 Chapter 7 of He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollop. Chapter 7 Miss Jemima Stanbury of Exeter. Miss Jemima Stanbury, the aunt of our friend Hugh, was a maiden lady very much respected indeed in the city of Exeter. It is to be hoped that no readers of these pages will be so un-English as to be unable to appreciate the difference between county society and town society, the society that is of a provincial town, or so ignorant as not to know also that there may be persons so privileged that, although they live distinctly within a provincial town, there is accorded to them, as though by brevet rank, all the merit of living in the county. In reference to persons so privileged, it is considered that they have been made free from the contamination of contiguous bricks and mortar by certain inner gifts, probably of birth, occasionally of profession, possibly of merit. It is very rarely indeed that money alone will bestow this acknowledged rank, and in Exeter, which by the stringency and excellence of its well-defined rules on such matters, may perhaps be said to take the lead of all English provincial towns, money alone has never availed. Good blood, especially if it be blood good in Devonshire, is rarely rejected. Clergymen are allowed within the pale, though by no means as certainly as used to be the case, and indeed in these days of literates, clergymen have to pass harder examinations than those ever imposed upon them by bishops chaplains, before they are admitted ad yundim among the chosen ones of the city of Exeter. The wives and daughters of the old pre-benderies see well to that, and, as has been said, special merit may prevailed. Sir Peter Mancrudy, the great Exeter physician, has won his way in, not at all by being Sir Peter, which has stood in his way rather than otherwise, but by the acknowledged excellence of his book about psaltses. Sir Peter Mancrudy is supposed to have quite a metropolitan, almost a European reputation, and therefore is acknowledged to belong to the county set, although he never dines out at any house beyond the limits of the city. Now let it be known that no inhabitant of Exeter ever achieved a clearer right to be regarded as county in opposition to town than had Miss Jemima Stanbury. There was not a tradesman in Exeter who was not aware of it, and who did not touch his hat to her accordingly. The men who drove the flies, when summoned to take her out at night, would bring oats with them, knowing how probable it was that they might have to travel far. A distinct apology was made if she was asked to drink tea with people who were simply town. The gnolls of Dadascom Lee, the Cliffords of Budley Salterton, the Powell's of Halden, the charitans of Alpington, all county persons, but very frequently in the city, were greeted by her and greeted her on terms of equality. Her most intimate friend was Old Mrs. McHugh, the widow of the last dean but two, who could not have stood higher had she been the widow of the last bishop. And then, although Miss Stanbury was intimate with the Frenches of Hevetry, with the rights of Northern Hay, with the abjons of Helian Villa, a really magnificent house, two miles out of the city on the Creditan Road, and with the crumbies of Cronstat House, St. Ide's, who would have been county people, if living in the country made the difference, although she was intimate with all these families, her manner to them was not the same, nor was it expected to be the same, as with those of her own acknowledged set. These things are understood in Exeter so well. Miss Stanbury belonged to the county set, but she lived in a large brick house standing in the close, almost behind the cathedral. Indeed it was so close to the eastern end of the edifice that a carriage could not be brought quite up to her door. It was a large brick house, very old, with a door in the middle and five steps ascending to it between high iron rails. On each side of the door there were two windows on the ground floor, and above that there were three tiers of five windows each, and the house was double throughout, having as many windows looking out behind into a gloomy courtyard. But the glory of the house consisted in this, that there was a garden attached to it, a garden with very high walls, over which the boughs of trees might be seen, giving to the otherwise gloomy abode a touch of freshness in the summer, and a look of space in the winter, which no doubt added something to the reputation even of Miss Stanbury. The fact, for it was a fact, that there was no gloomier or less attractive spot in the whole city than Miss Stanbury's garden, when seen inside, did not militate against this advantage. There were but half a dozen trees, and a few square yards of grass that was never green, and a damp, ungraveled path on which no one ever walked. Even from the inside the garden was not much, but from the outside it gave a distinct character to the house, and produced an unexpressed acknowledgment that the owner of it ought to belong to the county set. The house and all that was in it belonged to Miss Stanbury herself, as did also many other houses in the neighborhood. She was the owner of the cock and bottle, a very decent second class inn on the other side of the close, and inn supposed to have clerical tendencies which made it quite suitable for a close. The choristers took their beer there, and the landlord was a retired verger. Nearly the whole of one side of a dark passage leading out of the close towards the high street belonged to her, and though the passage be narrow and the house is dark, the locality is known to be good for trade, and she owned two large houses in the high street, and a great warehouse at St. Thomas's, and had been bought out of land by the railway at St. David's, much to her own dissatisfaction, as she was want to express herself, but undoubtedly at a very high price. It will be understood, therefore, that Miss Stanbury was wealthy, and that she was bound to the city in which she lived by peculiar ties. But Miss Stanbury had not been born to this wealth, nor can she be said to have inherited from her forefathers any of these high privileges which had been awarded to her. She had achieved them by the romance of her life, and the manner in which she had carried herself amidst its vicissitudes. Her father had been vicar of Nuncombe Putney, a parish lying twenty miles west of Exeter, among the Moors, and on her father's death, her brother, also now dead, had become vicar of the same parish, her brother, whose only son, Hugh Stanbury, we already know, working for the D.R., up in London. When Miss Stanbury was twenty-one, she became engaged to a certain Mr. Brooke Burgess, the eldest son of a banker in Exeter, or, it might perhaps be better said, a banker himself, for at the time Mr. Brooke Burgess was in the firm. It need not here be told how various misfortunes arose, how Mr. Burgess quarreled with the Stanbury family, how Jemima quarreled with her own family, how, when her father died, she went out from Nuncombe Putney parsonage, and lived on the smallest pittance in a city lodging, how her lover was untrue to her, and did not marry her, and how, at last, he died, and left her every shilling that he possessed. The Devonshire people, at the time, had been much divided as to the merits of the Stanbury quarrel. There were many who said that the brother could not have acted otherwise than he did, and that Miss Stanbury, though by force of character and force of circumstances she had weathered the storm, had in truth been very indiscreet. The results, however, were as have been described. At the period of which we treat, Miss Stanbury was a very rich lady, living by herself in Exeter, admitted without question to be one of the county set, and still at variance with her brother's family. Except to Hugh, she had never spoken a word to one of them since her brother's death. When the money came into her hands, she at that time being over forty, and her nephew being then just ten years old, she had undertaken to educate him, and to start him in the world. We know how she had kept her word, and how and why she had withdrawn herself from any further responsibility in the matter. And in regard to this business of starting the young man, she had been careful to let it be known that she would do no more than start him. In the formal document, by means of which she had made the proposal to her brother, she had been careful to let it be understood that simple education was all that she intended to bestow upon him, and that only, she had added, in the event of my surviving till his education be completed. And to Hugh himself, she had declared that any allowance which she made him after he was called to the bar, was only made in order to give him room for his foot, a spot of ground from whence to make his first leap. We know how he made that leap, infinitely to the disgust of his aunt, who, when he refused obedience to her in the manner of withdrawing from the daily record, immediately withdrew from him not only her patronage and assistance, but even her friendship and acquaintance. This was the letter which she wrote to him. I don't think that writing radical stuff for a penny newspaper is a respectable occupation for a gentleman, and I will have nothing to do with it. If you choose to do such work, I cannot help it. But it was not for such that I sent you to Harrow and Oxford, nor yet up to London and paid one hundred pounds a year to Mr. Lambert. I think you are treating me badly, but that is nothing to your bad treatment of yourself. You need not trouble yourself to answer this, unless you are prepared to say that you will not write any more stuff for that penny newspaper. Only I wish to be understood. I will have no connection that I can help, and no acquaintance at all with radical scribblers and incendiaries. Jemima Stanbury, The Close, Exeter, April 15, 1860 Blank Hugh Stanbury had answered this, thanking his aunt for past favors and explaining to her, or striving to do so, that he felt it to be his duty to earn his bread, as a means of earning it had come within his reach. He might as well have spared himself the trouble. She simply wrote a few words across his own letter in red ink. The bread of unworthiness should never be earned or eaten, and then sent the letter back under a blank envelope to her nephew. She was a thorough Tory of the old school. Had Hugh taken to writing for a newspaper that had cost six pence, or even three pence for its copies, she might perhaps have forgiven him. At any rate, the offence would not have been so flagrant. And had the paper been conservative instead of liberal, she would have had some qualms of conscience before she gave him up. But to live by writing for a newspaper, and for a penny newspaper, and for a penny radical newspaper, it was more than she could endure. Of what nature were the articles which he contributed, it was impossible that she should have any idea, for no consideration would have induced her to look at a penny newspaper, or to admit it within her doors. She herself took in the John Bull and the Herald, and daily groaned deeply at the way in which those once great organs of true British public feeling were becoming demoralized and perverted. Had any reduction been made in the price of either of them, she would at once have stopped her subscription. In the matter of politics, she had long since come to think that everything good was over. She hated the name of reform so much that she could not bring herself to believe in Mr. Disraeli and his bill. For many years she had believed in Lord Derby. She would fain believe in him still if she could. It was the great desire of her heart to have someone in whom she believed. In the bishop of her diocese she did believe, and annually sent him some little comforting present from her own hand. And in two or three of the clergymen around her she believed, finding in them a flavor of the unesthetic godliness of ancient days which was gratifying to her palette. But in politics there was hardly a name remaining to which she could fix her faith, and declare that there should be her guide. For a while she thought she would cling to Mr. Low, but when she made inquiry she found that there was no base there of