was able to offer; and she offered it so often that he began gradually to feel that something might be done towards bringing about so desirable an event. After what had occurred they could not live again in Curzon Street,--nor even in London for awhile; but Naples was open to them. Lady Milborough said so much to him of the advantages which always came in such circumstances from going to Naples, that he began to regard such a trip as almost the natural conclusion of his adventure. But then there came that very difficult question;--what step should be first taken? Lady Milborough proposed that he should go boldly down to Nuncombe Putney, and make the arrangement. "She will only be too glad to jump into your arms," said Lady Milborough. Trevelyan thought that if he went to Nuncombe Putney, his wife might perhaps jump into his arms; but what would come after that? How would he stand then in reference to his authority? Would she own that she had been wrong? Would she promise to behave better in future? He did not believe that she was yet sufficiently broken in spirit to make any such promise. And he told himself again and again that it would be absurd in him to allow her to return to him without such subjection, after all that he had gone through in defence of his marital rights. If he were to write to her a long letter, argumentative, affectionate, exhaustive, it might be better. He was inclined to believe of himself that he was good at writing long, affectionate, argumentative, and exhaustive letters. But he would not do even this as yet. He had broken up his house, and scattered all his domestic gods to the winds, because she had behaved badly to him; and the thing done was too important to allow of redress being found so easily.

So he lived on a wretched life in London. He could hardly endure to show himself at his club, fearing that every one would be talking of him as the man who was separated from his wife,--perhaps as the man of whose wife Colonel Osborne was the dear friend. No doubt for a day or two there had been much of such conversation; but it had died away from the club long before his consciousness had become callous. At first he had gone into a lodging in Mayfair; but this had been but for a day or two. After that he had taken a set of furnished chambers in Lincoln's Inn, immediately under those in which Stanbury lived; and thus it came to pass that he and Stanbury were very much thrown together. As Trevelyan would always talk of his wife this was rather a bore; but our friend bore with it, and would even continue to instruct the world through the columns of the D. R. while Trevelyan was descanting on the peculiar cruelty of his own position.

"I wish to be just, and even generous; and I do love her with all my heart," he said one afternoon, when Hugh was very hard at work.

"'It is all very well for gentlemen to call themselves reformers,'" Hugh was writing, "'but have these gentlemen ever realised to themselves the meaning of that word? We think that they have never done so as long as--' Of course you love her," said Hugh, with his eyes still on the paper, still leaning on his pen, but finding by the cessation of sound that Trevelyan had paused, and therefore knowing that it was necessary that he should speak.

"As much as ever," said Trevelyan, with energy.

"'As long as they follow such a leader, in such a cause, into whichever lobby he may choose to take them--' Exactly so,--exactly," said Stanbury; "just as much as ever."

"You are not listening to a word," said Trevelyan.

"I haven't missed a single expression you have used," said Stanbury. "But a fellow has to do two things at a time when he's on the daily press."

"I beg your pardon for interrupting you," said Trevelyan, angrily, getting up, taking his hat, and stalking off to the house of Lady Milborough. In this way he became rather a bore to his friends. He could not divest his mind of the injury which had accrued to him from his wife's conduct, nor could he help talking of the grief with which his mind was laden. And he was troubled with sore suspicions, which, as far as they concerned his wife, had certainly not been merited. It had seemed to him that she had persisted in her intimacy with Colonel Osborne in a manner that was not compatible with that wife-like indifference which he regarded as her duty. Why had she written to him and received letters from him when her husband had plainly told her that any such communication was objectionable? She had done so, and as far as Trevelyan could remember her words, had plainly declared that she would continue to do so. He had sent her away into the most remote retirement he could find for her; but the post was open to her. He had heard much of Mrs. Stanbury, and of Priscilla, from his friend Hugh, and thoroughly believed that his wife was in respectable hands. But what was to prevent Colonel Osborne from going after her, if he chose to do so? And if he did so choose, Mrs. Stanbury could not prevent their meeting. He was racked with jealousy, and yet he did not cease to declare to himself that he knew his wife too well to believe that she would sin. He could not rid himself of his jealousy, but he tried with all his might to make the man whom he hated the object of it, rather than the woman whom he loved.

He hated Colonel Osborne with all his heart. It was a regret to him that the days of duelling were over, so that he could not shoot the man. And yet, had duelling been possible to him, Colonel Osborne had done nothing that would have justified him in calling his enemy out, or would even have enabled him to do so with any chance of inducing his enemy to fight. Circumstances, he thought, were cruel to him beyond compare, in that he should have been made to suffer so great torment without having any of the satisfaction of revenge. Even Lady Milborough, with all her horror as to the Colonel, could not tell him that the Colonel was amenable to any punishment. He was advised that he must take his wife away and live at Naples because of this man,--that he must banish himself entirely if he chose to repossess himself of his wife and child;--and yet nothing could be done to the unprincipled rascal by whom all his wrongs and sufferings were occasioned! Thinking it very possible that Colonel Osborne would follow his wife, he had a watch set upon the Colonel. He had found a retired policeman,--a most discreet man, as he was assured,--who, for a consideration, undertook the management of interesting jobs of this kind. The man was one Bozzle, who had not lived without a certain reputation in the police courts. In these days of his madness, therefore, he took Mr. Bozzle into his pay; and after a while he got a letter from Bozzle with the Exeter post-mark. Colonel Osborne had left London with a ticket for Lessboro'. Bozzle also had taken a place by the same train for that small town. The letter was written in the railway carriage, and, as Bozzle explained, would be posted by him as he passed through Exeter. A further communication should be made by the next day's post, in a letter which Mr. Bozzle proposed to address to Z. A., Post-office, Waterloo Place.

On receiving this first letter, Trevelyan was in an agony of doubt, as well as misery. What should he do? Should he go to Lady Milborough, or to Stanbury; or should he at once follow Colonel Osborne and Mr. Bozzle to Lessboro'? It ended in his resolving at last to wait for the letter which was to be addressed to Z. A. But he spent an interval of horrible suspense, and of insane rage. Let the laws say what they might, he would have the man's blood, if he found that the man had even attempted to wrong him. Then, at last, the second letter reached him. Colonel Osborne and Mr. Bozzle had each of them spent the day in the neighbourhood of Lessboro', not exactly in each other's company, but very near to each other. "The Colonel" had ordered a gig, on the day after his arrival at Lessboro', for the village of Cockchaffington; and, for all Mr. Bozzle knew, the Colonel had gone to Cockchaffington. Mr. Bozzle was ultimately inclined to think that the Colonel had really spent his day in going to Cockchaffington. Mr. Bozzle himself, knowing the wiles of such men as Colonel Osborne, and thinking at first that that journey to Cockchaffington might only be a deep ruse, had walked over to Nuncombe Putney. There he had had a pint of beer and some bread and cheese at Mrs. Crocket's house, and had asked various questions, to which he did not receive very satisfactory answers. But he inspected the Clock House very minutely, and came to a decided opinion as to the point at which it would be attacked, if burglary were the object of the assailants. And he observed the iron gates, and the steps, and the shape of the trees, and the old pigeon-house-looking fabric in which the clock used to be placed. There was no knowing when information might be wanted, or what information might not be of use. But he made himself tolerably sure that Colonel Osborne did not visit Nuncombe Putney on that day; and then he walked back to Lessboro'. Having done this, he applied himself to the little memorandum book in which he kept the records of these interesting duties, and entered a claim against his employer for a conveyance to Nuncombe Putney and back, including driver and ostler; and then he wrote his letter. After that he had a hot supper, with three glasses of brandy and water, and went to bed with a thorough conviction that he had earned his bread on that day.

The letter to Z. A. did not give all these particulars, but it did explain that Colonel Osborne had gone off, apparently, to Cockchaffington, and that he,--Bozzle,--had himself visited Nuncombe Putney. "The hawk hasn't been nigh the dovecot as yet," said Mr. Bozzle in his letter, meaning to be both mysterious and facetious.

