“Why did you say anything about it? Oh dear, oh dear! why did you speak to Hugh? See what you have done!”
“I am sorry that I did speak,” replied Priscilla slowly.
“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