really well-formed conservative granite. The three gentlemen who had disevered themselves for Mr. Disraeli when Mr. Disraeli was passing his reform bill were doubtless very good in their way, but they were not big enough to fill her heart. She tried to make herself happy with General Peel, but General Peel was after all no more than a shade to her. But the untruth of others never made her untrue, and she still talked of the excellence of George III and the glories of the subsequent reign. She had a bust of Lord Eldon, before which she was accustomed to stand with hands closed and to weep, or to think that she wept. She was a little woman, now nearly sixty years of age, with bright gray eyes and a strong Roman nose and thin lips and a sharp-cut chin. She wore a headgear that almost amounted to a mobcap, and beneath it her gray hair was always frizzled with the greatest care. Her dress was invariably of black silk, and she had five gowns, one for church, one for evening parties, one for driving out, and one for evenings at home and one for mornings. The dress, when new, always went to church. Nothing, as she was wont to say, was too good for the Lord's house. In the days of Crinolines she had protested that she had never worn one—a protest, however, which was hardly true—and now in these later days her hatred was especially developed in reference to the headdresses of young women. Cinyon was a word which she had never been heard to pronounce. She would talk of those bandboxes which the sluts wear behind their noddles, for Miss Standbury allowed herself the use of much strong language. She was very punctilious in all her habits, breakfasting ever at half-past eight, and dining always at six. Half-past five had been her time, till the bishop, who on an occasion was to be her guest, once signified to her that such an hour cut up the day and interfered with clerical work. Her lunch was always of bread and cheese, and they who lunched with her either ate that or the bread without the cheese. An afternoon tea was a thing horrible to her imagination. Tea and buttered toast at half-past eight in the evening was the great luxury of her life. She was as strong as a horse, and had never hitherto known a day's illness. As a consequence of this she did not believe in the illness of other people, especially not in the illness of women. She did not like a girl who could not drink a glass of beer with her bread and cheese in the middle of the day, and she thought that a glass of port after dinner was good for everybody. Indeed she had a thorough belief in port wine, thinking that it would go far to cure most miseries. But she could not put up with the idea that a woman, young or old, should want the stimulus of a glass of sherry to support her at any odd time of the day. She thought concoctions of strong drink at Christmas she would allow to everybody, and was very strong in recommending such comforts to ladies blessed, or about to be blessed, with children. She took the sacrament every month, and gave away exactly a tenth of her income to the poor. She believed that there was a special holiness in a tithe of a thing, and attributed the commencement of the downfall of the Church of England to rent charges, and the commutation of clergyman's incomes. As Judas there had never been to her thinking a traitor so base, or an apostate so sinful as Colenso, and yet of the nature of Colenso's teaching she was as ignorant as the towers of the Cathedral opposite to her. She believed in Exeter, thinking that there was no other provincial town in England in which a maiden lady could live safely and decently. London to her was an abode of sin, and though as we have seen, she delighted to call herself one of the county set, she did not love the fields and lanes. And in Exeter the only place for a lady was the close. Southern Hay and Northern Hay might be very well, and there was doubtless, a respectable neighbourhood on the hevetry side of the town, but for the new streets, and especially for the suburban villas, she had no endurance. She liked to deal at deer shops, but would leave any shop, either deer or sheep, in regard to which a printed advertisement should reach her eye. She paid all her bills at the end of each six months, and almost took a delight in high prices. She would rejoice that bread should be cheap, and grieve that meat should be deer, because of the poor, but in regard to other matters no reduction in the cost of an article ever pleased her. She had houses as to which she was told by her agent that the rents should be raised, but she would not raise them. She had others which it was difficult to let without lowering the rents, but she would not lower them. All change was to her hateful and unnecessary. She kept three maid-servants, and a man came in every day to clean the knives and boots. Service with her was well-requited, and much labour was never exacted. But it was not every young woman who could live with her. A rigidity as to ours, as to religious exercises, and as to dress was exacted, under which many poor girls altogether broke down. But they who could stand this rigidity came to know that their places were very valuable. No one belonging to them need want for ought when once the good opinion of Miss Stanbury had been earned. When once she believed in her servant there was nobody like that servant. There was not a man in Exeter could clean a boot except Giles Hickbody, and if not in Exeter then where else? And her own maid Martha, who had lived with her now for twenty years, and who had come with her to the Brick House when she first inhabited it, was such a woman that no other servant anywhere was fit to hold a candle to her. But then Martha had great gifts, was never ill, and really liked having sermons read to her. Such was Miss Stanbury, who had now discarded her nephew Hugh. She had never been tenderly affectionate to Hugh, or she would hardly have asked him to live in London on a hundred a year. She had never really been kind to him since he was a boy. For although she had paid for him she had been almost penorious in her manner of doing so, and had repeatedly given him to understand that in the event of her death not a shilling would be left to him. Indeed, as to that matter of bequeathing her money, it was understood that it was her purpose to let it all go back to the Burgess family. With the Burgess family she had kept up no sustained connection, it being quite understood that she was never to be asked to meet the only one of them now left in Exeter. Nor was it as yet known to anyone in what manner the money was to go back, how it was to be divided or who were to be the recipients. But she had declared that it should go back, explaining that she had conceived it to be a duty to let her own relations know that they would not inherit her wealth at her death. About a week after she had sent back poor Hugh's letter with the endorsement on it as to unworthy bread, she summoned Martha to the back parlor in which she was accustomed to write her letters. It was one of the theories of her life that different rooms should be used only for the purposes for which they were intended. She never allowed pens and ink up into the bedrooms, and had she ever heard that any guest in her house was reading in bed, she would have made an instant personal attack upon that guest, whether male or female, which would have surprised that guest. Poor Hugh would have got on better with her had he not been discovered once smoking in the garden. Nor would she have writing materials in the drawing room or dining room. There was a chamber behind the dining room in which there was an ink-bottle, and if there was a letter to be written, let the writer go there and write it. In the writing of many letters, however, she put no confidence, and regarded penny-postage as one of the strongest evidences of the coming ruin. Martha, she said, I want to speak to you, sit down, I think I am going to do something. Martha sat down, but did not speak a word. There had been no question asked of her, and the time for speaking had not come. I am writing to Mrs. Stanbury at Nuncombe Putney, and what do you think I am saying to her? Now the question had been asked, and it was Martha's duty to reply. Writing to Mrs. Stanbury, ma'am? Yes, to Mrs. Stanbury. It ain't possible for me to say, ma'am, unless it's to put Mr. Hugh from going on with the newspapers. When my nephew won't be controlled by me, I shan't go elsewhere to look for control over him. You may be sure of that, Martha. And remember, Martha, I don't want to have his name mentioned again in the house. You will tell them all so, if you please. He was a very nice gentleman, ma'am. Martha, I won't have it, and there's an end of it. I won't have it. Perhaps I know what goes to the making of a nice gentleman as well as you do. Mr. Hugh, ma'am, I won't have it, Martha, and when I say so, let there be an end of it. As she said this, she got up from her chair, and shook her head, and took a turn about the room. If I'm not Mistress Hugh, I'm nobody. Of course you're Mistress Hugh, ma'am. And if I don't know what's fit to be done, and what's not fit, I'm too old to learn, and what's more, I won't be taught. I'm not going to have my house crammed with radical incendiary stuff, printed with ink that stinks on paper made out of straw. If I can't live without penny literature at any rate I'll die without it. Now listen to me. Yes, ma'am. I have asked Mrs. Standbury to send one of the girls over here. To live, ma'am? Martha's tone, as she asked the question, showed how deeply she felt its importance. Yes, Martha, to live. You'll never like it, ma'am. I don't suppose I shall. You'll never get on with it, ma'am, never. The young lady will be out of the house in a week, or if she ain't somebody else will. You mean yourself. I'm only a servant, ma'am, and it don't signify about me. You're a fool. That's true, ma'am, I don't doubt. I've sent for her, and we must do the best we can. Perhaps she won't come. She'll come fast enough, said Martha. But whether she'll stay, that's a different thing. I don't see how it's possible she's to stay. I'm told they're feckless idle young ladies. She'll be so soft, ma'am, and you. Well, what of me? You'll be so hard, ma'am. I'm not a bit harder than you, Martha, nor yet so hard. I'll do my duty, or at least I'll try. Now you know all about it, and you may go away. There's the letter, and I mean to go out and post it myself. END OF CHAPTER VII. Miss Stanbury carried her letter all the way to the chief post office in the city, having no faith whatever in those little subsidiary receiving-houses which are established in different parts of the city. As for the iron pillar boxes which had been erected of late years for the receipt of letters, one of which, a most hateful thing to her, stood almost close to her own hall door, she had not the faintest belief that any letter put into one of them would ever reach its destination. She could not understand why people should not walk with their letters to a respectable post office, instead of chucking them into an iron stump, as she called it, out in the middle of the street with nobody to look after it. Positive orders had been given that no letter from her house should ever be put into the iron post. Her epistle to her sister-in-law, of whom she never spoke otherwise than as Mrs. Stanbury, was as follows. The Close, Exeter, 22 April, 1860 Blank. My dear sister Stanbury. Your son, Hugh, has taken to courses of which I do not approve, and therefore I have put an end to my connection with him. I shall be happy to entertain your daughter Dorothy in my house, if you and she approve of such a plan. Should you agree to this, she will be welcome to receive you or her sister, not her brother, in my house any Wednesday morning between half-past nine and half-past twelve. I will endeavour to make my house pleasant to her and useful, and will make her an allowance of twenty-five pounds per annum for her clothes, as long as she may remain with me. I shall expect her to be regular at meals, to be constant in going to church, and not to read modern novels. I intend the arrangement to be permanent, but, of course, I must retain the power of closing it if, and when, I shall see fit. This