It would be difficult to say whether the wit or the mystery disgusted Trevelyan the most. He had felt that he was defiling himself with dirt when he first went to Mr. Bozzle. He knew that he was having recourse to means that were base and low,--which could not be other than base or low, let the circumstances be what they might. But Mr. Bozzle's conversation had not been quite so bad as Mr. Bozzle's letters; as it may have been that Mr. Bozzle's successful activity was more insupportable than his futile attempts. But, nevertheless, something must be done. It could not be that Colonel Osborne should have gone down to the close neighbourhood of Nuncombe Putney without the intention of seeing the lady whom his obtrusive pertinacity had driven to that seclusion. It was terrible to Trevelyan that Colonel Osborne should be there, and not the less terrible because such a one as Mr. Bozzle was watching the Colonel on his behalf. Should he go to Nuncombe Putney himself? And if so, when he got to Nuncombe Putney what should he do there? At last, in his suspense and his grief, he resolved that he would tell the whole to Hugh Stanbury.

"Do you mean," said Hugh, "that you have put a policeman on his track?"

"The man was a policeman once."

"What we call a private detective. I can't say I think you were right."

"But you see that it was necessary," said Trevelyan.

"I can't say that it was necessary. To speak out, I can't understand that a wife should be worth watching who requires watching."

"Is a man to do nothing then? And even now it is not my wife whom I doubt."

"As for Colonel Osborne, if he chooses to go to Lessboro', why shouldn't he? Nothing that you can do, or that Bozzle can do, can prevent him. He has a perfect right to go to Lessboro'."

"But he has not a right to go to my wife."

"And if your wife refuses to see him; or having seen him,--for a man may force his way in anywhere with a little trouble,--if she sends him away with a flea in his ear, as I believe she would--"

"She is so frightfully indiscreet."

"I don't see what Bozzle can do."

"He has found out at any rate that Osborne is there," said Trevelyan. "I am not more fond of dealing with such fellows than you are yourself. But I think it is my duty to know what is going on. What ought I to do now?"

"I should do nothing,--except dismiss Bozzle."

"You know that that is nonsense, Stanbury."

"Whatever I did I should dismiss Bozzle." Stanbury was now quite in earnest, and, as he repeated his suggestion for the dismissal of the policeman, pushed his writing things away from him. "If you ask my opinion, you know, I must tell you what I think. I should get rid of Bozzle as a beginning. If you will only think of it, how can your wife come back to you if she learns that you have set a detective to watch her?"

"But I haven't set the man to watch her."

"Colonel Osborne is nothing to you, except as he is concerned with her. This man is now down in her neighbourhood; and, if she learns that, how can she help feeling it as a deep insult? Of course the man watches her as a cat watches a mouse."

"But what am I to do? I can't write to the man and tell him to come away. Osborne is down there, and I must do something. Will you go down to Nuncombe Putney yourself, and let me know the truth?"

After much debating of the subject, Hugh Stanbury said that he would himself go down to Nuncombe Putney alone. There were difficulties about the D. R.; but he would go to the office of the newspaper and overcome them. How far the presence of Nora Rowley at his mother's house may have assisted in bringing him to undertake the journey, perhaps need not be accurately stated. He acknowledged to himself that the claims of friendship were strong upon him; and that as he had loudly disapproved of the Bozzle arrangement, he ought to lend a hand to some other scheme of action. Moreover, having professed his conviction that no improper visiting could possibly take place under his mother's roof, he felt bound to shew that he was not afraid to trust to that conviction himself. He declared that he would be ready to proceed to Nuncombe Putney to-morrow;--but only on condition that he might have plenary power to dismiss Bozzle.

"There can be no reason why you should take any notice of the man," said Trevelyan.

"How can I help noticing him when I find him prowling about the place? Of course I shall know who he is."

"I don't see that you need know anything about him."

"My dear Trevelyan, you cannot have two ambassadors engaged in the same service without communication with each other. And any communication with Mr. Bozzle, except that of sending him back to London, I will not have." The controversy was ended by the writing of a letter from Trevelyan to Bozzle, which was confided to Stanbury, in which the ex-policeman was thanked for his activity and requested to return to London for the present. "As we are now aware that Colonel Osborne is in the neighbourhood," said the letter, "my friend Mr. Stanbury will know what to do."

As soon as this was settled, Stanbury went to the office of the D. R. and made arrangement as to his work for three days. Jones could do the article on the Irish Church upon a pinch like this, although he had not given much study to the subject as yet; and Puddlethwaite, who was great in City matters, would try his hand on the present state of society in Rome, a subject on which it was essential that the D. R. should express itself at once. Having settled these little troubles Stanbury returned to his friend, and in the evening they dined together at a tavern.

"And now, Trevelyan, let me know fairly what it is that you wish," said Stanbury.

"I wish to have my wife back again."

"Simply that. If she will agree to come back, you will make no difficulty."

"No; not quite simply that. I shall desire that she shall be guided by my wishes as to any intimacies she may form."

"That is all very well; but is she to give any undertaking? Do you intend to exact any promise from her? It is my opinion that she will be willing enough to come back, and that when she is with you there will be no further cause for quarrelling. But I don't think she will bind herself by any exacted promise; and certainly not through a third person."

"Then say nothing about it. Let her write a letter to me proposing to come,--and she shall come."

"Very well. So far I understand. And now what about Colonel Osborne? You don't want me to quarrel with him I suppose?"

"I should like to keep that for myself," said Trevelyan, grimly.

"If you will take my advice you will not trouble yourself about him," said Stanbury. "But as far as I am concerned, I am not to meddle or make with him? Of course," continued Stanbury, after a pause, "if I find that he is intruding himself in my mother's house, I shall tell him that he must not come there."

"But if you find him installed in your mother's house as a visitor,--how then?"

"I do not regard that as possible."

"I don't mean living there," said Trevelyan, "but coming backwards and forwards;--going on in habits of intimacy with,--with--?" His voice trembled so as he asked these questions, that he could not pronounce the word which was to complete them.

"With Mrs. Trevelyan, you mean."

"Yes; with my wife. I don't say that it is so; but it may be so. You will be bound to tell me the truth."

"I will certainly tell you the truth."

"And the whole truth."

"Yes; the whole truth."

"Should it be so I will never see her again,--never. And as for him;--but never mind." Then there was another short period of silence, during which Stanbury smoked his pipe and sipped his whisky toddy. "You must see," continued Trevelyan, "that it is absolutely necessary that I should do something. It is all very well for you to say that you do not like detectives. Neither do I like them. But what was I to do? When you condemn me you hardly realise the difficulties of my position."

"It is the deuce of a nuisance certainly," said Stanbury, through the cloud of smoke,--thinking now not at all of Mrs. Trevelyan, but of Mrs. Trevelyan's sister.

"It makes a man almost feel that he had better not marry at all," said Trevelyan.

"I don't see that. Of course there may come troubles. The tiles may fall on your head, you know, as you walk through the streets. As far as I can see, women go straight enough nineteen times out of twenty. But they don't like being,--what I call looked after."

"And did I look after my wife more than I ought?"

"I don't mean that; but if I were married,--which I never shall be, for I shall never attain to the respectability of a fixed income,--I fancy I shouldn't look after my wife at all. It seems to me that women hate to be told about their duties."

"But if you saw your wife, quite innocently, falling into an improper intimacy,--taking up with people she ought not to know,--doing that in ignorance, which could not but compromise yourself;--wouldn't you speak a word then?"

"Oh! I might just say, in an off-hand way, that Jones was a rascal, or a liar, or a fool, or anything of that sort. But I would never caution her against Jones. By George, I believe a woman can stand anything better than that."

"You have never tried it, my friend."

"And I don't suppose I ever shall. As for me, I believe Aunt Stanbury was right when she said that I was a radical vagabond. I dare say I shall never try the thing myself, and therefore it's very easy to have a theory. But I must be off. Good night, old fellow. I'll do the best I can; and, at any rate, I'll let you know the truth."

There had been a question during the day as to whether Stanbury should let his sister know by letter that he was expected; but it had been decided that he should appear at Nuncombe without any previous notification of his arrival. Trevelyan had thought that this was very necessary, and when Stanbury had urged that such a measure seemed to imply suspicion, he had declared that in no other way could the truth be obtained. He, Trevelyan, simply wanted to know the facts as they were occurring. It was a fact that Colonel Osborne was down in the neighbourhood of Nuncombe Putney. That, at least, had been ascertained. It might very possibly be the case that he would be refused admittance to the Clock House,--that all the ladies there would combine to keep him out. But,--so Trevelyan urged,--the truth on this point was desired. It was essentially necessary to his happiness that he should know what was being done.

