Trevelyan.
Thanks for the words of the opera.
When she had written this, being determined that all should be open and above board, she put a penny stamp on the envelope, and desired that the letter should be posted. But she destroyed that which she had received from Colonel Osborne. In all things she would act as she would have done if her husband had not been so foolish, and there could have been no reason why she should have kept so unimportant a communication.
In the course of the day Trevelyan passed through the hall to the room which he himself was accustomed to occupy behind the parlour, and as he did so saw the note lying ready to be posted, took it up, and read the address. He held it for a moment in his hand, then replaced it on the hall table, and passed on. When he reached his own table he sat down hurriedly, and took up in his hand some Review that was lying ready for him to read. But he was quite unable to fix his mind upon the words before him. He had spoken to his wife on that morning in the strongest language he could use as to the unseemliness of her intimacy with Colonel Osborne; and then, the first thing she had done when his back was turned was to write to this very Colonel Osborne, and tell him, no doubt, what had occurred between her and her husband. He sat thinking of it all for many minutes. He would probably have declared himself that he had thought of it for an hour as he sat there. Then he got up, went up-stairs and walked slowly into the drawing-room. There he found his wife sitting with her sister. "Nora," he said, "I want to speak to Emily. Will you forgive me, if I ask you to leave us for a few minutes?" Nora, with an anxious look at Emily, got up and left the room.
"Why do you send her away?" said Mrs. Trevelyan.
"Because I wish to be alone with you for a few minutes. Since what I said to you this morning, you have written to Colonel Osborne."
"Yes;—I have. I do not know how you have found it out; but I suppose you keep a watch on me."
"I keep no watch on you. As I came into the house, I saw your letter lying in the hall."
"Very well. You could have read it if you pleased."
"Emily, this matter is becoming very serious, and I strongly advise you to be on your guard in what you say. I will bear much for you, and much for our boy; but I will not bear to have my name made a reproach."
"Sir, if you think your name is shamed by me, we had better part," said Mrs. Trevelyan, rising from her chair, and confronting him with a look before which his own almost quailed.
"It may be that we had better part," he said, slowly. "But in the first place I wish you to tell me what were the contents of that letter."
"If it was there when you came in, no doubt it is there still. Go and look at it."
"That is no answer to me. I have desired you to tell me what are its contents."
"I shall not tell you. I will not demean myself by repeating anything so insignificant in my own justification. If you suspect me of writing what I should not write, you will suspect me also of lying to conceal it."
"Have you heard from Colonel Osborne this morning?"
"I have."
"And where is his letter?"
"I have destroyed it."
Again he paused, trying to think what he had better do, trying to be calm. And she stood still opposite to him, confronting him with the scorn of her bright angry eyes. Of course, he was not calm. He was the very reverse of calm. "And you refuse to tell me what you wrote," he said.
"The letter is there," she answered, pointing away towards the door. "If you want to play the spy, go and look at it for yourself."
"Do you call me a spy?"
"And what have you called me? Because you are a husband, is the privilege of vituperation to be all on your side?"
"It is impossible that I should put up with this," he said;—"quite impossible. This would kill me. Anything is better than this. My present orders to you are not to see Colonel Osborne, not to write to him or have any communication with him, and to put under cover to me, unopened, any letter that may come from him. I shall expect your implicit obedience to these orders."
"Well;—go on."
"Have I your promise?"
"No;—no. You have no promise. I will make no promise exacted from me in so disgraceful a manner."
"You refuse to obey me?"
"I will refuse nothing, and will promise nothing."
"Then we must part;—that is all. I will take care that you shall hear from me before to-morrow morning."
So saying, he left the room, and, passing through the hall, saw that the letter had been taken away.
CHAPTER XI.
LADY MILBOROUGH AS AMBASSADOR.
"Of course, I know you are right," said Nora to her sister;—"right as far as Colonel Osborne is concerned; but nevertheless you ought to give way."
"And be trampled upon?" said Mrs. Trevelyan.
"Yes; and be trampled upon, if he should trample on you;—which, however, he is the last man in the world to do."
"And to endure any insult and any names? You yourself—you would be a Griselda, I suppose."
"I don't want to talk about myself," said Nora, "nor about Griselda. But I know that, however unreasonable it may seem, you had better give way to him now and tell him what there was in the note to Colonel Osborne."
"Never! He has ordered me not to see him or to write to him, or to open his letters,—having, mind you, ordered just the reverse a day or two before; and I will obey him. Absurd as it is, I will obey him. But as for submitting to him, and letting him suppose that I think he is right;—never! I should be lying to him then, and I will never lie to him. He has said that we must part, and I suppose it will be better so. How can a woman live with a man that suspects her? He cannot take my baby from me."
There were many such conversations as the above between the two sisters before Mrs. Trevelyan received from her husband the communication with which she had been threatened. And Nora, acting on her own judgment in the matter, made an attempt to see Mr. Trevelyan, writing to him a pretty little note, and beseeching him to be kind to her. But he declined to see her, and the two women sat at home, with the baby between them, holding such pleasant conversations as that above narrated. When such tempests occur in a family, a woman will generally suffer the least during the thick of the tempest. While the hurricane is at the fiercest, she will be sustained by the most thorough conviction that the right is on her side, that she is aggrieved, that there is nothing for her to acknowledge, and no position that she need surrender. Whereas her husband will desire a compromise, even amidst the violence of the storm. But afterwards, when the wind has lulled, but while the heavens around are still all black and murky, then the woman's sufferings begin. When passion gives way to thought and memory, she feels the loneliness of her position,—the loneliness, and the possible degradation. It is