permanence must be contingent on my life. I have no power of providing for any one after my death. Yours truly, Jemima Stanbury. I hope the young lady does not have any false hair about her. When this note was received at Nuncombe Putney, the amazement which it occasioned was extreme. Mrs. Stanbury, the widow of the late vicar, lived in a little morsel of a cottage on the outskirts of the village, with her two daughters, Priscilla and Dorothy. Their whole income, out of which it was necessary that they should pay rent for their cottage, was less than seventy pounds per annum. During the last few months, a five-pound note now and again had found its way to Nuncombe Putney out of the coffers of the D.R., but the ladies there were most unwilling to be so relieved, thinking that their brother's career was of infinitely more importance than their comforts or even than their living. They were very poor, but they were accustomed to poverty. The elder sister was older than Hugh, but Dorothy, the younger, to whom this strange invitation was now made, was two years younger than her brother, and was now nearly twenty-six. How they had lived, and dressed themselves, and had continued to be called ladies by the inhabitants of the village, was, and is, and will be, a mystery to those who have had the spending of much larger incomes, but have still been always poor. But they had lived, had gone to church every Sunday in decent apparel, and had kept up friendly relations with the family of the present vicar, and with one or two other neighbours. When the letter had been read first by the mother and then allowed, and then by each of them separately, in the little sitting-room in the cottage, there was silence among them, for neither of them desired to be the first to express an opinion. Nothing could be more natural than the proposed arrangement, had it not been made unnatural by a quarrel existing nearly throughout the whole life of the person most nearly concerned. Priscilla, the elder daughter, was the one of the family who was generally the ruler, and she, at last, expressed an opinion adverse to the arrangement. My dear, you would never be able to bear it, said Priscilla. I suppose not, said Mrs. Stanbury, plaintively. I could try, said Dorothy. My dear, you don't know that woman, said Priscilla. Of course I don't know her, said Dorothy. She has always been very good to Hugh, said Mrs. Stanbury. I don't think she has been good to him at all, said Priscilla. But think what a saving it would be, said Dorothy, and I could send home half of what Aunt Stanbury says she would give me. You must not think of that, said Priscilla, because she expects you to be dressed. I should like to try, she said before the morning was over, if you and Mama don't think it would be wrong. The conference that day ended in a written request to Aunt Stanbury that a week might be allowed for consideration, the letter being written by Priscilla but signed with her mother's name, and with a very long epistle to Hugh in which each of the ladies took apart, and in which advice and decision were demanded. It was very evident to Hugh that his mother and Dorothy were for compliance, and that Priscilla was for refusal. But he never doubted for a moment. Of course she will go, he said in his answer to Priscilla, and she must understand that Aunt Stanbury is a most excellent woman, as true as the son, thoroughly honest, with no fault but this, that she likes her own way. Of course Dolly can go back again if she finds the house too hard for her. Then he sent another five-pound note, observing that Dolly's journey to Exeter would cost money, and that her wardrobe would want some improvement. I'm very glad that it isn't me, said Priscilla, who, however, did not attempt to oppose the decision of the man of the family. Dorothy was greatly gratified by the excitement of the proposed change in her life, and the following letter, the product of the wisdom of the family, was written by Mrs. Stanbury. Nuncomputney, 1 May, 1860 Blank, my dear sister Stanbury, we are all very thankful for the kindness of your offer, which my daughter Dorothy will accept with feelings of affectionate gratitude. I think you will find her docile, good-tempered, and amiable, but a mother, of course, speaks well of her own child. She will endeavor to comply with your wishes in all things reasonable. She, of course, understands that should the arrangement not suit, she will come back home on the expression of your wish that it should be so, and she will, of course, do the same if she should find that living in Exeter does not suit herself. This sentence was inserted at the insistence of Priscilla, after much urgent expostulation. Dorothy will be ready to go to you on any day you may fix after the seventh of this month. Give me to remain your affectionate sister-in-law, P. Stanbury. She's going to come, said Miss Stanbury to Martha, holding the letter in her hand. I never doubted her coming, ma'am, said Martha, and I mean her to stay, unless it's her own fault. She'll have the small room upstairs looking out front next to mine, and you must go and fetch her. Go and fetch her, ma'am. Yes, if you won't, I must. She ain't a child, ma'am. She's twenty-five years old, and surely she can come to Exeter by herself, with a railroad all the way from Lesborough. There's no place a young woman is insulted in so bad as those railway carriages, and I won't have her come by herself. If she is to live with me, she shall begin decently at any rate. Martha argued the matter, but was, of course, beaten, and on the day fixed started early in the morning for Nuncomputney, and returned in the afternoon to the close with her charge. At the time that she had reached the house she had in some degree reconciled herself to the dangerous step that her mistress had taken, partly by perceiving that in face Dorothy Stanbury was very like her brother Hugh, and partly, perhaps, by finding that the young woman's manner to herself was both gentle and sprightly. She knew well that gentleness alone, without some backbone of strength under it, would not long succeed with Miss Stanbury. As far as I can judge, ma'am, she's a sweet young lady, said Martha, when she reported her arrival to her mistress, who had retired upstairs to her own room, in order that she might thus hear a word of tidings from her lieutenant before she showed herself on the field of action. Sweet! I hate your sweets, said Miss Stanbury. Then why did you send for her, ma'am? Because I was an old fool, but I must go down and receive her, I suppose. Then Miss Stanbury went down, almost trembling as she went. The matter to her was one of vital importance. She was going to change the whole tenor of her life for the sake, as she told herself, of doing her duty by a relative whom she did not even know. But we may fairly suppose that there had in truth been a feeling beyond that, which taught her to desire to have someone near her to whom she might not only do her duty as guardian, but whom she might also love. She had tried this with her nephew, but her nephew had been too strong for her, too far from her, too unlike to herself. When he came to see her he had smoked a short pipe which had been shocking to her, and he had spoken of reform and trades unions and meetings in the parks as though they had not been devil's ordinances. And he was very shy of going to church, utterly refusing to be taken there twice on the same Sunday, and he had told his aunt that owing to a peculiar and unfortunate weakness in his constitution he could not listen to the reading of sermons, and then she was almost certain that he had once kissed one of the maids. She had found it impossible to manage him in any way, and when he positively declared himself as permanently devoted to the degrading iniquities of penny newspapers she had thought it best to cast him off altogether. Now, thus late in life, she was going to make another venture, to try an altogether new mode of living in order, as she said to herself, that she might be of some use to somebody, but, no doubt, with a further unexpressed hope in her bosom, that the solitude of her life might be relieved by the companionship of someone whom she might love. She had arrayed herself in a clean cap and her evening gown, and she went downstairs looking sternly with a fully developed idea that she must initiate her new duties by assuming a mastery at once. But inwardly she trembled, and was intensely anxious as to the first appearance of her niece. Of course there would be a little morsel of a bonnet. She hated those vile patches, dirty, dirty, flat dobs of millinery as she called them, but they had become too general for her to refuse admittance for such a thing within her doors. But a chignon, a bandbox behind the noddle, she would not endure. And then there were other details of feminine gear, which shall not be specified as to which she was painfully anxious, almost forgetting in her anxiety that the dress of this young woman whom she was about to see must have ever been regulated by the closest possible economy. The first thing she saw on entering the room was a dark straw hat, a straw hat with a strong penthouse flap to it, and her heart was immediately softened. My dear, she said, I am glad to see you. Dorothy, who, on her part, was trembling also, whose position was one to justify most intense anxiety, murmured some reply. Take off your hat, said the aunt, and let me give you a kiss. The hat was taken off, and the kiss was given. There was certainly no chignon there. Dorothy Stanbury was light-haired, with almost flaxen ringlets. Worn after the old-fashioned way which we used to think so pretty when we were young, she had very soft gray eyes, which ever seemed to beseech you to do something when they looked at you, and her mouth was a beseeching mouth. There are women who, even amidst their strongest efforts at giving assistance to others, always look as though they were asking aid themselves, and such a one was Dorothy Stanbury. Her complexion was pale, but there was always present in it a tint of pink running here and there, changing with every word she spoke, changing indeed with every pulse of her heart. Nothing ever was softer than her cheek, but her hands were thin and hard, and almost fibrous with the working of the thread upon them. She was rather tall than otherwise, but that extreme look of feminine dependence which always accompanied her took away something even from the appearance of her height. These are all real at any rate, said her aunt, taking hold of the curls, and won't be hurt by a little cold water. Dorothy smiled but said nothing, and was then taken up to her bedroom. Indeed, when the aunt and niece sat down to dinner together, Dorothy had hardly spoken, but Miss Stanbury had spoken, and things upon the whole had gone very well. I hope you like roast chicken, my dear, said Miss Stanbury. Oh, thank you! And bread sauce? Jane, I do hope the bread sauce is hot. If the reader thinks that Miss Stanbury was indifferent to considerations of the table, the reader is altogether ignorant of Miss Stanbury's character. When Miss Stanbury gave her niece the liver wing, and picked out from the attendant sausages one that had been well browned and properly broken in the frying, she meant to do a real kindness. And now, my dear, there are mashed potatoes and bread sauce, as for green vegetables, I don't know what has become of them. They tell me I may have green peas from France at a shilling accord, but if I can't have English green peas I won't have any. Miss Stanbury was standing up as she said this, as she always did on such occasions, liking to have a full mastery over the dish. I hope you like it, my dear. Everything is so very nice! That's right! I like to see a young woman with an appetite. Remember that God sends the good things for us to eat, and as long as we don't take more than our share, and give away something to those who haven't a fair share of their own, I, for one, think it quite right to enjoy my victuals. Jane, this bread sauce isn't hot. It never is hot. Don't tell me I know what hot is. Dorothy thought that her aunt was very angry, but Jane knew Miss Stanbury better, and bore the scolding without shaking in her shoes. And