"Your mother and sister," said he, "cannot be afraid of your coming suddenly among them."

Stanbury, so urged, had found it necessary to yield, but yet he had felt that he himself was almost acting like a detective policeman, in purposely falling down upon them without a word of announcement. Had chance circumstances made it necessary that he should go in such a manner he would have thought nothing of it. It would simply have been a pleasant joke to him.

As he went down by the train on the following day, he almost felt ashamed of the part which he had been called upon to perform.

XX. SHEWING HOW COLONEL OSBORNE WENT TO COCKCHAFFINGTON

Together with Miss Stanbury's first letter to her sister-in-law a letter had also been delivered to Mrs. Trevelyan. Nora Rowley, as her sister had left the room with this in her hand, had expressed her opinion that it had come from Trevelyan; but it had in truth been written by Colonel Osborne. And when that second letter from Miss Stanbury had been received at the Clock House,--that in which she in plain terms begged pardon for the accusation conveyed in her first letter,--Colonel Osborne had started on his deceitful little journey to Cockchaffington, and Mr. Bozzle, the ex-policeman who had him in hand, had already asked his way to Nuncombe Putney.

When Colonel Osborne learned that Louis Trevelyan had broken up his establishment in Curzon Street, and had sent his wife away into a barbarous retirement in Dartmoor,--for such was the nature of the information on the subject which was spread among Trevelyan's friends in London;--and when he was made aware also that all this was done on his account,--because he was so closely intimate with Trevelyan's wife, and because Trevelyan's wife was, and persisted in continuing to be, so closely intimate with him,--his vanity was gratified. Although it might be true,--and no doubt was true,--that he said much to his friends and to himself of the deep sorrow which he felt that such a trouble should befall his old friend and his old friend's daughter; nevertheless, as he curled his grey whiskers before the glass, and made the most of such remnant of hair as was left on the top of his head, as he looked to the padding of his coat, and completed a study of the wrinkles beneath his eyes, so that in conversation they might be as little apparent as possible, he felt more of pleasure than of pain in regard to the whole affair. It was very sad that it should be so, but it was human. Had it been in his power to set the whole matter right by a word, he would probably have spoken that word; but as this was not possible, as Trevelyan had in his opinion made a gross fool of himself, as Emily Trevelyan was very nice, and not the less nice in that she certainly was fond of himself, as great tyranny had been used towards her, and as he himself had still the plea of old family friendship to protect his conscience,--to protect his conscience unless he went so far as to make that plea an additional sting to his conscience,--he thought that, as a man, he must follow up the matter. Here was a young, and fashionable, and very pretty woman banished to the wilds of Dartmoor for his sake. And, as far as he could understand, she would not have been so banished had she consented to say that she would give up her acquaintance with him. In such circumstances as these was it possible that he should do nothing? Various ideas ran through his head. He began to think that if Trevelyan were out of the way, he might,--might perhaps be almost tempted to make this woman his wife. She was so nice that he almost thought that he might be rash enough for that, although he knew well the satisfaction of being a bachelor; but as the thought suggested itself to him, he was well aware that he was thinking of a thing quite distant from him. The reader is not to suppose that Colonel Osborne meditated any making-away with the husband. Our Colonel was certainly not the man for a murder. Nor did he even think of running away with his friend's daughter. Though he told himself that he could dispose of his wrinkles satisfactorily, still he knew himself and his powers sufficiently to be aware that he was no longer fit to be the hero of such a romance as that. He acknowledged to himself that there was much labour to be gone through in running away with another man's wife; and that the results, in respect to personal comfort, are not always happy. But what if Mrs. Trevelyan were to divorce herself from her husband on the score of her husband's cruelty? Various horrors were related as to the man's treatment of his wife. By some it was said that she was in the prison on Dartmoor,--or, if not actually in the prison, an arrangement which the prison discipline might perhaps make difficult,--that she was in the custody of one of the prison warders who possessed a prim cottage and a grim wife, just outside the prison walls. Colonel Osborne did not himself believe even so much as this, but he did believe that Mrs. Trevelyan had been banished to some inhospitable region, to some dreary comfortless abode, of which, as the wife of a man of fortune, she would have great ground to complain. So thinking, he did not probably declare to himself that a divorce should be obtained, and that, in such event, he would marry the lady,--but ideas came across his mind in that direction. Trevelyan was a cruel Bluebeard; Emily,--as he was studious to call Mrs. Trevelyan,--was a dear injured saint. And as for himself, though he acknowledged to himself that the lumbago pinched him now and again, so that he could not rise from his chair with all the alacrity of youth, yet, when he walked along Pall Mall with his coat properly buttoned, he could not but observe that a great many young women looked at him with admiring eyes.

It was thus with no settled scheme that the Colonel went to work, and made inquiries, and ascertained Mrs. Trevelyan's address in Devonshire. When he learned it, he thought that he had done much; though, in truth, there had been no secrecy in the matter. Scores of people knew Mrs. Trevelyan's address besides the newsvendor who supplied her paper, from whose boy Colonel Osborne's servant obtained the information. But when the information had been obtained, it was expedient that it should be used; and therefore Colonel Osborne wrote the following letter:--

Acrobats Club, July 31, 186--.

DEAR EMILY,

Twice the Colonel wrote Dearest Emily, and twice he tore the sheet on which the words were written. He longed to be ardent, but still it was so necessary to be prudent! He was not quite sure of the lady. Women sometimes tell their husbands, even when they have quarrelled with them. And, although ardent expressions in writing to pretty women are pleasant to male writers, it is not pleasant for a gentleman to be asked what on earth he means by that sort of thing at his time of life. The Colonel gave half an hour to the consideration, and then began the letter, Dear Emily. If prudence be the soul of valour, may it not be considered also the very mainspring, or, perhaps, the pivot of love?

DEAR EMILY,

I need hardly tell you with what dismay I have heard of all that has taken place in Curzon Street. I fear that you must have suffered much, and that you are suffering now. It is an inexpressible relief to me to hear that you have your child with you, and Nora. But, nevertheless, to have your home taken away from you, to be sent out of London, to be banished from all society! And for what? The manner in which the minds of some men work is quite incomprehensible.

As for myself, I feel that I have lost the company of a friend, whom indeed I can very ill spare. I have a thousand things to say to you, and among them one or two which I feel that I must say,--that I ought to say. As it happens, an old schoolfellow of mine is Vicar of Cockchaffington, a village which I find by the map is very near to Nuncombe Putney. I saw him in town last spring, and he then asked me to pay him a visit. There is something in his church which people go to see, and though I don't understand churches much, I shall go and see it. I shall run down on Wednesday, and shall sleep at the inn at Lessboro'. I see that Lessboro' is a market town, and I suppose there is an inn. I shall go over to my friend on the Thursday, but shall return to Lessboro'. Though a man be ever so eager to see a church door-way, he need not sleep at the parsonage. On the following day, I will get over to Nuncombe Putney, and I hope that you will see me. Considering my long friendship with you, and my great attachment to your father and mother, I do not think that the strictest martinet would tell you that you need hesitate in the matter.

I have seen Mr. Trevelyan twice at the club, but he has not spoken to me. Under such circumstances I could not of course speak to him. Indeed, I may say that my feelings towards him just at present are of such a nature as to preclude me from doing so with any appearance of cordiality.

Dear Emily, Believe me now, as always, your affectionate friend,

FREDERIC OSBORNE.

When he read that letter over to himself a second time he felt quite sure that he had not committed himself. Even if his friend were to send the letter to her husband, it could not do him any harm. He was aware that he might have dilated more on the old friendship between himself and Sir Marmaduke, but he experienced a certain distaste to the mention of things appertaining to years long past. It did not quite suit him in his present frame of mind to speak of his regard in those quasi-paternal terms which he would have used had it satisfied him to represent himself simply as her father's friend. His language therefore had been a little doubtful, so that the lady might, if she were so minded, look upon him in that tender light in which her husband had certainly chosen to regard him.

