Sir Marmaduke and Lady Rowley were to reach England about the end of March or the beginning of April, and both Mrs Trevelyan and Nora Rowley were almost sick for their arrival. Both their uncle and aunt had done very much for them, had been true to them in their need, and had submitted to endless discomforts in order that their nieces might have respectable shelter in their great need; but nevertheless their conduct had not been of a kind to produce either love or friendship. Each of the sisters felt that she had been much better off at Nuncombe Putney; and that either the weakness of Mrs Stanbury, or the hardness of Priscilla, was preferable to the repulsive forbearance of their clerical host. He did not scold them. He never threw it in Mrs Trevelyan’s teeth that she had been separated from her husband by her own fault; he did not tell them of his own discomfort. But he showed it in every gesture, and spoke of it in every tone of his voice, so that Mrs Trevelyan could not refrain from apologising for the misfortune of her presence.

‘My dear,’ he said, ‘things can’t be pleasant and unpleasant at the same time. You were quite right to come here. I am glad for all our sakes that Sir Marmaduke will be with us so soon.’

She had almost given up in her mind the hope that she had long cherished, that she might some day be able to live again with her husband. Every step which he now took in reference to her seemed to be prompted by so bitter an hostility, that she could not but believe that she was hateful to him. How was it possible that a husband and his wife should again come together, when there had been between them such an emissary as a detective policeman? Mrs Trevelyan had gradually come to learn that Bozzle had been at Nuncombe Putney, watching her, and to be aware that she was still under the surveillance of his eye. For some months past now she had neither seen Colonel Osborne, nor heard from him. He had certainly by his folly done much to produce the ruin which had fallen upon her; but it never occurred to her to blame him. Indeed she did not know that he was liable to blame. Mr Outhouse always spoke of him with indignant scorn, and Nora had learned to think that much of their misery was due to his imprudence. But Mrs Trevelyan would not see this, and, not seeing it, was more widely separated from her husband than she would have been had she acknowledged that any excuse for his misconduct had been afforded by the vanity and folly of the other man.

Lady Rowley had written to have a furnished house taken for them from the first of April, and a house had been secured in Manchester Street. The situation in question is not one which is of itself very charming, nor is it supposed to be in a high degree fashionable; but Nora looked forward to her escape from St. Diddulph’s to Manchester Street as though Paradise were to be re-opened to her as soon as she should be there with her father and mother. She was quite clear now as to her course about Hugh Stanbury. She did not doubt that that she could so argue the matter as to get the consent of her father and mother. She felt herself to be altogether altered in her views of life, since experience had come upon her, first at Nuncombe Putney, and after that, much more heavily and seriously, at St. Diddulph’s. She looked back as though to a childish dream to the ideas which had prevailed with her when she had told herself, as she used to do so frequently, that she was unfit to be a poor man’s wife. Why should she be more unfit for such a position than another? Of course there were many thoughts in her mind, much of memory if nothing of regret, in regard to Mr Glascock and the splendour that had been offered to her. She had had her chance of being a rich man’s wife, and had rejected it — had rejected it twice, with her eyes open. Readers will say that if she loved Hugh Stanbury with all her heart, there could be nothing of regret in her reflections. But we are perhaps accustomed in judging for ourselves and of others to draw the lines too sharply, and to say that on this side lie vice, folly, heartlessness, and greed and on the other honour, love, truth, and wisdom, the good and the bad each in its own domain. But the good and the bad mix themselves so thoroughly in our thoughts, even in our aspirations, that we must look for excellence rather in overcoming evil than in freeing ourselves from its influence. There had been many moments of regret with Nora but none of remorse. At the very moment in which she had sent Mr Glascock away from her, and had felt that he had now been sent away for always, she had been full of regret. Since that there had been many hours in which she had thought of her own self-lesson, of that teaching by which she had striven to convince herself that she could never fitly become a poor man’s wife. But the upshot of it all was a healthy pride in what she had done, and a strong resolution that she would make shirts and hem towels for her husband if he required it. It had been given her to choose, and she had chosen. She had found herself unable to tell a man that she loved him when she did not love him and equally unable to conceal the love which she did feel. ‘If he wheeled a barrow of turnips about the street, I’d marry him tomorrow,’ she said to her sister one afternoon as they were sitting together in the room which ought to have been her uncle’s study.