now, my dear, you must take a glass of port wine. It will do you good after your journey. Dorothy attempted to explain that she never did drink any wine, but her aunt talked down her scruples at once. One glass of port wine never did anybody any harm, and as there is port wine, it must be intended that somebody should drink it. Miss Stanbury, as she sipped hers out very slowly, seemed to enjoy it very much. Although May had come, there was a fire in the grate, and she sat with her toes on the fender, and her silk dress folded up above her knees. She sat quite silent in this position for a quarter of an hour, every now and then raising her glass to her lips. Dorothy sat silent also. To her, in the newness of her condition, speech was impossible. I think it will do, said Miss Stanbury at last. As Dorothy had no idea what would do, she could make no reply to this. I'm sure it will do, said Miss Stanbury, after another short interval. You're as like my poor sister as two eggs. You don't have headaches, do you? Dorothy said that she was not ordinarily affected in that way. When girls have headaches, it comes from tight lacing and not walking enough, and carrying all manner of nasty smells about with them. I know what headaches mean. How was a woman not to have a headache, when she carries a thing on the back of her pole as big as a gardener's wheel-barrow? Come, it's a fine evening, and we'll go out and look at the towers. You've never even seen them yet, I suppose. So they went out, and finding the verger at the cathedral door, he being a great friend of Miss Stanbury, they walked up and down the aisles, and Dorothy was instructed as to what would be expected from her in regard to the outward forms of religion. She was to go to the cathedral service on the morning of every weekday, and on Sundays in the afternoon. On Sunday mornings she was to attend the little church of St. Margaret. On Sunday evenings it was the practice of Miss Stanbury to read a sermon in the dining-room to all of whom her household consisted. Did Dorothy like daily services? Dorothy, who was more patient than her brother, and whose life had been much less energetic, said that she had no objection to going to church every day when there was not too much to do. There need never be too much to do to attend the Lord's house, said Miss Stanbury, somewhat angrily. Only if you've got to make the beds, said Dorothy. My dear, I beg your pardon, said Miss Stanbury. I beg your pardon heartily. I'm a thoughtless old woman, I know. Never mind. Now we'll go in. Later in the evening when she gave her niece a candlestick to go to bed, she repeated what she had said before. It'll do very well, my dear. I'm sure it'll do. But if you read in bed, either night or morning, I'll never forgive you. This last caution was uttered with so much energy that Dorothy gave a little jump as she promised obedience. CHAPTER IX. OF HE KNEW HE WAS RIGHT. This Slipper-Vox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Ariel Lipshaw. He knew he was right by Anthony Trollope. CHAPTER IX. Showing how the quarrel progressed again. On one Sunday morning, when the month of May was nearly over, Hugh Stanbury met Colonel Osbourne in Curson Street, not many yards from Trevelyan's door. Colonel Osbourne had just come from the house, and Stanbury was going to it. Hugh had not spoken to Osbourne since the day, now a fortnight since, on which both of them had witnessed the scene in the park. But on that occasion they had been left together, and it had been impossible for them not to say a few words about their mutual friends. Osbourne had expressed his sorrow that there should be any misunderstanding, and had called Trevelyan a confounded fool. Stanbury had suggested that there was something in it which they too probably did not understand, and that matters would be sure to come all right. The truth is Trevelyan bullies her, said Osbourne, and if he goes on with that he'll be sure to get the worst of it. Now on this present occasion Stanbury asked whether he would find the ladies at home. Yes, they are both there, said Osbourne, Trevelyan has just gone out in a huff, she'll never be able to go on living with him. Anybody can see that with half an eye. Then he had passed on, and Hugh Stanbury knocked at the door. He was shown up into the drawing-room, and found both the sisters there, but he could see that Mrs. Trevelyan had been in tears. The avowed purpose of his visit, that is, the purpose which he had avowed to himself, was to talk about his sister Dorothy. He had told Miss Rowley, while walking in the park with her, how Dorothy had been invited over to Exeter by her aunt, and how he had counseled his sister to accept the invitation. Nora had expressed herself very interested as to Dorothy's fate, and had said how much she wished that she knew Dorothy. We all understand how sweet it is, when two such persons as Hugh Stanbury and Nora Rowley cannot speak of their love for each other, to say these tender things in regard to someone else. Nora had been quite anxious to know how Dorothy had been received by that old conservative warrior, as Hugh Stanbury had called his aunt, and Hugh had now come to Curson Street with a letter from Dorothy in his pocket. But when he saw that there had been some cause for trouble, he hardly knew how to introduce his subject. Trevelyan is not at home, he asked. No, said Emily, with her face turned away. He went out and left us a quarter of an hour since. Did you meet Colonel Osborne? I was speaking to him in the street, not a moment since. As he answered, he could see that Nora was making some sign to her sister. Nora was most anxious that Emily should not speak of what had just occurred, but her signs were all thrown away. Somebody must tell him, said Mrs. Trevelyan, and I don't know who can do so better than so old a friend as Mr. Stanbury. Tell what, and to whom, he asked. No, no, no, said Nora. Then I must tell him myself, said she, that is all. As for standing this kind of life, it is out of the question. I should either destroy myself or go mad. If I could do any good, I should be so happy, said Stanbury. Nobody can do any good between a man and wife, said Nora. Then Mrs. Trevelyan began to tell her story, putting aside with an impatient motion of her hands the efforts which her sister made to stop her. She was very angry, and as she told it, standing up, all trace of sobbing soon disappeared from her voice. The fact is, she said, he does not know his own mind, or what to fear or what not to fear. He told me that I was never to see Colonel Osborne again. What is the use, Emily, of your repeating that to Mr. Stanbury? Why should I not repeat it? Colonel Osborne is Papa's oldest friend, and mine too. He is a man I like very much, who is a real friend to me. As he is old enough to be my father, one would have thought that my husband could have found no objection. I don't know much about his age, said Stanbury. It does make a difference. It must make a difference. I should not think of becoming so intimate with a younger man, but, however, when my husband told me that I was to see him no more, though the insult nearly killed me, I determined to obey him. An order was given that Colonel Osborne should not be admitted. You may imagine how painful it was, but it was given, and I was prepared to bear it. But he had been lunching with you on that Sunday. Yes, that is just it. As soon as it was given, Lewis would rescind it, because he was ashamed of what he had done. He was so jealous that he did not want me to see the man, and yet he was so afraid that it should be known that he ordered me to see him. He ordered him into the house at last, and I—I went away upstairs. That was on the Sunday that we met you in the park, asked Stanbury. What is the use of going back to all that, said Nora? Then I met him by chance in the park, continued Mrs. Trevelyan, and because he said a word which I knew would anger my husband, I left him abruptly. Since that my husband has begged that things might go on as they were before. He could not bear that Colonel Osborne himself should think that he was jealous. Well, I gave way, and the man has been here as before. And now there has been a scene which has been disgraceful to us all. I cannot stand it, and I won't. If he does not behave himself with more manliness, I will leave him. But what can I do? Nothing, Mr. Stanbury, said Nora. Yes, you can do this. You can go to him from me, and can tell him that I have chosen you as a messenger because you are his friend. You can tell him that I am willing to obey him in anything. If he chooses, I will consent that Colonel Osborne shall be asked never to come into my presence again. It will be very absurd, but if he chooses I will consent. Or I will let things go on as they are, and continue to receive my father's old friend when he comes. But if I do, I will not put up with an imputation on my conduct because he does not like the way in which the gentleman thinks fit to address me. I take upon myself to say that if any man alive spoke to me as he ought not to speak, I should know how to resent it myself. But I cannot fly into a passion with an old gentleman for calling me by my Christian name when he has done so habitually for years. From all this it will appear that the great godsend of a rich marriage, with all manner of attendant comforts, which had come in the way of the Rowley family as they were living at the Mandarin's, had not turned out to be an unmixed blessing. In the matter of the quarrel, as it had hitherto progressed, the husband had perhaps been more in the wrong than his wife. But the wife, in spite of all her promises of perfect obedience, had proved herself to be a woman very hard to manage. Had she been earnest in her desire to please her lord and master in this matter of Colonel Osborne's visits, to please him even after he had so vacillated in his own behests, she might probably have so received the man as to have quelled all feeling of jealousy in her husband's bosom. But instead of doing so, she had told herself that as she was innocent, and as her innocence had been acknowledged, and as she had been specially instructed to receive this man whom she had before been specially instructed not to receive, she would now fall back exactly into her old manner with him. She had told Colonel Osborne never to allude to that meeting in the park, and to ask no creature as to what had occasioned her conduct on that Sunday, thus having a mystery with him, which of course he understood as well as she did. And then she had again taken to writing notes to him and receiving notes from him, none of which she showed to her husband. She was more intimate with him than ever, and yet she hardly ever mentioned his name to her husband. Trevelyan acknowledging to himself that he had done no good by his former interference, feeling that he had put himself in the wrong on that occasion, and that his wife had got the better of him, had borne with all this with soreness and a moody savageness of general conduct, but still without further words of anger with reference to the man himself. But now, on this Sunday, when his wife had been closeted with Colonel Osborne in the back-drawing-room, leaving him with his sister in law, his temper had become too hot for him, and he had suddenly left the house, declaring that he would not walk with the two women on that day. Why not, Louis, his wife had said, coming up to him? Never mind why not, but I shall not, he had answered, and then he left the room. What is the matter with him, Colonel Osborne had asked? It is impossible to say what is the matter with him, Mrs. Trevelyan had replied. After that she had at once gone upstairs to her child, telling herself that she was doing all that the strictest propriety could require in leaving the man's society as soon as her husband was gone. Then there was an awkward minute or two between Nora and Colonel Osborne, and he took his leave. Stanbury at last promised that he would see Trevelyan, repeating, however, very frequently that often used assertion, that no task is so hopeless as that of interfering between a man and his wife. By the last he promised, and undertook to look for Trevelyan at the acrobats on that afternoon, at last he got