When the letter was handed to Mrs. Trevelyan, she at once took it with her up to her own room, so that she might be alone when she read it. The handwriting was quite familiar to her, and she did not choose that even her sister should see it. She had told herself twenty times over that, while living at Nuncombe Putney, she was not living under the guardianship of Mrs. Stanbury. She would consent to live under the guardianship of no one, as her husband did not choose to remain with her and protect her. She had done no wrong, and she would submit to no other authority, than that of her legal lord and master. Nor, according to her views of her own position, was it in his power to depute that authority to others. He had caused the separation, and now she must be the sole judge of her own actions. In itself, a correspondence between her and her father's old friend was in no degree criminal or even faulty. There was no reason, moral, social, or religious, why an old man, over fifty, who had known her all her life, should not write to her. But yet she could not say aloud before Mrs. Stanbury, and Priscilla, and her sister, that she had received a letter from Colonel Osborne. She felt that the colour had come to her cheek, and that she could not even walk out of the room as though the letter had been a matter of indifference to her.

And would it have been a matter of indifference had there been nobody there to see her? Mrs. Trevelyan was certainly not in love with Colonel Osborne. She was not more so now than she had been when her father's friend, purposely dressed for the occasion, had kissed her in the vestry of the church in which she was married, and had given her a blessing, which was then intended to be semi-paternal,--as from an old man to a young woman. She was not in love with him,--never would be, never could be in love with him. Reader, you may believe in her so far as that. But where is the woman, who, when she is neglected, thrown over, and suspected by the man that she loves, will not feel the desire of some sympathy, some solicitude, some show of regard from another man? This woman's life, too, had not hitherto been of such a nature that the tranquillity of the Clock House at Nuncombe Putney afforded to her all that she desired. She had been there now a month, and was almost sick from the want of excitement. And she was full of wrath against her husband. Why had he sent her there to break her heart in a disgraceful retirement, when she had never wronged him? From morning to night she had no employment, no amusement, nothing to satisfy her cravings. Why was she to be doomed to such an existence? She had declared that as long as she could have her boy with her, she would be happy. She was allowed to have her boy; but she was anything but happy. When she received Colonel Osborne's letter,--while she held it in her hand still unopened, she never for a moment thought that that could make her happy. But there was in it something of excitement. And she painted the man to herself in brighter colours now than she had ever given to him in her former portraits. He cared for her. He was gracious to her. He appreciated her talents, her beauty, and her conduct. He knew that she deserved a treatment very different from that accorded to her by her husband. Why should she reject the sympathy of her father's oldest friend, because her husband was madly jealous about an old man? Her husband had chosen to send her away, and to leave her, so that she must act on her own judgment. Acting on her own judgment, she read Colonel Osborne's letter from first to last. She knew that he was wrong to speak of coming to Nuncombe Putney; but yet she thought that she would see him. She had a dim perception that she was standing on the edge of a precipice, on broken ground which might fall under her without a moment's warning, and yet she would not retreat from the danger. Though Colonel Osborne was wrong, very wrong in coming to see her, yet she liked him for coming. Though she would be half afraid to tell her news to Mrs. Stanbury, and more than half afraid to tell Priscilla, yet she liked the excitement of the fear. Nora would scold her; but Nora's scolding she thought she could answer. And then it was not the fact that Colonel Osborne was coming down to Devonshire to see her. He was coming as far as Lessboro' to see his friend at Cockchaffington. And when at Lessboro', was it likely that he should leave the neighbourhood without seeing the daughter of his old ally? And why should he do so? Was he to be unnatural in his conduct, uncivil and unfriendly, because Mr. Trevelyan had been foolish, suspicious, and insane?

So arguing with herself, she answered Colonel Osborne's letter before she had spoken on the subject to any one in the house,--and this was her answer:--

MY DEAR COLONEL OSBORNE,

I must leave it to your own judgment to decide whether you will come to Nuncombe Putney or not. There are reasons which would seem to make it expedient that you should stay away,--even though circumstances are bringing you into the immediate neighbourhood. But of these reasons I will leave you to be the judge. I will never let it be said that I myself have had cause to dread the visit of any old friend. Nevertheless, if you stay away, I shall understand why you do so.

Personally, I shall be glad to see you,--as I have always been. It seems odd to me that I cannot write in warmer tones to my father's and mother's oldest friend. Of course, you will understand that though I shall readily see you if you call, I cannot ask you to stay. In the first place, I am not now living in my own house. I am staying with Mrs. Stanbury, and the place is called the Clock House.

Yours very sincerely,

EMILY TREVELYAN.

The Clock House, Nuncombe Putney, Monday.

Soon after she had written it, Nora came into her room, and at once asked concerning the letter which she had seen delivered to her sister that morning.

"It was from Colonel Osborne," said Mrs. Trevelyan.

"From Colonel Osborne! How very wrong!"

"I don't see that it is wrong at all. Because Louis is foolish and mad, that cannot make another man wrong for doing the most ordinary thing in the world."

"I had hoped it had been from Louis," said Nora.

"Oh dear, no. He is by no means so considerate. I do not suppose I shall hear from him, till he chooses to give some fresh order about myself or my child. He will hardly trouble himself to write to me, unless he takes up some new freak to show me that he is my master."

"And what does Colonel Osborne say?"

"He is coming here."

"Coming here?" almost shouted Nora.

"Yes; absolutely here. Does it sound to you as if Lucifer himself were about to show his face? The fact is, he happens to have a friend in the neighbourhood whom he has long promised to visit; and as he must be at Lessboro', he does not choose to go away without the compliment of a call. It will be as much to you as to me."

"I don't want to see him in the least," said Nora.

"There is his letter. As you seem to be so suspicious, you had better read it."

Then Nora read it.

"And there is a copy of my answer," said Mrs. Trevelyan. "I shall keep both, because I know so well what ill-natured things people will say."

"Dear Emily, do not send it," said Nora.

"Indeed I shall. I will not be frightened by bugbears. And I will not be driven to confess to any man on earth that I am afraid to see him. Why should I be afraid of Colonel Osborne? I will not submit to acknowledge that there can be any danger in Colonel Osborne. Were I to do so I should be repeating the insult against myself. If my husband wished to guide me in such matters, why did he not stay with me?"

Then she went out into the village and posted the letter. Nora meanwhile was thinking whether she would call in the assistance of Priscilla Stanbury; but she did not like to take any such a step in opposition to her sister.

XXI. SHEWING HOW COLONEL OSBORNE WENT TO NUNCOMBE PUTNEY

Colonel Osborne was expected at Nuncombe Putney on the Friday, and it was Thursday evening before either Mrs. Stanbury or Priscilla was told of his coming. Emily had argued the matter with Nora, declaring that she would make the communication herself, and that she would make it when she pleased and how she pleased. "If Mrs. Stanbury thinks," said she, "that I am going to be treated as a prisoner, or that I will not judge myself as to whom I may see, or whom I may not see, she is very much mistaken." Nora felt that were she to give information to those ladies in opposition to her sister's wishes, she would express suspicion on her own part by doing so; and she was silent. On that same Thursday Priscilla had written her last defiant letter to her aunt,--that letter in which she had cautioned her aunt to make no further accusations without being sure of her facts. To Priscilla's imagination that coming of Lucifer in person, of which Mrs. Trevelyan had spoken, would hardly have been worse than the coming of Colonel Osborne. When, therefore, Mrs. Trevelyan declared the fact on the Thursday evening, vainly endeavouring to speak of the threatened visit in an ordinary voice, and as of an ordinary circumstance, it was as though a thunderbolt had fallen upon them.

"Colonel Osborne coming here!" said Priscilla, mindful of the Stanbury correspondence,--mindful of the evil tongues of the world.

"And why not?" demanded Mrs. Trevelyan, who had heard nothing of the Stanbury correspondence.

"Oh dear, oh dear!" ejaculated Mrs. Stanbury, who, of course, was aware of all that had passed between the Clock House and the house in the Close, though the letters had been written by her daughter.

