"Sorry! Of course you are sorry; but what good is that?"

"But, mother, I do not think that I was wrong. I feel sure that the real fault in all this is with Mr. Trevelyan, as it has been all through. He should not have written to her as he has done."

"I suppose Hugh did tell him."

"No doubt;--and I told Hugh; but not after the fashion in which he has told her. I blame myself mostly for this,--that we ever consented to come to this house. We had no business here. Who is to pay the rent?"

"Hugh insisted upon taking it."

"Yes;--and he will pay the rent; and we shall be a drag upon him, as though he had been fool enough to have a wife and a family of his own. And what good have we done? We had not strength enough to say that that wicked man should not see her when he came;--for he is a wicked man."

"If we had done that she would have been as bad then as she is now."

"Mother, we had no business to meddle either with her badness or her goodness. What had we to do with the wife of such a one as Mr.

Trevelyan, or with any woman who was separated from her husband?"

"It was Hugh who thought we should be of service to them."

"Yes;--and I do not blame him. He is in a position to be of service to people. He can do work and earn money, and has a right to think and to speak. We have a right to think only for ourselves, and we should not have yielded to him. How are we to get back again out of this house to our cottage?"

"They are pulling the cottage down, Priscilla."

"To some other cottage, mother. Do you not feel while we are living here that we are pretending to be what we are not? After all, Aunt Stanbury was right, though it was not her business to meddle with us.

We should never have come here. That poor woman now regards us as her bitter enemies."

"I meant to do for the best," said Mrs. Stanbury.

"The fault was mine, mother."

"But you meant it for the best, my dear."

"Meaning for the best is trash. I don't know that I did mean it for the best. While we were at the cottage we paid our way and were honest. What is it people say of us now?"

"They can't say any harm."

"They say that we are paid by the husband to keep his wife, and paid again by the lover to betray the husband."

"Priscilla!"

"Yes;--it is shocking enough. But that comes of people going out of their proper course. We were too humble and low to have a right to take any part in such a matter. How true it is that while one crouches on the ground, one can never fall."

The matter was discussed in the Clock House all day, between Mrs.

Stanbury and Priscilla, and between Mrs. Trevelyan and Nora, in their rooms and in the garden; but nothing could come of such discussions.

No change could be made till further instructions should have been received from the angry husband; nor could any kind of argument be even invented by Priscilla which might be efficacious in inducing the two ladies to remain at the Clock House, even should Mr. Trevelyan allow them to do so. They all felt the intolerable injustice, as it appeared to them,--of their subjection to the caprice of an unreasonable and ill-conditioned man; but to all of them it seemed plain enough that in this matter the husband must exercise his own will,--at any rate till Sir Marmaduke should be in England. There were many difficulties throughout the day. Mrs. Trevelyan would not go down to dinner, sending word that she was ill, and that she would, if she were allowed, have some tea in her own room. And Nora said that she would remain with her sister. Priscilla went to them more than once; and late in the evening they all met in the parlour. But any conversation seemed to be impossible; and Mrs. Trevelyan, as she went up to her room at night, again declared that she would rid the house of her presence as soon as possible.

One thing, however, was done on that melancholy day. Mrs. Trevelyan wrote to her husband, and enclosed Colonel Osborne's letter to herself, and a copy of her reply. The reader will hardly require to be told that no such further letter had been written by her as that of which Bozzle had given information to her husband. Men whose business it is to detect hidden and secret things, are very apt to detect things which have never been done. What excuse can a detective make even to himself for his own existence if he can detect nothing?

Mr. Bozzle was an active-minded man, who gloried in detecting, and who, in the special spirit of his trade, had taught himself to believe that all around him were things secret and hidden, which would be within his power of unravelling if only the slightest clue were put in his hand. He lived by the crookednesses of people, and therefore was convinced that straight doings in the world were quite exceptional. Things dark and dishonest, fights fought and races run that they might be lost, plants and crosses, women false to their husbands, sons false to their fathers, daughters to their mothers, servants to their masters, affairs always secret, dark, foul, and fraudulent, were to him the normal condition of life. It was to be presumed that Mrs. Trevelyan should continue to correspond with her lover,--that old Mrs. Stanbury should betray her trust by conniving at the lover's visit,--that everybody concerned should be steeped to the hips in lies and iniquity. When, therefore, he found at Colonel Osborne's rooms that the Colonel had received a letter with the Lessboro' post-mark, addressed in the handwriting of a woman, he did not scruple to declare that Colonel Osborne had received, on that morning, a letter from Mr. Trevelyan's "lady." But in sending to her husband what she called with so much bitterness, "the correspondence," Mrs. Trevelyan had to enclose simply the copy of one sheet note from herself.