a moment in which to produce the letter from his sister, and was able to turn the conversation for a few minutes to his own affairs. Dorothy's letter was read and discussed by both the ladies with much zeal. It is quite a strange world to me, said Dorothy, but I am beginning to find myself more at my ease than I was at first. Aunt Stanbury is very good-natured, and when I know what she wants, I think I shall be able to please her. What you said of her disposition is not so bad to me, as, of course, a girl in my position does not expect to have her own way. Why shouldn't she have her share of her own way as well as anybody else, said Mrs. Trevelyan? Poor Dorothy would never want to have her own way, said Hugh. She ought to want it, said Mrs. Trevelyan. She has spared enough to turn if she's trodden on, said Hugh. That's more than what most women have, said Mrs. Trevelyan. Then he went on with the letter. She is very generous, and has given me six pounds five shillings in advance of my allowance. When I said I would send part of it home to Mama, she seemed to be angry, and said that she wanted me always to look nice about my clothes. She told me afterwards to do as I pleased, and that I might try my own way for the first quarter, so I was frightened and only sent thirty shillings. He went out the other evening to drink tea with Mrs. McHugh, an old lady whose husband was once Dean. I had to go, and it was all very nice. There were a great many clergymen there, but many of them were young men. Poor Dorothy, exclaimed Nora. One of them was the minor canon who chants the service every morning. He is a bachelor. Then there is a hope for her, said Nora. And he always talks a little as though he were singing the litany. That's very bad, said Nora, fancy having a husband to sing the litany to you always. Better than that, perhaps, than having him always singing something else, said Mrs. Trevelyan. It was decided between them that Dorothy's state might on the whole be considered as flourishing, but that Hugh was bound as a brother to go down to Exeter and look after her. He explained, however, that he was expressly debarred from calling on his sister, even between the hours of half-past nine and half-past twelve on Wednesday mornings, and that he could not see her at all, unless he did so surreptitiously. If I were you I would see my sister in spite of all the old varagos in Exeter, said Mrs. Trevelyan. I have no idea of anybody taking so much upon themselves. You must remember, Mrs. Trevelyan, that she has taken upon herself much also in the way of kindness, in doing what perhaps I ought to call charity. I wonder what I should have been doing now if it were not for my Aunt Stanbury. He took his leave, and went at once from Curson Street to Trevelyan's club, and found that Trevelyan had not been there as yet. In another hour he called again, and was about to give it up, when he met the man whom he was seeking on the steps. I was looking for you, he said. Well, here I am. It was impossible not to see in the look of Trevelyan's face, and not to hear in the tone of his voice, that he was, at the moment, in an angry and unhappy frame of mind. He did not move as though he were willing to accompany his friend, and seemed almost to know beforehand that the approaching interview was to be an unpleasant one. I want to speak to you, and perhaps you wouldn't mind taking a turn with me, said Stanbury. But Trevelyan objected to this, and led the way into the club-waiting-room. A club-waiting-room is always a gloomy, unpromising place for a confidential conversation, and so Stanbury felt it to be on the present occasion. But he had no alternative. There they were together, and he must do as he had promised. Trevelyan kept on his hat, and did not sit down, and looked very gloomy. Stanbury, having to commence without any assistance from outward auxiliaries, almost forgot what it was that he had promised to do. I have just come from Curson Street, he said. Well, at least I was there about two hours ago. It doesn't matter, I suppose, whether it was two hours or two minutes, said Trevelyan. Not in the least. The fact is this. I happened to come upon the two girls there when they were very unhappy, and your wife asked me to come and say a word or two to you. Was Colonel Osborn there? No, I had met him in the street a minute or two before. Well now, look here, Stanbury. If you'll take my advice, you'll keep your hands out of this. It is not but that I regard you as being as good a friend as I have in the world. But to own the truth I cannot put up with interference between myself and my wife. Of course you understand that I only come as a messenger. You had better not be a messenger in such a cause, if she has anything to say she can say it to myself. Am I to understand that you will not listen to me? I had rather not. I think you are wrong, said Stanbury. In that matter you must allow me to judge for myself. I can easily understand that a young woman like her, especially with her sister to back her, should induce such a one as you to take her part. I am taking nobody's part. You wrong your wife and you especially wrong Miss Rowley. If you please, Stanbury, we will say nothing more about it. This Trevelyan said, holding the door of the room half open in his hand, so that the other was obliged to pass out through it. Good evening, said Stanbury, with much anger. Good evening, said Trevelyan, with an assumption of indifference. Mastery went away in absolute wrath, though the trouble which he had had in the interview was much less than he had anticipated, and the result quite as favourable. He had known that no good would come of his visit, and yet he was now full of anger against Trevelyan and had become a partisan in the matter which was exactly that which he had resolutely determined that he would not become. I believe that no woman on earth could live with him, he said to himself as he walked away. It was always the same with him, a desire for mastery which he did not know how to use when he had obtained it. If it were Nora, instead of the other sister, he would break her sweetheart within a month. Trevelyan dined at his club, and hardly spoke a word to anyone during the evening. At about eleven he started to walk home, but went by no means straight thither, taking a long turn through St. James's Park and by Pimlico. It was necessary that he should make up his mind as to what he would do. He had sternly refused the interference of a friend, and he must be prepared to act on his own responsibility. He knew well that he could not begin again with his wife on the next day as though nothing had happened. Standbury's visit to him, if it had done nothing else, had made this impossible. He determined that he would not go to her room to-night, but would see her as early as possible in the morning, and would then talk to her with all the wisdom of which he was master. How many husbands have come to the same resolution, and how few of them have found the words of wisdom to be efficacious? CHAPTER X HARD WORDS It is to be feared that men in general do not regret as they should do any temporary ill feeling or irritating jealousy between husbands and wives of which they themselves have been the cause. The author is not speaking now of actual love-makings, of intrigues and devilish villainy, either perpetrated or imagined, but rather of those passing gusts of short-lived and unfounded suspicion to which, as to other accidents, very well-regulated families may occasionally be liable. When such suspicion rises in the bosom of a wife, some woman intervening or being believed to intervene between her and the man who is her own, that woman who has intervened or been supposed to intervene will either glory in her position or bewail it bitterly according to the circumstances of the case. We will charitably suppose that in a great majority of such instances she will bewail it. But when such painful jealous doubts annoy the husband, the man who is in the way will almost always feel himself justified in extracting a slightly pleasurable sensation from the transaction. He will say to himself probably, unconsciously indeed and with no formed words, that the husband is an ass, an ass if he be in a Twitter either for that which he has kept or for that which he has been unable to keep, that the lady has shown a good deal of appreciation, and that he himself is, is, is quite a captain bold of Halifax. All the while he will not have the slightest intention of wronging the husband's honor, and will have received no greater favor from the intimacy accorded to him than the privilege of running on one day to Marshall and Snellgroves, the Haberdashers, and on another to Hancox, the jewelers. If he be allowed to buy a present or two or to pay a few shillings here or there, he has achieved much. Terrible things now and again do occur, even here in England, but women with us are slow to burn their household gods. It happens, however, occasionally, as we are all aware, that the outward garments of a domestic deity will be a little scorched, and when this occurs, the man who is the interloper will generally find a gentle consolation in his position, let its interest be ever so flaccid and unreal, and its troubles in running about and the like ever so considerable and time-destructive. It was so certainly with Colonel Osborn when he became aware that his intimacy with Mrs. Trevelyan had caused her husband uneasiness. He was not especially a vicious man, and had now, as we know, reached a time of life when such vice as that in question might be supposed to have lost its charm for him. A gentleman over fifty, popular in London, with a seat in Parliament, fond of good dinners, and possessed of everything which the world has to give, could hardly have wished to run away with his neighbour's wife or to have destroyed the happiness of his old friend's daughter. Such wickedness had never come into his head, but he had a certain pleasure in being the confidential friend of a very pretty woman, and when he heard that that pretty woman's husband was jealous, the pleasure was enhanced, rather than otherwise. On that Sunday, as he had left the house in Curson Street, he had told St. Brey that Trevelyan had just gone off in a huff, which was true enough, and he had walked from thence down Clarge's Street, and across Piccadilly to St. James's Street, with a jauntyer step than usual, because he was aware that he himself had been the occasion of that trouble. This was very wrong, but there is reason to believe that many such men as Colonel Osborne, who are bachelors at fifty, are equally malicious. He thought a good deal about it on that evening, and was still thinking about it on the following morning. He had promised to go up to Curson Street on the Monday, really on some most trivial mission, on a matter of business which no man could have taken in hand, whose time was of the slightest value to himself or anyone else. But now that mission assumed an importance in his eyes, and seemed to require either a special observance or a special excuse. There was no real reason why he should not have stayed away from Curson Street for the next fortnight, and had he done so he need have made no excuse to Mrs. Trevelyan when he met her. But the opportunity for a little excitement was not to be missed, and instead of going, he wrote to her the following note. Albany Monday Dear Emily What was it all about yesterday? I was to have come up with the words of that opera, but perhaps it will be better to send it. If it be not wicked, do tell me whether I am to consider myself as a banished man. I thought that our little meetings were so innocent and so pleasant. The green-eyed monster is, of all monsters, the most monstrous and the most unreasonable. Pray let me have a line, if it be not forbidden. Yours always heartily, F.O. Putting aside all joking, I beg you to remember that I consider myself always entitled to be regarded by you as your most sincere friend. When this was brought to Mrs. Trevelyan about twelve o'clock in the day, she had already undergone the inflection of those words of wisdom which her husband had prepared for her, and which were threatened at the close of the last chapter. Her husband had come up to her while