Nora was determined to stand up for her sister, whatever might be the circumstances of the case. "I wish Colonel Osborne were not coming," said she, "because it makes a foolish fuss; but I cannot understand how anybody can suppose it to be wrong that Emily should see papa's very oldest friend in the world."

"But why is he coming?" demanded Priscilla.

"Because he wants to see an acquaintance at Cockchaffington," said Mrs. Trevelyan; "and there is a wonderful church-door there."

"A church-fiddlestick!" said Priscilla.

The matter was debated throughout all the evening. At one time there was a great quarrel between the ladies, and then there was a reconciliation. The point on which Mrs. Trevelyan stood with the greatest firmness was this,--that it did not become her, as a married woman whose conduct had always been good and who was more careful as to that than she was even of her name, to be ashamed to meet any man. "Why should I not see Colonel Osborne, or Colonel anybody else who might call here with the same justification for calling which his old friendship gives him?" Priscilla endeavoured to explain to her that her husband's known wishes ought to hinder her from doing so. "My husband should have remained with me to express his wishes," Mrs. Trevelyan replied.

Neither could Mrs. Stanbury nor could Priscilla bring herself to say that the man should not be admitted into the house. In the course of the debate, in the heat of her anger, Mrs. Trevelyan declared that were any such threat held out to her, she would leave the house and see Colonel Osborne in the street, or at the inn.

"No, Emily; no," said Nora.

"But I will. I will not submit to be treated as a guilty woman, or as a prisoner. They may say what they like; but I won't be shut up."

"No one has tried to shut you up," said Priscilla.

"You are afraid of that old woman at Exeter," said Mrs. Trevelyan; for by this time the facts of the Stanbury correspondence had all been elicited in general conversation; "and yet you know how uncharitable and malicious she is."

"We are not afraid of her," said Priscilla. "We are afraid of nothing but of doing wrong."

"And will it be wrong to let an old gentleman come into the house," said Nora, "who is nearly sixty, and who has known us ever since we were born?"

"If he is nearly sixty, Priscilla," said Mrs. Stanbury, "that does seem to make a difference." Mrs. Stanbury herself was only just sixty, and she felt herself to be quite an old woman.

"They may be devils at eighty," said Priscilla.

"Colonel Osborne is not a devil at all," said Nora.

"But mamma is so foolish," said Priscilla. "The man's age does not matter in the least."

"I beg your pardon, my dear," said Mrs. Stanbury, very humbly.

At that time the quarrel was raging, but afterwards came the reconciliation. Had it not been for the Stanbury correspondence the fact of Colonel Osborne's threatened visit would have been admitted as a thing necessary--as a disagreeable necessity; but how was the visit to be admitted and passed over in the teeth of that correspondence? Priscilla felt very keenly the peculiar cruelty of her position. Of course Aunt Stanbury would hear of the visit. Indeed, any secrecy in the matter was not compatible with Priscilla's ideas of honesty. Her aunt had apologised humbly for having said that Colonel Osborne had been at Nuncombe. That apology, doubtless, had been due. Colonel Osborne had not been at Nuncombe when the accusation had been made, and the accusation had been unjust and false. But his coming had been spoken of by Priscilla in her own letters as an occurrence which was quite out of the question. Her anger against her aunt had been for saying that the man had come, not for objecting to such a visit. And now the man was coming, and Aunt Stanbury would know all about it. How great, how terrible, how crushing would be Aunt Stanbury's triumph!

"I must write and tell her," said Priscilla.

"I am sure I shall not object," said Mrs. Trevelyan.

"And Hugh must be told," said Mrs. Stanbury.

"You may tell all the world, if you like," said Mrs. Trevelyan.

In this way it was settled among them that Colonel Osborne was to be received. On the next morning, Friday morning, Colonel Osborne, doubtless having heard something of Mrs. Crocket from his friend at Cockchaffington, was up early, and had himself driven over to Nuncombe Putney before breakfast. The ever-watchful Bozzle was, of course, at his heels,--or rather, not at his heels on the first two miles of the journey; for Bozzle, with painful zeal, had made himself aware of all the facts, and had started on the Nuncombe Putney road half an hour before the Colonel's fly was in motion. And when the fly passed him he was lying discreetly hidden behind an old oak. The driver, however, had caught a glimpse of him as he was topping a hill, and having seen him about on the previous day, and perceiving that he was dressed in a decent coat and trousers, and that, nevertheless, he was not a gentleman, began to suspect that he was--somebody. There was a great deal said afterwards about Bozzle in Mrs. Clegg's yard at Lessboro'; but the Lessboro' mind was never able to satisfy itself altogether respecting Bozzle and his mission. As to Colonel Osborne and his mission, the Lessboro' mind did satisfy itself with much certainty. The horse was hardly taken from out of Colonel Osborne's fly in Mrs. Crocket's yard when Bozzle stepped into the village by a path which he had already discovered, and soon busied himself among the tombs in the churchyard. Now, one corner of the churchyard was immediately opposite to the iron gate leading into the Clock House. "Drat 'un," said the wooden-legged postman, still sitting on his donkey, to Mrs. Crocket's ostler, "if there be'ant the chap as was here yesterday when I was a starting, and I zeed 'un in Lezbro' street thick very morning." "He be'ant arter no good, that 'un," said the ostler. After that a close watch was kept upon the watcher.

In the meantime, Colonel Osborne had ordered his breakfast at the Stag and Antlers, and had asked questions as to the position of the Clock House. He was altogether ignorant of Mr. Bozzle, although Mr. Bozzle had been on his track now for two days and two nights. He had determined, as he came on to Nuncombe Putney, that he would not be shame-faced about his visit to Mrs. Trevelyan. It is possible that he was not so keen in the matter as he had been when he planned his journey in London; and, it may be, that he really tried to make himself believe that he had come all the way to the confines of Dartmoor to see the porch of Cockchaffington Church. The session in London was over, and it was necessary for such a man as Colonel Osborne that he should do something with himself before he went down to the Scotch grouse. He had long desired to see something of the most picturesque county in England; and now, as he sat eating his breakfast in Mrs. Crocket's parlour, he almost looked upon his dear Emily as a subsidiary attraction. "Oh, that's the Clock House," he said to Mrs. Crocket. "No, I have not the pleasure of knowing Mrs. Stanbury; very respectable lady, so I have heard; widow of a clergyman; ah, yes; son up in London; I know him;--always writing books is he? Very clever, I dare say. But there's a lady,--indeed two ladies,--whom I do know. Mrs. Trevelyan is there, I think,--and Miss Rowley."

"You be'ant Muster Trevelyan, be you?" said Mrs. Crocket, looking at him very hard.

"No, I'm not Mr. Trevelyan."

"Nor yet 'the Colonel' they doo be talking about?"

"Well, yes, I am a colonel. I don't know why anybody should talk about me. I'll just step out now, however, and see my friends."

"It's madam's lover," said Mrs. Crocket to herself, "as sure as eggs is eggs." As she said so, Colonel Osborne boldly walked across the village and pulled the bell at the iron gate, while Bozzle, crouching among the tombs, saw the handle in his hand. "There he is," said Priscilla. Everybody in the Clock House had known that the fly, which they had seen, had brought "the Colonel" into Nuncombe Putney. Everybody had known that he had breakfasted at the Stag and Antlers. And everybody now knew that he was at the gate ringing the bell. "Into the drawing-room," said Mrs. Stanbury, with a fearful, tremulous whisper, to the girl who went across the little garden in front to open the iron gate. The girl felt as though Apollyon were there, and as though she were called upon to admit Apollyon. Mrs. Stanbury having uttered her whisper, hurried away up-stairs. Priscilla held her ground in the parlour, determined to be near the scene of action if there might be need. And it must be acknowledged that she peeped from behind the curtain, anxious to catch a glimpse of the terrible man, whose coming to Nuncombe Putney she regarded as so severe a misfortune.

The plan of the campaign had all been arranged. Mrs. Trevelyan and Nora together received Colonel Osborne in the drawing-room. It was understood that Nora was to remain there during the whole visit. "It is horrible to think that such a precaution should be necessary," Mrs. Trevelyan had said, "but perhaps it may be best. There is no knowing what the malice of people may not invent."

