“I dare say not; but my view is different.”
“She cannot admit herself to be wrong when she knows herself to be right. You would not have her confess to a fault, the very idea of which has always been abhorrent to her?”
“She must be crushed in spirit, Lady Rowley, before she can again become a pure and happy woman.”
“This is more than I can bear,” said Lady Rowley, now, at last, worked up to a fever of indignation. “My daughter, sir, is as pure a woman as you have ever known, or are likely to know. You, who should have protected her against the world, will some day take blame to yourself as you remember that you have so cruelly maligned her.” Then she walked away to the door, and would not listen to the words which he was hurling after her. She went down the stairs, and out of the house, and at the end of Poulter’s Alley found the cab which was waiting for her.
Trevelyan, as soon as he was alone, rang the bell, and sent for Bozzle. And while the waiter was coming to him, and until his myrmidon had appeared, he continued to stalk up and down the room, waving his hand in the air as though he were continuing his speech. “Bozzle,” said he, as soon as the man had closed the door, “I have changed my mind.”
“As how, Mr. Trewillian?”
“I shall make no further attempt. I have done all that man can do, and have done it in vain. Her father and mother uphold her in her conduct, and she is lost to me—forever.”
“But the boy, Mr. T.?”
“I have my child. Yes—I have my child. Poor infant. Bozzle, I look to you to see that none of them learn our retreat.”
“As for that, Mr. Trewillian—why facts is to be come at by one party pretty well as much as by another. Now, suppose the things was changed, wicey warsey—and as I was hacting for the Colonel’s party.”
“D⸺ the Colonel!” exclaimed Trevelyan.
“Just so, Mr. Trewillian; but if I was hacting for the other party, and they said to me, ‘Bozzle—where’s the boy?’ why, in three days I’d be down on the facts. Facts is open, Mr. Trewillian, if you knows where to look for them.”
“I shall take him abroad—at once.”
“Think twice of it, Mr. T. The boy is so young, you see, and a mother’s ’art is softer and lovinger than anything. I’d think twice of it, Mr. T., before I kept ’em apart.” This was a line of thought which Mr. Bozzle’s conscience had not forced him to entertain to the prejudice of his professional arrangements; but now, as he conversed with his employer, and became by degrees aware of the failure of Trevelyan’s mind, some shade of remorse came upon him, and made him say a word on behalf of the “other party.”
“Am I not always thinking of it? What else have they left me to think of? That will do for today. You had better come down to me tomorrow afternoon.” Bozzle promised obedience to these instructions, and as soon as his patron had started he paid the bill, and took himself home.
Lady Rowley, as she travelled back to her house in Manchester Street, almost made up her mind that the separation between her daughter and her son-in-law had better be continued. It was a very sad conclusion to which to come, but she could not believe that any high-spirited woman could long continue to submit herself to the caprices of a man so unreasonable and dictatorial as he to whom she had just been listening. Were it not for the boy, there would, she felt, be no doubt upon the matter. And now, as matters stood, she thought that it should be their great object to regain possession of the child. Then she endeavoured to calculate what would be the result to her daughter, if in very truth it should be found that the wretched man was mad. To hope for such a result seemed to her to be very wicked;—and yet she hardly knew how not to hope for it.
“Well, mamma,” said Emily Trevelyan, with a faint attempt at a smile, “you saw him?”
“Yes, dearest, I saw him. I can only say that he is a most unreasonable man.”
“And he would tell you nothing of Louey?”
“No dear—not a word.”
LXIII
Sir Marmaduke at Home
Nora Rowley had told her lover that there was to be no further communication between them till her father and mother should be in England; but in telling him so, had so frankly confessed her own affection for him and had so sturdily promised to be true to him, that no lover could have been reasonably aggrieved by such an interdiction. Nora was quite conscious of this, and was aware that Hugh Stanbury had received such encouragement as ought at any rate to bring him to the new Rowley establishment, as soon as he should learn where it had fixed itself. But when at the end of ten days he had not shown himself, she began to feel doubts. Could it be that he had changed his mind, that he was unwilling to encounter refusal from her father, or that he had found, on looking into his own affairs more closely, that it would be absurd for him to propose to take a wife to himself while his means were so poor and so precarious? Sir Marmaduke during this time had been so unhappy, so fretful, so indignant, and so much worried, that Nora herself had become almost afraid of him; and, without much reasoning on the matter, had taught herself to believe that Hugh might be actuated by similar fears. She had intended to tell her mother of what had occurred between