‘If he wheeled a big barrow, you’d have to wheel a little one,’ said her sister.

‘Then I’d do it. I shouldn’t mind. There has been this advantage in St. Diddulph’s, that nothing can be triste, nothing dull, nothing ugly after it.’

‘It may be so with you, Nora, that is in imagination.’

‘What I mean is that living here has taught me much that I never could have learned in Curzon Street. I used to think myself such a fine young woman but, upon my word, I think myself a finer one now.’

‘I don’t quite know what you mean.’

‘I don’t quite know myself; but I nearly know. I do know this, that I’ve made up my own mind about what I mean to do.’

‘You’ll change it, dear, when mamma is here, and things are comfortable again. It’s my belief that Mr Glascock would come to you again tomorrow if you would let him.’ Mrs Trevelyan was, naturally, in complete ignorance of the experience of transatlantic excellence which Mr Glascock had encountered in Italy.

‘But I certainly should not let him. How would it be possible after what I wrote to Hugh?’

‘All that might pass away,’ said Mrs Trevelyan slowly, after a long pause.

‘All what might pass away? Have I not given him a distinct promise? Have I not told him that I loved him, and sworn that I would be true to him? Can that be made to pass away, even if one wished it?’

‘Of course it can. Nothing need be fixed for you till you have stood at the altar with a man and been made his wife. You may choose still. I can never choose again.’

‘I never will, at any rate,’ said Nora.

Then there was another pause. ‘It seems strange to me, Nora,’ said the elder sister, ‘that after what you have seen you should be so keen to be married to any one.’

‘What is a girl to do?’

‘Better drown herself than do as I have done. Only think what there is before me. What I have gone through is nothing to it. Of course I must go back to the Islands. Where else am I to live? Who else will take me?’

‘Come to us,’ said Nora.

‘Us, Nora! Who are the us? But in no way would that be possible. Papa will be here, perhaps, for six months.’ Nora thought it quite possible that she might have a home of her own before six months were passed, even though she might be wheeling the smaller barrow, but she would not say so. ‘And by that time everything must be decided.’

‘I suppose it must.’

‘Of course papa and mamma must go back,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.

‘Papa might take a pension. He’s entitled to a pension now.’

‘He’ll never do that as long as he can have employment. They’ll go back, and I must go with them. Who else would take me in?’

‘I know who would take you in, Emily.’

‘My darling, that is romance. As for myself, I should not care where I went. If it were even to remain here, I could bear it.’

‘I could not,’ said Nora, decisively.

‘It is so different with you, dear. I don’t suppose it is possible I should take my boy with me to the Islands; and how am I to go anywhere without him?’ Then she broke down, and fell into a paroxysm of sobs, and was in very truth a broken-hearted woman.

Nora was silent for some minutes, but at last she spoke. ‘Why do you not go back to him, Emily?’

‘How am I to go back to him? What am I to do to make him take me back?’ At this very moment Trevelyan was in the house, but they did not know it.

‘Write to him,’ said Nora.

‘What am I to say? In very truth I do believe that he is mad. If I write to him, should I defend myself or accuse myself? A dozen times I have striven to write such a letter, not that I might send it, but that I might find what I could say should I ever wish to send it. And it is impossible. I can only tell him how unjust he has been, how cruel, how mad, how wicked!’

‘Could you not say to him simply this? “Let us be together, wherever it may be; and let bygones be bygones.”’

‘While he is watching me with a policeman? While he is still thinking that I entertain a lover? While he believes that I am the base thing that he has dared to think me?’

‘He has never believed it.’

‘Then how can he be such a villain as to treat me like this? I could not go to him, Nora not unless I went to him as one who was known to be mad, over whom in his wretched condition it would be my duty to keep watch. In no other way could I overcome my abhorrence of the outrages to which he has subjected me.’