"My dear girls," said the Colonel, "I am delighted to see you," and he gave a hand to each.

"We are not very cheerful here," said Mrs. Trevelyan, "as you may imagine."

"But the scenery is beautiful," said Nora, "and the people we are living with are kind and nice."

"I am very glad of that," said the Colonel. Then there was a pause, and it seemed, for a moment or two, that none of them knew how to begin a general conversation. Colonel Osborne was quite sure, by this time, that he had come down to Devonshire with the express object of seeing the door of the church at Cockchaffington, and Mrs. Trevelyan was beginning to think that he certainly had not come to see her. "Have you heard from your father since you have been here?" asked the Colonel.

Then there was an explanation about Sir Marmaduke and Lady Rowley. Mr. Trevelyan's name was not mentioned; but Mrs. Trevelyan stated that she had explained to her mother all the painful circumstances of her present life. Sir Marmaduke, as Colonel Osborne was aware, was expected to be in England in the spring, and Lady Rowley would, of course, come with him. Nora thought that they might probably now come before that time; but Mrs. Trevelyan declared that it was out of the question that they should do so. She was sure that her father could not leave the islands except when he did so in obedience to official orders. The expense of doing so would be ruinous to him. And what good would he do? In this way there was a great deal of family conversation, in which Colonel Osborne was able to take a part; but not a word was said about Mr. Trevelyan.

Nor did "the Colonel" find an opportunity of expressing a spark of that sentiment, for the purpose of expressing which he had made this journey to Devonshire. It is not pleasant to make love in the presence of a third person, even when that love is all fair and above board; but it is quite impracticable to do so to a married lady, when that married lady's sister is present. No more futile visit than this of Colonel Osborne's to the Clock House was ever made. And yet, though not a word was spoken to which Mr. Trevelyan himself could have taken the slightest exception, the visit, futile as it was, could not but do an enormous deal of harm. Mrs. Crocket had already guessed that the fine gentleman down from London was the lover of the married lady at the Clock House, who was separated from her husband. The wooden-legged postman and the ostler were not long in connecting the man among the tombstones with the visitor to the house. Trevelyan, as we are aware, already knew that Colonel Osborne was in the neighbourhood. And poor Priscilla Stanbury was now exposed to the terrible necessity of owning the truth to her aunt. "The Colonel," when he had sat an hour with his young friends, took his leave; and, as he walked back to Mrs. Crocket's, and ordered that his fly might be got ready for him, his mind was heavy with the disagreeable feeling that he had made an ass of himself. The whole affair had been a failure; and though he might be able to pass off the porch at Cockchaffington among his friends, he could not but be aware himself that he had spent his time, his trouble, and his money for nothing. He became aware, as he returned to Lessboro', that had he intended to make any pleasant use whatever of his position in reference to Mrs. Trevelyan, the tone of his letter and his whole mode of proceeding should have been less patriarchal. And he should have contrived a meeting without the presence of Nora Rowley.

As soon as he had left them, Mrs. Trevelyan went to her own room, and Nora at once rejoined Priscilla.

"Is he gone?" asked Priscilla.

"Oh, yes;--he has gone."

"What would I have given that he had never come!"

"And yet," said Nora, "what harm has he done? I wish he had not come, because, of course, people will talk! But nothing was more natural than that he should come over to see us when he was so near us."

"Nora!"

"What do you mean?"

"You don't believe all that? In the neighbourhood! I believe he came on purpose to see your sister, and I think that it was a dastardly and most ungentleman-like thing to do."

"I am quite sure you are wrong, then,--altogether wrong," said Nora.

"Very well. We must have our own opinions. I am glad you can be so charitable. But he should not have come here,--to this house, even though imperative business had brought him into the very village. But men in their vanity never think of the injury they may do to a woman's name. Now I must go and write to my aunt. I am not going to have it said hereafter that I deceived her. And then I shall write to Hugh. Oh dear; oh dear!"

"I am afraid we are a great trouble to you."

"I will not deceive you, because I like you. This is a great trouble to me. I have meant to be so prudent, and with all my prudence I have not been able to keep clear of rocks. And I have been so indignant with Aunt Stanbury! Now I must go and eat humble-pie."

Then she eat humble-pie,--after the following fashion:--

DEAR AUNT STANBURY,

After what has passed between us, I think it right to tell you that Colonel Osborne has been at Nuncombe Putney, and that he called at the Clock House this morning. We did not see him. But Mrs. Trevelyan and Miss Rowley, together, did see him. He remained here perhaps an hour.

I should not have thought it necessary to mention this to you, the matter being one in which you are not concerned, were it not for our former correspondence. When I last wrote, I had no idea that he was coming,--nor had mamma. And when you first wrote, he was not even expected by Mrs. Trevelyan. The man you wrote about was another gentleman;--as I told you before. All this is most disagreeable and tiresome;--and would be quite nonsensical, but that circumstances seem to make it necessary.

As for Colonel Osborne, I wish he had not been here; but his coming would do no harm,--only that it will be talked about.

I think you will understand how it is that I feel myself constrained to write to you. I do hope that you will spare mamma, who is disturbed and harassed when she gets angry letters. If you have anything to say to myself, I don't mind it.

Yours truly,

PRISCILLA STANBURY.

The Clock House, Friday, August 5.

She wrote also to her brother Hugh; but Hugh himself reached Nuncombe Putney before the letter reached him.

Mr. Bozzle watched the Colonel out of the house, and watched him out of the village. When the Colonel was fairly started, Mr. Bozzle walked back to Lessboro'.

XXII. SHEWING HOW MISS STANBURY BEHAVED TO HER TWO NIECES

The triumph of Miss Stanbury when she received her niece's letter was certainly very great,--so great that in its first flush she could not restrain herself from exhibiting it to Dorothy. "Well,--well,--what do you think, Dolly?"

"About what, aunt? I don't know who the letter is from."

"Nobody writes to me now so constant as your sister Priscilla. The letter is from Priscilla. Colonel Osborne has been at the Clock House, after all. I knew that he would be there. I knew it! I knew it!"

Dorothy, when she heard this, was dumbfounded. She had rested her defence of her mother and sister on the impossibility of any such visit being admitted. According to her lights the coming of Colonel Osborne, after all that had been said, would be like the coming of Lucifer himself. The Colonel was, to her imagination, a horrible roaring lion. She had no idea that the erratic manoeuvres of such a beast might be milder and more innocent than the wooing of any turtle-dove. She would have asked whether the roaring lion had gone away again, and, if so, whether he had taken his prey with him, were it not that she was too much frightened at the moment to ask any question. That her mother and sister should have been wilfully concerned in such iniquity was quite incredible to her, but yet she did not know how to defend them. "But are you quite sure of it, Aunt Stanbury? May there not be another mistake?"

"No mistake this time, I think, my dear. Any way, Priscilla says that he is there." Now in this there was a mistake. Priscilla had said nothing of the kind.

"You don't mean that he is staying at the Clock House, Aunt Stanbury?"

"I don't know where he is now. I'm not his keeper. And, I'm glad to say, I'm not the lady's keeper either. Ah, me! It's a bad business. You can't touch pitch and not be defiled, my dear. If your mother wanted the Clock House, I would sooner have taken it for her myself than that all this should have happened,--for the family's sake."

But Miss Stanbury, when she was alone, and when she had read her niece's three letters again and again, began to understand something of Priscilla's honesty, and began also to perceive that there might have been a great difficulty respecting the Colonel, for which neither her niece nor her sister-in-law could fairly be held to be responsible. It was perhaps the plainest characteristic of all the Stanburys that they were never wilfully dishonest. Ignorant, prejudiced, and passionate they might be. In her anger Miss Stanbury, of Exeter, could be almost malicious; and her niece at Nuncombe Putney was very like her aunt. Each could say most cruel things, most unjust things, when actuated by a mistaken consciousness of perfect right on her own side. But neither of them could lie,--even by silence. Let an error be brought home to either of them,--so as to be acknowledged at home,--and the error would be assuredly confessed aloud. And, indeed, with differences in the shades, Hugh and Dorothy were of the same nature. They were possessed of sweeter tempers than their aunt and sister, but they were filled with the same eager readiness to believe themselves to be right,--and to own themselves to others to be wrong, when they had been constrained to make such confession to themselves. The chances of life, and something probably of inner nature, had made Dorothy mild and obedient; whereas, in regard to Hugh, the circumstances of his life and disposition had made him obstinate and self-reliant. But in all was to be found the same belief in self,--which amounted almost to conceit,--the same warmth of affection, and the same love of justice.