she was yet in her bedroom, and had striven hard to prevail against her, but his success had been very doubtful. In regard to the number of words Mrs. Trevelyan certainly had had the best of it. As far as any understanding one of another was concerned, the conversation had been useless. She believed herself to be injured and aggrieved, and would continue so to assert, let him implore her to listen to him as loudly as he might. Yes, I will listen, and I will obey you, she had said, but I will not endure such insult without telling you that I feel them. Then he had left her fully conscious that he had failed, and went forth out of his house into the city, to his club, to wander about the streets, not knowing what he had best do to bring back that state of tranquility at home which he felt to be so desirable. Mrs. Trevelyan was alone when Colonel Osborne's note was brought to her, and was at that moment struggling with herself in anger against her husband. If he laid any command upon her she would execute it, but she would never cease to tell him that he had ill-used her. She would din it into his ears, let him come to her as often as he might with his wise words, wise words. And what was the use of wise words when a man was such a fool in nature? And as for Colonel Osborne, she would see him if he came to her three times a day, unless her husband gave some clearly intelligible order to the contrary. She was fortifying her mind with this resolution when Colonel Osborne's letter was brought to her. She asked whether any servant was waiting for an answer. No, the servant who had left it had gone at once. She read the note, and sat working with it before her for a quarter of an hour, and then walked over to her desk and answered it. My dear Colonel Osborne, it will be best to say nothing whatever about the occurrence of yesterday, and if possible not to think of it. As far as I am concerned I wish for no change except that people should be more reasonable. You can call, of course, whenever you please, and I am very grateful for your expression of friendship. Yours most sincerely, Emily Trevelyan. Thanks for the words of the opera. When she had written this, being determined that all should be open and above-board, she put a penny stamp on the envelope, and desired that the letter should be posted. But she destroyed that which she had received from Colonel Osborne. In all things she would act as she would have done if her husband had not been so foolish, and there could have been no reason why she should have kept so unimportant a communication. In the course of the day Trevelyan passed through the hall to the room which he himself was accustomed to occupy behind the parlor, and as he did so saw the note lying ready to be posted, took it up, and read the address. He held it for a moment in his hand, then replaced it on the hall table and passed on. When he reached his own table he sat down hurriedly, and took up in his hand some review that was lying ready for him to read. But he was quite unable to fix his mind on the words before him. He had spoken to his wife on that morning in the strongest language he could use as to the unseemliness of her intimacy with Colonel Osborne, and then the first thing she had done when his back was turned was to write to this very Colonel Osborne and tell him, no doubt, what had occurred between her and her husband. He sat thinking of it all for many minutes. He would probably have declared himself that he had thought of it for an hour as he sat there. Then he got up, went upstairs, and walked slowly into the drawing room. There he found his wife sitting with her sister. "'Nora,' he said, "'I want to speak to Emily. Will you forgive me if I ask you to leave us for a few minutes?' Nora, with an anxious look at Emily, got up and left the room. "'Why do you send her away?' said Mrs. Trevelyan. "'Because I wish to be alone with you for a few minutes. Since what I said to you this morning you have written to Colonel Osborne.' "'Yes, I have. I do not know how you have found it out, but I suppose you keep a watch on me. I keep no watch on you. As I came into the house I saw your letter lying in the hall. "'Very well. You could have read it if you pleased.' "'Emily, this matter is becoming very serious, and I strongly advise you to be on your guard in what you say. I will bear much for you and much for our boy, but I will not bear to have my name made a reproach. "'Sir, if you think your name is shamed by me, we had better part,' said Mrs. Trevelyan, rising from her chair and confronting him with a look before which his own almost quailed. "'It may be that we had better part,' he said slowly, but in the first place I wish you to tell me what were the contents of that letter. "'If it was there when you came in, no doubt it is there still. Go and look at it.' "'That is no answer to me. I have desired you to tell me what are its contents. I shall not tell you. I will not demean myself by repeating anything so insignificant in my own justification. If you suspect me of writing what I should not write, you will suspect me also of lying to conceal it. Have you heard from Colonel Osborne this morning? I have. And where is his letter? I have destroyed it.' Again he paused, trying to think what he had better do, trying to be calm, and she stood still opposite to him, confronting him with the scorn of her bright angry eyes. Of course he was not calm. He was the very reverse of calm. And you refused to tell me what you wrote, he said. The letter is there, she answered, pointing away towards the door. If you want to play the spy, go and look at it for yourself. Do you call me a spy? And what have you called me? Because you are a husband, is the privilege of a tupperation to be all on your side? It is impossible that I should put up with this, he said. Quite impossible. This would kill me. Anything is better than this. My present orders to you are not to see Colonel Osborne, not to write to him or have any communication with him, and to put under cover to me, unopened, any letter that may come from him. I shall expect your implicit obedience to these orders. Well go on. Have I your promise? No, no, you have no promise. I will make no promise exacted from me in so disgraceful a manner. You refuse to obey me. I will refuse nothing, and will promise nothing. Then we must part, that is all. I will take care that you shall hear from me before tomorrow morning. So saying, he left the room, and passing through the hall saw that the letter had been taken away. CHAPTER 11 Lady Milbora as Ambassador Of course I know you are right, said Nora to her sister, right as far as Colonel Osborne is concerned, but nevertheless you ought to give way. And be trampled upon, said Mrs. Trevelyan. Yes, and be trampled upon, if he should trample on you, which however he is the last man in the world to do. And to endure any insults and any names. You yourself, you would be a grizzelda, I suppose. I don't want to talk about myself, said Nora, Nora about grizzelda. But I know that however unreasonable it may seem, you had better give way to him now and tell him what there was in the note to Colonel Osborne. Never. He has ordered me not to see him or to write to him or to open his letters, having, mind you, ordered just the reverse a day or two before, and I will obey him, absurd as it is I will obey him. But as for submitting to him, and letting him suppose that I think he is right, never. I should be lying to him then, and I will never lie to him. He has said that we must part, and I suppose it will be better so. How can a woman live with a man that suspects her? He cannot take my baby from me. There were many such conversations as the above between the two sisters, before Mrs. Trevelyan received from her husband the communication with which she had been threatened. And Nora, acting on her own judgment in the matter, made an attempt to see Mr. Trevelyan, writing to him a pretty little note, and beseeching him to be kind to her. But he declined to see her, and the two women sat at home, with the baby between them, holding such pleasant conversations as that above narrated. When such tempests occur in a family, a woman will generally suffer the least during the thick of the tempest. While the hurricane is at the fiercest, she will be sustained by the most thorough conviction that the right is on her side, that she is aggrieved that there is nothing for her to acknowledge and no position that she needs to render. Whereas her husband will desire a compromise, even amidst the violence of the storm. But afterwards, when the wind has lulled, but while the heavens around are still all black and murky, then the woman's sufferings begin. When passion gives way to thought and memory, she feels the loneliness of her position, the loneliness and the possible degradation. It is all very well for a man to talk about his name and his honor, but it is the woman's honor and the woman's name that are, in truth, placed in jeopardy. Let the woman do what she will. The man can, in truth, show his face in the world, and, after a while, does show his face. But the woman may be compelled to veil hers, either by her own fault, or by his. Mrs. Trevelyan was now told that she was to be separated from her husband, and she did not, at any rate, believe that she had done any harm. But, if such separation did come, where could she live? What could she do? What position in the world would she possess? Would not her face be, in truth, veiled as effectually as those she had disgraced herself and her husband? And then there was that terrible question about the child. Mrs. Trevelyan had said a dozen times to her sister that her husband could not take the boy away from her. Nora, however, had never assented to this, partly from a conviction of her own ignorance, not knowing what might be the power of a husband in such a matter, and partly thinking that any argument would be good and fair by which she could induce her sister to avoid a catastrophe so terrible as that which was now threatened. I suppose he could take him, if he chose, she said at last. I don't believe he is wicked like that, said Mrs. Trevelyan. He would not wish to kill me. But he will say that he loves baby as well as you do. He will never take my child from me. He could never be so bad as that. And you will never be so bad as to leave him, said Nora after a pause. I will not believe that it can come to that. You know that he is good at heart, that nobody on earth loves you as he does. So they went on for two days, and on the evening the second day there came a letter from Trevelyan to his wife. They had neither of them seen him, although he had been in and out of the house. And on the afternoon of the Sunday a new grievance, a very terrible grievance, was added to those which Mrs. Trevelyan was made to bear. Her husband had told one of the servants in the house that Colonel Osborne was not to be admitted, and the servant to whom he had given this order was the cook. There is no reason why a cook should be less trustworthy in such a matter than any other servant, and in Mr. Trevelyan's household there was a reason why she should be more so, as she, and she alone, was what we generally call an old family domestic. She had lived with her master's mother, and had known her master when he was a boy. Looking about him, therefore, for someone in his house to whom he could speak, feeling that he was bound to convey the order through some medium, he called to him the ancient cook, and imparted to her so much of his trouble as was necessary to make the order intelligible. This he did with various ill-worded assurances to Mrs. Progers that there really was nothing amiss. But when Mrs. Trevelyan heard what had been done, which she did for Mrs. Progers herself, Mrs. Progers having been desired by her master to make the communication, she declared to her sister that everything was now over. She could never again live with a husband who had disgraced his wife by desiring her own cook to keep a guard upon her. Had the footman been instructed not to admit Colonel Asbourne, there would have been in such instruction some apparent adherence to the recognized usages of society. If you do not desire either your friend or your enemy to be received