‘But for the child’s sake, Emily.’

‘Ah, yes! If it were simply to grovel in the dust before him it should be done. If humiliation would suffice, or any self-abasement that were possible to me! But I should be false if I said that I look forward to any such possibility. How can he wish to have me back again after what he has said and done? I am his wife, and he has disgraced me before all men by his own words. And what have I done, that I should not have done; what left undone on his behalf that I should have done? It is hard that the foolish workings of a weak man’s mind should be able so completely to ruin the prospects of a woman’s life!’

Nora was beginning to answer this by attempting to shew that the husband’s madness was, perhaps, only temporary, when there came a knock at the door, and Mrs Outhouse was at once in the room. It will be well that the reader should know what had taken place at the parsonage while the two sisters had been together upstairs, so that the nature of Mrs Outhouse’s mission to them may explain itself. Mr Outhouse had been in his closet downstairs, when the maid-servant brought word to him that Mr Trevelyan was in the parlour, and was desirous of seeing him.

‘Mr Trevelyan!’ said the unfortunate clergyman, holding up both his hands. The servant understood the tragic importance of the occasion quite as well as did her master, and simply shook her head. ‘Has your mistress seen him?’ said the master. The girl again shook her head. ‘Ask your mistress to come to me,’ said the clergyman. Then the girl disappeared; and in a few minutes Mrs Outhouse, equally imbued with the tragic elements of the day, was with her husband.

Mr Outhouse began by declaring that no consideration should induce him to see Trevelyan, and commissioned his wife to go to the man and tell him that he must leave the house. When the unfortunate woman expressed an opinion that Trevelyan had some legal rights upon which he might probably insist, Mr Outhouse asserted roundly that he could have no legal right to remain in that parsonage against the will of the rector. ‘If he wants to claim his wife and child, he must do it by law not by force; and thank God, Sir Marmaduke will be here before he can do that.’ ‘But I can’t make him go,’ said Mrs Outhouse. ‘Tell him that you’ll send for a policeman,’ said the clergyman.

It had come to pass that there had been messages backwards and forwards between the visitor and the master of the house, all carried by that unfortunate lady.

Trevelyan did not demand that his wife and child should be given up to him, did not even, on this occasion, demand that his boy should be surrendered to him now, at once. He did say, very repeatedly, that of course he must have his boy, but seemed to imply that, under certain circumstances, he would be willing to take his wife to live with him again. This appeared to Mrs Outhouse to be so manifestly the one thing that was desirable, to be the only solution of the difficulty that could be admitted as a solution at all, that she went to work on that hint, and ventured to entertain a hope that a reconciliation might be effected. She implored her husband to lend a hand to the work, by which she intended to imply that he should not only see Trevelyan, but consent to meet the sinner on friendly terms. But Mr Outhouse was on the occasion ever more than customarily obstinate. His wife might do what she liked. He would neither meddle nor make. He would not willingly see Mr Trevelyan in his own house unless, indeed, Mr Trevelyan should attempt to force his way up into the nursery. Then he said that which left no doubt on his wife’s mind that, should any violence be attempted, her husband would manfully join the melee.

But it soon became evident that no such attempt was to be made on that day. Trevelyan was lachrymose, heartbroken, and a sight pitiable to behold. When Mrs Outhouse loudly asserted that his wife had not sinned against him in the least ‘not in a tittle, Mr Trevelyan,’ she repeated over and over again he began to assert himself, declaring that she had seen the man in Devonshire, and corresponded with him since she had been at St. Diddulph’s; and when the lady had declared that the latter assertion was untrue, he had shaken his head, and had told her that perhaps she did not know all. But the misery of the man had its effect upon her, and at last she proposed to be the bearer of a message to his wife. He had demanded to see his child, offering his promise that he would not attempt to take the boy by force on this occasion saying, also, that his claim by law was so good, that no force could be necessary. It was proposed by Mrs Outhouse that he should first see the mother, and to this he at last assented. How blessed a thing would it be if these two persons could be ind............