When Miss Stanbury had again perused the correspondence, and had come to see, dimly, how things had gone at Nuncombe Putney,--when the conviction came upon her mind that Priscilla had entertained a horror as to the coming of this Colonel equal to that which she herself had felt,--when her imagination painted to her all that her niece had suffered, her heart was softened somewhat. She had declared to Dorothy that pitch, if touched, would certainly defile; and she had, at first, intended to send the same opinion, couched in very forcible words, to her correspondents at the Clock House. They should not continue to go astray for want of being told that they were going astray. It must be acknowledged, too, that there was a certain amount of ignoble wrath in the bosom of Miss Stanbury because her sister-in-law had taken the Clock House. She had never been told, and had not even condescended to ask Dorothy, whether the house was taken and paid for by her nephew on behalf of his mother, or whether it was paid for by Mr. Trevelyan on behalf of his wife. In the latter case, Mrs. Stanbury would, she thought, be little more than an upper servant, or keeper,--as she expressed it to herself. Such an arrangement appeared to her to be quite disgraceful in a Stanbury; but yet she believed that such must be the existing arrangement, as she could not bring herself to conceive that Hugh Stanbury could keep such an establishment over his mother's head out of money earned by writing for a penny newspaper. There would be a triumph of democracy in this which would vanquish her altogether. She had, therefore, been anxious enough to trample on Priscilla and upon all the affairs of the Clock House; but yet she had been unable to ignore the nobility of Priscilla's truth, and having acknowledged it to herself she found herself compelled to acknowledge it aloud. She sat down to think in silence, and it was not till she had fortified herself by her first draught of beer, and till she had finished her first portion of bread and cheese, that she spoke. "I have written to your sister herself, this time," she said. "I don't know that I ever wrote a line to her before in my life."

"Poor Priscilla!" Dorothy did not mean to be severe on her aunt, either in regard to the letters which had not been written, or to the one letter which now had been written. But Dorothy pitied her sister, whom she felt to be in trouble.

"Well; I don't know about her being so poor. Priscilla, I'll be bound, thinks as well of herself as any of us do."

"She'd cut her fingers off before she'd mean to do wrong," said Dorothy.

"But what does that come to? What's the good of that? It isn't meaning to do right that will save us. For aught I know, the Radicals may mean to do right. Mr. Beales means to do right--perhaps."

"But, aunt,--if everybody did the best they could?"

"Tush, my dear! you are getting beyond your depth. There are such things still, thank God! as spiritual pastors and masters. Entrust yourself to them. Do what they think right." Now if aught were known in Exeter of Miss Stanbury, this was known,--that if any clergyman volunteered to give to her, unasked and uninvited, counsel, either ghostly or bodily, that clergyman would be sent from her presence with a wigging which he would not soon forget. The thing had been tried more than once, and the wigging had been complete. There was no more attentive listener in church than Miss Stanbury; and she would, now and again, appeal to a clergyman on some knotty point. But for the ordinary authority of spiritual pastors and masters she shewed more of abstract reverence than of practical obedience.

"I'm sure Priscilla does the best she can," said Dorothy, going back to the old subject.

"Ah,--well,--yes. What I want to say about Priscilla is this. It is a thousand pities she is so obstinate, so pig-headed, so certain that she can manage everything for herself better than anybody else can for her." Miss Stanbury was striving to say something good of her niece, but found the task to be difficult and distasteful to her.

"She has managed for mamma ever so many years; and since she took it we have hardly ever been in debt," said Dorothy.

"She'll do all that, I don't doubt. I don't suppose she cares much for ribbons and false hair for herself."

"Who? Priscilla! The idea of Priscilla with false hair!"

"I dare say not;--I dare say not. I do not think she'd spend her mother's money on things of that kind."

"Aunt Stanbury, you don't know her."

"Ah; very well. Perhaps I don't. But, come, my dear, you are very hard upon me, and very anxious to take your sister's part. And what is it all about? I've just written to her as civil a letter as one woman ever wrote to another. And if I had chosen, I could have,--could have,--h--m--m." Miss Stanbury, as she hesitated for words in which to complete her sentence, revelled in the strength of the vituperation which she could have poured upon her niece's head, had she chosen to write her last letter about Colonel Osborne in her severe strain.

"If you have written kindly to her, I am so much obliged to you," said Dorothy.

"The truth is, Priscilla has meant to be right. Meaning won't go for much when the account is taken, unless the meaning comes from a proper source. But the poor girl has done as well as she has known how. I believe it is Hugh's fault more than anybody else's." This accusation was not pleasant to Dorothy, but she was too intent just now on Priscilla's case to defend her brother. "That man never ought to have been there; and that woman never ought to have been there. There cannot be a doubt about that. If Priscilla were sitting there opposite to me, she would own as much. I am sure she would." Miss Stanbury was quite right if she meant to assert that Priscilla had owned as much to herself. "And because I think so, I am willing to forgive her part in the matter. To me, personally, she has always been rude,--most uncourteous,--and,--and,--and unlike a younger woman to an older one, and an aunt, and all that. I suppose it is because she hates me."

"Oh, no, Aunt Stanbury!"

"My dear, I suppose it is. Why else should she treat me in such a way? But I do believe of her that she would rather eat an honest, dry crust, than dishonest cake and ale."

"She would rather starve than pick up a crumb that was dishonest," said Dorothy, fairly bursting out into tears.

"I believe it. I do believe it. There; what more can I say? Clock House, indeed! What matter what house you live in, so that you can pay the rent of it honestly?"

"But the rent is paid--honestly," said Dorothy, amidst her sobs.

"It's paid, I don't doubt. I dare say the woman's husband and your brother see to that among them. Oh, that my boy, Hugh, as he used to be, should have brought us all to this! But there's no knowing what they won't do among them. Reform, indeed! Murder, sacrilege, adultery, treason, atheism;--that's what Reform means; besides every kind of nastiness under the sun." In which latter category Miss Stanbury intended especially to include bad printer's ink, and paper made of straw.

The reader may as well see the letter which was as civil a letter as ever one woman wrote to another, so that the collection of the Stanbury correspondence may be made perfect.

The Close, August 6, 186--.

MY DEAR NIECE,

Your letter has not astonished me nearly as much as you expected it would. I am an older woman than you, and, though you will not believe it, I have seen more of the world. I knew that the gentleman would come after the lady. Such gentlemen always do go after their ladies. As for yourself, I can see all that you have done, and pretty nearly hear all that you have said, as plain as a pike-staff. I do you the credit of believing that the plan is none of your making. I know who made the plan, and a very bad plan it is.

As to my former letters and the other man, I understand all about it. You were very angry that I should accuse you of having this man at the house; and you were right to be angry. I respect you for having been angry. But what does all that say as to his coming,--now that he has come?

If you will consent to take an old woman's advice, get rid of the whole boiling of them. I say it in firm love and friendship, for I am,--

Your affectionate aunt,

JEMIMA STANBURY.

The special vaunted courtesy of this letter consisted, no doubt, in the expression of respect which it contained, and in that declaration of affection with which it terminated. The epithet was one which Miss Stanbury would by no means use promiscuously in writing to her nearest relatives. She had not intended to use it when she commenced her letter to Priscilla. But the respect of which she had spoken had glowed, and had warmed itself into something of temporary love; and feeling at the moment that she was an affectionate aunt, Miss Stanbury had so put herself down in her letter. Having done such a deed she felt that Dorothy, though Dorothy knew nothing about it, ought in her gratitude to listen patiently to anything that she might now choose to say against Priscilla.