into your house, you communicate your desire to the person who has charge of the door, but the cook. And now, Nora, if it were you, do you mean to say that you would remain with him? asked Mrs. Trevelyan. Nora simply replied that anything under any circumstances would be better than a separation. On the morning of the third day there came the following letter. Wednesday, June 1st, twelve midnight. Dearest Emily, You will readily believe me when I say that I never in my life was so wretched as I have been during the last two days, that you and I should be in the same house together and not able to speak to each other is in itself a misery, but this is terribly enhanced by the dread lest the state of things should be made to continue. I want you to understand that I do not in the least suspect you of having as yet done anything wrong or having even said anything injurious, either to my position as your husband or to your position as my wife. But I cannot but perceive that you are allowing yourself to be entrapped into an intimacy with Colonel Osbourne, which, if it be not checked, will be destructive to my happiness and your own. After what had passed before you cannot have thought it right to receive letters from him which I was not to see, or to write letters to him of which I was not to know the contents. It must be manifest to you that such conduct on your part is wrong as judged by any of the rules by which a wife's conduct can be measured, and yet you have refused even to say that this shall be discontinued. I need hardly explain to you that if you persist in this refusal you and I cannot continue to live together as man and wife. All my hopes and prospects in life will be blighted by such a separation. I have not as yet been able to think what I should do in such wretched circumstances, and for you, as also for Nora, such a catastrophe would be most lamentable. Do therefore think of it well, and write me such a letter as may bring me back to your side. There is only one friend in the world to whom I could endure to talk of this great grief, and I have been to her and told her everything. You will know that I mean Lady Milbora. After much difficult conversation I have persuaded her to see you, and she will call in Curson Street to-morrow about twelve. There can be no kinder-hearted or more gentle woman in the world than Lady Milbora, nor did anyone ever have a warmer friend than both you and I have in her. Let me implore you, then, to listen to her, and be guided by her advice. Pray believe, dearest Emily, that I am now, as ever, your most affectionate husband, and that I have no wish so strong as that we should not be compelled to part. Louis Trevelyan This epistle was, in many respects, a very injudicious composition. Trevelyan should have trusted either to the eloquence of his own written words, or to that of the ambassador whom he was about to dispatch, but by sending both he weakened both. And then there were certain words in the letter which were odious to Mrs. Trevelyan, and must have been odious to any young wife. He had said that he did not, as yet, suspect her of having done anything wrong. And then, when he endeavored to explain to her that a separation would be very injurious to herself, he had coupled her sister with her, thus seeming to imply that the injury to be avoided was of a material kind. She had better do what he told her, as, otherwise, she and her sister would not have a roof over their head. That was the nature of the threat which his words were supposed to convey. The matter had become so serious that Mrs. Trevelyan, haughty and stiff-nacked as she was, did not dare to abstain from showing the letter to her sister. She had no other counselor at any rate till Lady Milbara came, and the weight of the battle was too great for her own unaided spirit. The letter had been written late at night, as was shown by the precision of the date, and had been brought to her early in the morning. At first she had determined to say nothing about it to Nora, but she was not strong enough to maintain such a purpose. She felt that she needed the poor consolation of discussing her wretchedness. She first declared that she would not see Lady Milbara. I hate her, and she knows that I hate her, and she ought not to have thought of coming, said Mrs. Trevelyan. But she was, at last, beaten out of this purpose by Nora's argument, that all the world would be against her if she refused to see her husband's old friend. And then, though the letter was an odious letter, as she declared a dozen times, she took some little comfort in the fact that not a word was said in it about the baby. She thought that if she could take her child with her into any separation she could endure it, and her husband would ultimately be conquered. Yes, I'll see her, she said, as they finished the discussion. As he chooses to send her I suppose I had better see her. But I don't think he does much to mend matters when he sends the woman whom he knows I dislike more than any other in all London. Exactly at twelve o'clock Lady Milbara's carriage was at the door. Trevelyan was in the house at the time, and heard the knock at the door. During those two or three days of absolute wretchedness, he spent most of his hours under the same roof with his wife and sister-in-law, though he spoke to neither of them. He had had his doubts as to the reception of Lady Milbara, and was, to tell the truth, listening with most anxious ear when her ladyship was announced. His wife, however, was not so bitterly contumatious as to refuse admittance to his friend, and he heard the rustle of the ponderous silk as the old woman was shown upstairs. When Lady Milbara reached the drawing-room, Mrs. Trevelyan was alone. I had better see her by myself, she had said to her sister. Nora had then left her, with one word of prayer that she would be as little defiant as possible. That must depend, Emily had said, with a little shake of her head. There had been a suggestion that the child should be with her, but the mother herself had rejected this. It would be stagey, she had said, and claptrap, there is nothing I hate so much as that. She was sitting, therefore, quite alone, and as stiff as a man in armor, when Lady Milbara was shown up to her. And Lady Milbara herself was not at all comfortable as she commenced the interview. She had prepared many wise words to be spoken, but was not so little ignorant of the character of the woman with whom she had to deal as to suppose that the wise words would get themselves spoken without interruption. She had known from the first that Mrs. Trevelyan would have much to say for herself, and the feeling that it would be so became stronger than ever as she entered the room. The ordinary feelings between the two ladies were cold and constrained, and then there was silence for a few moments when the Countess had taken her seat. Mrs. Trevelyan had quite determined that the enemy should fire the first shot. This is a very sad state of things, said the Countess. Yes, indeed, Lady Milbara. The saddest in the world, and so unnecessary, is it not? Very unnecessary, indeed, as I think. Yes, my dear, yes, but of course we must remember. Then Lady Milbara could not clearly bring to her mind what it was that she had to remember. The fact is, my dear, that all this kind of thing is too monstrous to be thought of. Goodness gracious me, two young people like you and Lewis who thoroughly love each other and who have got a baby, to think of being separated. Of course it is out of the question. You cannot suppose, Lady Milbara, that I want to be separated from my husband. Of course not. How should it be possible? The very idea is too shocking to be thought of. I declare I haven't slept since Lewis was talking to me about it. But my dear, you must remember, you know, that a husband has a right to expect some sort of submission from his wife. He has a right to expect obedience, Lady Milbara. Of course, that is all one wants, and I will obey Mr. Trevalian in anything reasonable. But my dear, who is to say what is reasonable, that, you see, is always the difficulty? You must allow that your husband is the person who ought to decide that. As he told you that I have refused to obey him, Lady Milbara. The Countess paused a moment before she replied. Well, yes, I think he has, she said. He asked you to do something about a letter, a letter to that Colonel Osborn who is a man, my dear, really to be very much afraid of, a man who has done a great deal of harm, and you declined. Now in a matter of that kind, of course the husband, Lady Milbara, I must ask you to listen to me. You have listened to Mr. Trevalian, and I must ask you to listen to me. I am sorry to trouble you, but as you have come here about this unpleasant business, you must forgive me if I insist upon it. Of course I will listen to you, my dear. I have never refused to obey my husband, and I do not refuse now. The gentleman of whom you have been speaking is an old friend of my father's, and has become my friend. Nevertheless, had Mr. Trevalian given me any plain order about him, I should have obeyed him. A wife does not feel that her chances of happiness are increased, when she finds that her husband suspects her of being too intimate with another man. It is a thing very hard to bear. But I would have endeavored to bear it, knowing how important it is for both our sakes, and more especially for our child. I would have made excuses, and would have endeavored to think that this horrid feeling on his part is nothing more than a short delusion. But my dear, I must ask you to hear me out, Lady Milbara. But when he tells me first that I am not to meet the man, and so instructs the servants, then tells me that I am to meet him and go on just as I was going before, and then again tells me that I am not to see him, and again instructs the servants, and above all, the cook, that Colonel Osborne is not to come into the house, then his obedience becomes rather difficult. Just say now that you will do what he wants, and then all will be right. I will not say so to you, Lady Milbara. It is not to you that I ought to say it. But as he has chosen to send you here I will explain to you that I have never disobeyed him. When I was free, in accordance with Mr. Trevelyan's wishes, to have what intercourse I pleased with Colonel Osborne, I received a note from that gentleman on a most trivial matter. I answered it as trivially. My husband saw my letter, closed, and questioned me about it. I told him that the letter was still there, and that if he chose to be a spy upon my actions he could open it and read it. My dear, how could you bring yourself to use the word spy to your husband? How could he bring himself to accuse me as he did? If he cares for me, let him come and beg my pardon for the insult he has offered me. Oh, Mrs. Trevelyan! Yes, that seems very wrong to you, who have not had to bear it. It is very easy for a stranger to take a husband's part and help to put down a poor woman who has been ill-used. I have done nothing wrong, nothing to be ashamed of, and I will not say that I have. I never have spoken a word to Colonel Osborne that all the world might not hear. Nobody has accused you, my dear. Yes. He has accused me, and you have accused me, and you will make all the world accuse me. He may put me out of his house if he likes, but he shall not make me say I have been wrong when I know I have been right. He cannot take my child from me. But he will. No! shouted Mrs. Trevelyan, jumping up from her chair. No! He shall never do that. I will cling to him so that he cannot separate us. He will never be so wicked such a monster as that. I would go about the world saying what a monster he had been to me. The passion of the interview was becoming too great for Lady Milvara's power of moderating it, and she was beginning to feel herself to be in a difficulty. Lady Milvara, continued Mrs. Trevelyan, tell him for me that I will bear anything but that, that I will not bear. Dear Mrs. Trevelyan, do not let us talk about it. Who wants to talk about it? Why do you come here and threaten me with a thing so horrible? I do not believe you. He would not dare to separate me and my child. But you have only to say that you will submit yourself to him. I