telling himself that, after all,
Colonel Osborne was an old man,--a man older even than his wife's
father. If she would only have met him with gentleness, he would have
withdrawn his command, and have acknowledged that he had been wrong.
But she was hard, dignified, obedient, and resentful. "It will, I
think," he said, "be better for both of us that he should be asked in
to lunch to-day."

"You must judge of that," said Emily. "Perhaps, upon the whole, it
will be best. I can only say that I will not be present. I will lunch
up-stairs with baby, and you can make what excuse for me you please."
This was all very bad, but it was in this way that things were
allowed to arrange themselves. Richard was told that Colonel Osborne
was coming to lunch, and when he came something was muttered to him
about Mrs. Trevelyan being not quite well. It was Nora who told the
innocent fib, and though she did not tell it well, she did her very
best. She felt that her brother-in-law was very wretched, and she was
most anxious to relieve him. Colonel Osborne did not stay long, and
then Nora went up-stairs to her sister.

Louis Trevelyan felt that he had disgraced himself. He had meant to
have been strong, and he had, as he knew, been very weak. He had
meant to have acted in a high-minded, honest, manly manner; but
circumstances had been so untoward with him, that on looking at his
own conduct, it seemed to him to have been mean, and almost false
and cowardly. As the order for the exclusion of this hated man from
his house had been given, he should at any rate have stuck to the
order. At the moment of his vacillation he had simply intended to
make things easy for his wife; but she had taken advantage of his
vacillation, and had now clearly conquered him. Perhaps he respected
her more than he had done when he was resolving, three or four days
since, that he would be the master in his own house; but it may be
feared that the tenderness of his love for her had been impaired.

Late in the afternoon his wife and sister-in-law came down dressed
for walking, and, finding Trevelyan in the library, they asked him to
join them,--it was a custom with them to walk in the park on a Sunday
afternoon,--and he at once assented, and went out with them. Emily,
who had had her triumph, was very gracious. There should not be a
word more said by her about Colonel Osborne. She would avoid that
gentleman, never receiving him in Curzon Street, and having as little