But Dorothy was in truth very miserable, and in her misery wrote a long letter that afternoon to her mother,--which, however, it will not be necessary to place entire among the Stanbury records,--begging that she might be informed as to the true circumstances of the case. She did not say a word of censure in regard either to her mother or sister; but she expressed an opinion in the mildest words which she could use, that if anything had happened which had compromised their names since their residence at the Clock House, she, Dorothy, had better go home and join them. The meaning of which was that it would not become her to remain in the house in the Close, if the house in the Close would be disgraced by her presence. Poor Dorothy had taught herself to think that the iniquity of roaring lions spread itself very widely.

In the afternoon she made some such proposition to her aunt in ambiguous terms. "Go home!" said Miss Stanbury. "Now?"

"If you think it best, Aunt Stanbury."

"And put yourself in the middle of all this iniquity and abomination! I don't suppose you want to know the woman?"

"No, indeed!"

"Or the man?"

"Oh, Aunt Stanbury!"

"It's my belief that no decent gentleman in Exeter would look at you again if you were to go and live among them at Nuncombe Putney while all this is going on. No, no. Let one of you be saved out of it, at least."

Aunt Stanbury had more than once made use of expressions which brought the faintest touch of gentle pink up to her niece's cheeks. We must do Dorothy the justice of saying that she had never dreamed of being looked at by any gentleman, whether decent or indecent. Her life at Nuncombe Putney had been of such a nature, that though she knew that other girls were looked at, and even made love to, and that they got married and had children, no dim vision of such a career for herself had ever presented itself to her eyes. She had known very well that her mother and sister and herself were people apart,--ladies, and yet so extremely poor, that they could only maintain their rank by the most rigid seclusion. To live, and work unseen, was what the world had ordained for her. Then her call to Exeter had come upon her, and she had conceived that she was henceforth to be the humble companion of a very imperious old aunt. Her aunt, indeed, was imperious, but did not seem to require humility in her companion. All the good things that were eaten and drunk were divided between them with the strictest impartiality. Dorothy's cushion and hassock in the church and in the cathedral were the same as her aunt's. Her bed-room was made very comfortable for her. Her aunt never gave her any orders before company, and always spoke of her before the servants as one whom they were to obey and respect. Gradually Dorothy came to understand the meaning of this;--but her aunt would sometimes say things about young men which she did not quite understand. Could it be that her aunt supposed that any young man would come and wish to marry her,--her, Dorothy Stanbury? She herself had not quite so strong an aversion to men in general as that which Priscilla felt, but she had not as yet found that any of those whom she had seen at Exeter were peculiarly agreeable to her. Before she went to bed that night her aunt said a word to her which startled her more than she had ever been startled before. On that evening Miss Stanbury had a few friends to drink tea with her. There were Mr. and Mrs. Crumbie, and Mrs. MacHugh of course, and the Cheritons from Alphington, and the Miss Apjohns from Helion Villa, and old Mr. Powel all the way from Haldon, and two of the Wrights from their house in the Northernhay, and Mr. Gibson;--but the Miss Frenches from Heavitree were not there. "Why don't you have the Miss Frenches, aunt?" Dorothy had asked.

"Bother the Miss Frenches! I'm not bound to have them every time. There's Camilla has been and got herself a band-box on the back of her head a great deal bigger than the place inside where her brains ought to be." But the band-box at the back of Camilla French's head was not the sole cause of the omission of the two sisters from the list of Miss Stanbury's visitors on this occasion.

The party went off very much as usual. There were two whist tables, for Miss Stanbury could not bear to cut out. At other houses than her own, when there was cutting out, it was quite understood that Miss Stanbury was to be allowed to keep her place. "I'll go away, and sit out there by myself, if you like," she would say. But she was never thus banished; and at her own house she usually contrived that there should be no system of banishment. She would play dummy whist, preferring it to the four-handed game; and, when hard driven, and with a meet opponent, would not even despise double-dummy. It was told of her and of Mrs. MacHugh that they had played double-dummy for a whole evening together; and they who were given to calumny had declared that the candles on that evening had been lighted very early. On the present occasion a great many sixpenny points were scored, and much tea and cake were consumed. Mr. Gibson never played whist,--nor did Dorothy. That young John Wright and Mary Cheriton should do nothing but talk to each other was a thing of course, as they were to be married in a month or two. Then there was Ida Cheriton, who could not very well be left at home; and Mr. Gibson made himself pleasant to Dorothy and Ida Cheriton, instead of making himself pleasant to the two Miss Frenches. Gentlemen in provincial towns quite understand that, from the nature of social circumstances in the provinces, they should always be ready to be pleasant at least to a pair at a time. At a few minutes before twelve they were all gone, and then came the shock.

"Dolly, my dear, what do you think of Mr. Gibson?"

"Think of him, Aunt Stanbury?"

"Yes; think of him;--think of him. I suppose you know how to think?"

"He seems to me always to preach very drawling sermons."

"Oh, bother his sermons! I don't care anything about his sermons now. He is a very good clergyman, and the Dean thinks very much about him."

"I am glad of that, Aunt Stanbury."

Then came the shock. "Don't you think it would be a very good thing if you were to become Mrs. Gibson?"

It may be presumed that Miss Stanbury had assured herself that she could not make progress with Dorothy by "beating about the bush." There was an inaptitude in her niece to comprehend the advantages of the situations, which made some direct explanation absolutely necessary. Dorothy stood half-smiling, half-crying, when she heard the proposition, her cheeks suffused with that pink colour, and with both her hands extended with surprise.

"I've been thinking about it ever since you've been here," said Miss Stanbury.

"I think he likes Miss French," said Dorothy, in a whisper.

"Which of them? I don't believe he likes them at all. Maybe, if they go on long enough, they may be able to toss up for him. But I don't think it of him. Of course they're after him, but he'll be too wise for them. And he's more of a fool than I take him to be if he don't prefer you to them." Dorothy remained quite silent. To such an address as this it was impossible that she should reply a word. It was incredible to her that any man should prefer herself to either of the young women in question; but she was too much confounded for the expression even of her humility. "At any rate you're wholesome, and pleasant and modest," said Miss Stanbury.

Dorothy did not quite like being told that she was wholesome; but, nevertheless, she was thankful to her aunt.

"I'll tell you what it is," continued Miss Stanbury; "I hate all mysteries, especially with those I love. I've saved two thousand pounds, which I've put you down for in my will. Now, if you and he can make it up together, I'll give you the money at once. There's no knowing how often an old woman may alter her will; but when you've got a thing, you've got it. Mr. Gibson would know the meaning of a bird in the hand as well as anybody. Now those girls at Heavitree will never have above a few hundreds each, and not that while their mother lives." Dorothy made one little attempt at squeezing her aunt's hand, wishing to thank her aunt for this affectionate generosity; but she had hardly accomplished the squeeze, when she desisted, feeling strangely averse to any acknowledgment of such a boon as that which had been offered to her. "And now, good night, my dear. If I did not think you a very sensible young woman, I should not trust you by saying all this." Then they parted, and Dorothy soon found herself alone in her bedroom.

To have a husband of her own, a perfect gentleman too, and a clergyman;--and to go to him with a fortune! She believed that two thousand pounds represented nearly a hundred a year. It was a large fortune in those parts,--according to her understanding of ladies' fortunes. And that she, the humblest of the humble, should be selected for so honourable a position! She had never quite known, quite understood as yet, whether she had made good her footing in her aunt's house in a manner pleasant to her aunt. More than once or twice she had spoken even of going back to her mother, and things had been said which had almost made her think that her aunt had been angry with her. But now, after a month or two of joint residence, her aunt was offering to her--two thousand pounds and a husband!

But was it within her aunt's power to offer to her the husband? Mr. Gibson had always been very civil to her. She had spoken more to Mr. Gibson than to any other man in Exeter. But it had never occurred to her for a moment that Mr. Gibson had any special liking for her. Was it probable that he would ever entertain any feeling of that kind for her? It certainly had occurred to her before now that Mr. Gibson was sometimes bored by the Miss Frenches;--but then gentlemen do get bored by ladies.

And at last she asked herself another question,--had she any special liking for Mr. Gibson? As far as she understood such matters everything was blank there. Thinking of that other question, she went to sleep.