have submitted myself to him, and I will submit no further. What does he want? Why does he send you here? He does not know what he wants. He has made himself miserable by an absurd idea, and he wants everybody to tell him that he has been right. He has been very wrong, and if he desires to be wise now, he will come back to his home and say nothing further about it. He will gain nothing by sending messengers here. Lady Milvara, who had undertaken a most disagreeable task from the purest motives of old friendship, did not like being called a messenger. But the woman before her was so strong in her words, so eager and so passionate, that she did not know how to resent the injury. And there was coming over her an idea, of which she herself was hardly conscious, that after all, perhaps, the husband was not in the right. She had come there with the general idea that wives and especially young wives should be submissive. She had naturally taken the husband's part, and having a preconceived dislike to Colonel Osborne, she had been willing enough to think that precautionary measures were necessary in reference to so eminent and notorious and experienced a lethario. She had never altogether loved Mrs. Trevelyan, and had always been a little in dread of her. But she had thought that the authority with which she would be invested on this occasion, the manifest right on her side and the undeniable truth of her grand argument that a wife should obey, would carry her, if not easily, still successfully through all difficulties. It was probably the case that Lady Milvara, when preparing for her visit, had anticipated a triumph. But when she had been closeted for an hour with Mrs. Trevelyan, she found that she was not triumphant. She was told that she was a messenger, and an unwelcome messenger, and she began to feel that she did not know how she was to take herself away. "'I am sure I have done everything for the best,' she said, getting up from her chair. "'The best will be to send him back and make him feel the truth. "'The best for you, my dear, will be to consider well what should be the duty of a wife.' "'I have considered, Lady Milvara. It cannot be a wife's duty to acknowledge that she has been wrong in such a matter as this. Then Lady Milvara made her curtsy and got herself away in some manner that was sufficiently awkward, and Mrs. Trevelyan curtsied also as she rang the bell, and though she was sore and wretched, and in truth sadly frightened, she was not awkward. In that encounter, so far as it had gone, she had been the victor. As soon as she was alone and the carriage had been driven well away from the door, Mrs. Trevelyan left the drawing-room and went up to the nursery. As she entered, she clothed her face with her sweetest smile. "'How is his own mother's dearest, dearest, darling duck,' she said, putting out her arms and taking the boy from the nurse. The child was at this time about ten months old, and was a strong, hearty, happy infant, always laughing when he was awake, and always sleeping when he did not laugh, because his little limbs were free from pain, and his little stomach was not annoyed by internal troubles. He kicked and crowed and sputtered when his mother took him, and put up his little fingers to clutch her hair, and was to her as a young god upon the earth. Nothing in the world had ever been created so beautiful, so joyous, so satisfactory, so divine, and they told her that this apple of her eye was to be taken away from her. No, that must be impossible. I will take him into my own room, nurse, for a little while. You have had him all the morning, she said, as though the having baby was a privilege over which there might almost be a quarrel. Then she took her boy away with her, and when she was alone with him, went through such a service in baby worship as most mothers will understand. Divide these two. No, nobody should do that. Sooner than that she, the mother, would consent to be no more than a servant in her husband's house. Was not her baby all the world to her? On the evening of that day, the husband and wife had an interview together in the library, which, unfortunately, was as unsatisfactory as Lady Milborough's visit. The cause of the failure of them all lay, probably in this, that there was no decided point which, if conceded, would have brought about a reconciliation. Trevelyan asked for general submission, which he regarded as his right, and which in the existing circumstances he thought it necessary to claim. And though Mrs. Trevelyan did not refuse to be submissive, she would make no promise on the subject. But the truth was that each desired that the other should acknowledge a fault, and that neither of them would make that acknowledgement. Emily Trevelyan felt acutely that she had been ill-used, not only by her husband's suspicion, but by the manner in which he had talked of his suspicion to others, to Lady Milborough and the cook, and she was quite convinced that she was right herself, because he had been so vacillating in his conduct about Colonel Osbourne. But Trevelyan was equally sure that justice was on his side. Emily must have known his real wishes about Colonel Osbourne, but when she had found that he had rescinded his verbal orders about the admission of the man to the house, which he had done to save himself and her from slander and gossip, she had taken advantage of this, and had thrown herself more entirely than ever into the intimacy of which he disapproved. When they met, each was so sore that no approach to terms was made by them. "'If I am to be treated in that way, I would rather not live with you,' said the wife. "'It is impossible to live with a husband who is jealous. All I ask of you is that you shall promise me to have no further communication with this man. I will make no promise that implies my own disgrace. Then we must part, and if that be so, this house will be given up. You may live where you please in the country, not in London, but I shall take steps that Colonel Osbourne does not see you.' "'I will not remain in the room with you to be insulted, thus,' said Mrs. Trevelyan, and she did not remain, but left the chamber, slamming the door after her as she went. "'It will be better that she should go,' said Trevelyan, when he found himself alone. And so it came to pass that the blessing of a rich marriage, which had, as it were, fallen upon them at the mandarins from out of heaven, had become, after an interval of but two short years, anything but an unmixed blessing.' CHAPTER 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 Nuncomputney 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 visit 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 is 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. What you do is 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 Standbury 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 Lesborough due at the Exeter Station at ten. As Miss Standbury 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 Standbury! 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 upstairs. 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 witch punctuality, and thereby not to offend the owner of the mansion, Mrs. Standbury and Priscilla had been walking about the close for the last ten minutes. Mrs. Standbury was still in the parlor. 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? Hush, whispered Mrs. Standbury. 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 Standbury. 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. Standbury. 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 Standbury's compliments, ladies, and she hopes you'll take a glass of sherry. Thereupon she filled out the glasses and carried them round. Pray give my compliments and thanks to my sister Standbury, 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 recognized as disagreeable, but there had not as yet come to be any sympathy or assured signs of comfortable love. Miss Standbury 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 Standbury very sharply. Because she says that Hugh sends her now what she wants. Miss Standbury, when she heard this, looked very sour. I thought it best to tell you, you know. It will never come to any good, God in that way, never. But Aunt Standbury, 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 anyone 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 Standbury 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 defense. Aunt Standbury, 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 Standbury's countenance was still very grim and very stern. He's coming home to Nuncomputny, and I want to see, see him, continued Dorothy. Hugh Standbury coming to Exeter, he won't come here, then I'd rather go home, Aunt Standbury. Very well, very well, said Miss Standbury, 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 Standbury's ear. When the cloth was removed, and two glasses of port had been poured out by Miss Standbury 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 Standbury, 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 Standbury. 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 parlor. 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 Standbury. 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 may not 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 Standbury. 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 Standbury. 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 Standbury? He may, if he pleases. Oh, Aunt Standbury! 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 doorstep 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 Standbury, he had on a short rough jacket with enormous buttons and one of those flippity flappity 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 am 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. McHugh's. We should have been hooted about the clothes like a pair of mad dogs, and so I told him. All the young men seem to dress like that now, Aunt Standbury. No, they don't. Mr. Gibson doesn't dress like that. But he's a clergyman, Aunt Standbury. 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 housebreaker. For the matter of that I'm told that there is a difference, and that the housebreakers 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-turvy, 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 Nuncomputny, well and good, I shall wait up till Martha comes back from the train on Tuesday night and here. The city 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 Standbury was walking round the close with his aunt's old servant. He had not put up with that dreadfully radical establishment of which Miss Standbury was so much afraid, but had taken a bedroom at the railway in. 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 than 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 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. 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 humor 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 upstairs before the knot came at the door. But she managed, by peeping over the balcony, to catch a glimpse of the flippity-flopperty hat which her nephew certainly had with him on this occasion. New Stanbury had great news for his sister. The cottage in which Mrs. Stanbury lived in Uncomputney was the tiniest little dwelling in which a lady and her two daughters ever sheltered themselves. There was indeed a sitting-room, two bedrooms, 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 Uncomputney 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 MAMA Well, yes. Don't say a word about it as yet to Aunt Standbury, as she'll think that I've sold myself altogether to the old gentleman. But Hugh, how can Mama 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. Back to your aunt. You don't want to smoke pipes and wear Tom and Jerry hats and write for the penny newspapers. Now Hugh Standbury's secret was this, that Louis Trevelyan's wife and sister-in-law were to leave the house in Curson Street and come and live at Nuncomputney with Mrs. Standbury and Priscilla. Such at least was the plan to be carried out if Hugh Standbury should be successful in his present negotiations. End of Chapter 12, Recorded by Aria Lipschaw in New York City