He found Mrs. Trevelyan waiting for him at the station at Siena. He would hardly have known her—not from any alteration that was physically personal to herself, not that she had become older in face, or thin, or grey, or sickly—but that the trouble of her life had robbed her for the time of that brightness of apparel, of that pride of feminine gear, of that sheen of high-bred womanly bearing with which our wives and daughters are so careful to invest themselves. She knew herself to be a wretched woman, whose work in life now was to watch over a poor prostrate wretch, and who had thrown behind her all ideas of grace and beauty. It was not quickly that this condition had come upon her. She had been unhappy at Nuncombe Putney; but unhappiness had not then told upon the outward woman. She had been more wretched still at St. Diddulph’s, and all the outward circumstances of life in her uncle’s parsonage had been very wearisome to her; but she had striven against it all, and the sheen and outward brightness had still been there. After that her child had been taken from her, and the days which she had passed in Manchester Street had been very grievous;—but even yet she had not given way. It was not till her child had been brought back to her, and she had seen the life which her husband was living, and that her anger—hot anger—had been changed to pity, and that with pity love had returned, it was not till this point had come in her sad life that her dress became always black and sombre, that a veil habitually covered her face, that a bonnet took the place of the jaunty hat that she had worn, and that the prettinesses of her life were lain aside. “It is very good of you to come,” she said; “very good. I hardly knew what to do, I was so wretched. On the day that I sent he was so bad that I was obliged to do something.” Stanbury, of course, inquired after Trevelyan’s health, as they were being driven up to Mrs. Trevelyan’s lodgings. On the day on which she had sent the telegram her husband had again been furiously angry with her. She had interfered, or had endeavoured to interfere, in some arrangements as to his health and comfort, and he had turned upon her with an order that the child should be at once sent back to him, and that she should immediately quit Siena. “When I said that Louey could not be sent—and who could send a child into such keeping—he told me that I was the basest liar that ever broke a promise, and the vilest traitor that had ever returned evil for good. I was never to come to him again—never; and the gate of the house would be closed against me if I appeared there.”
On the next day she had gone again, however, and had seen him, and had visited him on every day since. Nothing further had been said about the child, and he had now become almost too weak for violent anger. “I told him you were coming, and though he would not say so, I think he is glad of it. He expects you tomorrow.”
“I will go this evening, if he will let me.”
“Not tonight. I think he goes to bed almost as the sun sets. I am never there myself after four or five in the afternoon. I told him that you should be there tomorrow—alone. I have hired a little carriage, and you can take it. He said specially that I was not to come with you. Papa goes certainly on next Saturday?” It was a Saturday now—this day on which Stanbury had arrived at Siena.
“He leaves town on Friday.”
“You must make him believe that. Do not tell him suddenly, but bring it in by degrees. He thinks that I am deceiving him. He would go back if he knew that papa were gone.”
They spent a long evening together, and Stanbury learned all that Mrs. Trevelyan could tell him of her husband’s state. There was no doubt, she said, that his reason was affected; but she thought the state of his mind was diseased in a ratio the reverse of that of his body, and that when he was weakest in health, then were his ideas the most clear and rational. He never now mentioned Colonel Osborne’s name, but would refer to the affairs of the last two years as though they had been governed by an inexorable Fate which had utterly destroyed his happiness without any fault on his part. “You may be sure,” she said, “that I never accuse him. Even when he says terrible things of me—which he does—I never excuse myself. I do not think I should answer a word, if he called me the vilest thing on earth.” Before they parted for the night many questions were of course asked about Nora, and Hugh described the condition in which he and she stood to each other. “Papa has consented, then?”
“Yes—at four o’clock in the morning—just as I was leaving them.”
“And when is it to be?”
“Nothing has been settled, and I do not as yet know where she will go to when they leave London. I think she will visit Monkhams when the Glascock people return to England.”
“What an episode in life—to go and see the place, when it might all now have been hers!”
“I suppose I ought to feel dreadfully ashamed of myself for having marred such