But she now wrote again to Colonel Osborne, and enclosed to her husband, not a copy of what she had written, but the note itself. It was as follows:--

Nuncombe Putney, Wednesday, August 10.

MY DEAR COLONEL OSBORNE,

My husband has desired me not to see you, or to write to you, or to hear from you again. I must therefore beg you to enable me to obey him,--at any rate till papa comes to England.

Yours truly,

EMILY TREVELYAN.

And then she wrote to her husband, and in the writing of this letter there was much doubt, much labour, and many changes. We will give it as it was written when completed:--

I have received your letter, and will obey your commands to the best of my power. In order that you may not be displeased by any further unavoidable correspondence between me and Colonel Osborne, I have written to him a note, which I now send to you. I send it that you may forward it. If you do not choose to do so, I cannot be answerable either for his seeing me, or for his writing to me again.

I send also copies of all the correspondence I have had with Colonel Osborne since you turned me out of your house. When he came to call on me, Nora remained with me while he was here. I blush while I write this;--not for myself, but that I should be so suspected as to make such a statement necessary.

You say that I have disgraced you and myself. I have done neither. I am disgraced;--but it is you that have disgraced me. I have never spoken a word or done a thing, as regards you, of which I have cause to be ashamed.

I have told Mrs. Stanbury that I and Nora will leave her house as soon as we can be made to know where we are to go. I beg that this may be decided instantly, as else we must walk out into the street without a shelter. After what has been said, I cannot remain here.

My sister bids me say that she will relieve you of all burden respecting herself as soon as possible. She will probably be able to find a home with my aunt, Mrs.

Outhouse, till papa comes to England. As for myself, I can only say that till he comes, I shall do exactly what you order.

EMILY TREVELYAN.

Nuncombe Putney, August 10.

CHAPTER XXIX.

MR. AND MRS. OUTHOUSE.

Both Mr. Outhouse and his wife were especially timid in taking upon themselves the cares of other people. Not on that account is it to be supposed that they were bad or selfish. They were both given much to charity, and bestowed both in time and money more than is ordinarily considered necessary, even from persons in their position. But what they gave, they gave away from their own quiet hearth. Had money been wanting to the daughters of his wife's brother, Mr. Outhouse would have opened such small coffer as he had with a free hand. But he would have much preferred that his benevolence should be used in a way that would bring upon him no further responsibility and no questionings from people whom he did not know and could not understand.

The Rev. Oliphant Outhouse had been Rector of St.

Diddulph's-in-the-East for the last fifteen years, having married the sister of Sir Marmaduke Rowley,--then simply Mr. Rowley, with a colonial appointment in Jamaica of 120 per annum,--twelve years before his promotion, while he was a curate in one of the populous borough parishes. He had thus been a London clergyman all his life; but he knew almost as little of London society as though he had held a cure in a Westmoreland valley. He had worked hard, but his work had been altogether among the poor. He had no gift of preaching, and had acquired neither reputation nor popularity. But he could work;--and having been transferred because of that capability to the temporary curacy of St. Diddulph's,--out of one diocese into another,--he had received the living from the bishop's hands when it became vacant.

A dreary place was the parsonage of St. Diddulph's-in-the-East for the abode of a gentleman. Mr. Outhouse had not, in his whole parish, a parishioner with whom he could consort. The greatest men around him were the publicans, and the most numerous were men employed in and around the docks. Dredgers of mud, navvies employed on suburban ca.n.a.ls, excavators, loaders and unloaders of cargo, cattle drivers, whose driving, however, was done mostly on board ship,--such and such like were the men who were the fathers of the families of St.

Diddulph's-in-the-East. And there was there, not far removed from the muddy estuary of a little stream that makes its black way from the Ess.e.x marshes among the houses of the poorest of the poor into the Thames, a large commercial establishment for turning the carca.s.ses of horses into manure. Messrs. Flowsem and Blurt were in truth the great people of St. Diddulph's-in-the-East; but the closeness of their establishment was not an additional attraction to the parsonage.

They were liberal, however, with their money, and Mr. Outhouse was disposed to think,--custom perhaps having made the establishment less objectionable to him than it was at first,--that St.

Diddulph's-in-the-East would be more of a Pandemonium than it now was, if by any sanitary law Messrs. Flowsem and Blurt were compelled to close their doors. "Non olet," he would say with a grim smile when the charitable cheque of the firm would come punctually to hand on the first Sat.u.r.day after Christmas.