“I don’t know why you should be glad.”
“Because I should not have liked your husband—not as your husband.”
“He is an excellent man, I’m sure,” said Dorothy.
“Nevertheless I am very glad. But I did not think you would accept him, and I congratulate you on your escape. You would have been nothing to me as Mrs. Gibson.”
“Shouldn’t I?” said Dorothy, not knowing what else to say.
“But now I think we shall always be friends.”
“I’m sure I hope so, Mr. Burgess. But indeed I must go now. It is ever so late, and you will hardly get any sleep. Good night.” Then he took her hand, and pressed it very warmly, and referring to a promise before made to her, he assured her that he would certainly make acquaintance with her brother as soon as he was back in London. Dorothy, as she went up to bed, was more than ever satisfied with herself, in that she had not yielded in reference to Mr. Gibson.
XLV
Trevelyan at Venice
Trevelyan passed on moodily and alone from Turin to Venice, always expecting letters from Bozzle, and receiving from time to time the dispatches which that functionary forwarded to him, as must be acknowledged, with great punctuality. For Mr. Bozzle did his work, not only with a conscience, but with a will. He was now, as he had declared more than once, altogether devoted to Mr. Trevelyan’s interest; and as he was an active, enterprising man, always on the alert to be doing something, and as he loved the work of writing dispatches, Trevelyan received a great many letters from Bozzle. It is not exaggeration to say that every letter made him for the time a very wretched man. This ex-policeman wrote of the wife of his bosom—of her who had been the wife of his bosom, and who was the mother of his child, who was at this very time the only woman whom he loved—with an entire absence of delicacy. Bozzle would have thought reticence on his part to be dishonest. We remember Othello’s demand of Iago. That was the demand which Bozzle understood that Trevelyan had made of him, and he was minded to obey that order. But Trevelyan, though he had in truth given the order, was like Othello also in this—that he would have preferred before all the prizes of the world to have had proof brought home to him exactly opposite to that which he demanded. But there was nothing so terrible to him as the grinding suspicion that he was to be kept in the dark. Bozzle could find out facts. Therefore he gave, in effect, the same order that Othello gave;—and Bozzle went to work determined to obey it. There came many dispatches to Venice, and at last there came one, which created a correspondence which shall be given here at length. The first is a letter from Mr. Bozzle to his employer:—
55, Stony Walk, Union Street, Borough,
September 29, 186‒, 4:30 p.m.Hond. Sir,
Since I wrote yesterday morning, something has occurred which, it may be, and I think it will, will help to bring this melancholy affair to a satisfactory termination and conclusion. I had better explain, Mr. Trewilyan, how I have been at work from the beginning about watching the Colonel. I couldn’t do nothing with the porter at the Albany, which he is always mostly muzzled with beer, and he wouldn’t have taken my money, not on the square. So, when it was tellegrammed to me as the Colonel was on the move in the North, I put on two boys as knows the Colonel, at eighteenpence a day, at each end, one Piccadilly end, and the other Saville Row end, and yesterday morning, as quick as ever could be, after the Limited Express Edinburgh Male Up was in, there comes the Saville Row End Boy here to say as the Colonel was lodged safe in his downey. Then I was off immediate myself to St. Diddulph’s, because I knows what it is to trust to Inferiors when matters gets delicate. Now, there hadn’t been no letters from the Colonel, nor none to him as I could make out, though that mightn’t be so sure. She might have had ’em addressed to A. Z., or the like of that, at any of the Post-offices as was distant, as nobody could give the notice to ’em all. Barring the money, which I know ain’t an object when the end is so desirable, it don’t do to be too ubiketous, because things will go astray. But I’ve kept my eye uncommon open, and I don’t think there have been no letters since that last which was sent, Mr. Trewilyan, let any of ’em, parsons, or whatnot, say what they will. And I don’t see as parsons are better than other folk when they has to do with a lady as likes her fancy-man.
Trevelyan, when he had read as far as this, threw down the letter and tore his hair in despair. “My wife,” he exclaimed, “Oh, my wife!” But it was essential
