ge, with all manner of attendant comforts, which had come in
the way of the Rowley family as they were living at the Mandarins,
had not turned out to be an unmixed blessing. In the matter of the
quarrel, as it had hitherto progressed, the husband had perhaps been
more in the wrong than his wife; but the wife, in spite of all her
promises of perfect obedience, had proved herself to be a woman very
hard to manage. Had she been earnest in her desire to please her lord
and master in this matter of Colonel Osborne's visits,--to please
him even after he had so vacillated in his own behests,--she might
probably have so received the man as to have quelled all feeling of
jealousy in her husband's bosom. But instead of doing so she had
told herself that as she was innocent, and as her innocence had been
acknowledged, and as she had been specially instructed to receive
this man whom she had before been specially instructed not to
receive, she would now fall back exactly into her old manner with
him. She had told Colonel Osborne never to allude to that meeting
in the park, and to ask no creature as to what had occasioned her
conduct on that Sunday; thus having a mystery with him, which of
course he understood as well as she did. And then she had again taken
to writing notes to him and receiving notes from him,--none of which
she showed to her husband. She was more intimate with him than ever,
and yet she hardly ever mentioned his name to her husband. Trevelyan,
acknowledging to himself that he had done no good by his former
interference, feeling that he had put himself in the wrong on that
occasion, and that his wife had got the better of him, had borne with
all this, with soreness and a moody savageness of general conduct,
but still without further words of anger with reference to the man
himself. But now, on this Sunday, when his wife had been closeted
with Colonel Osborne in the back drawing-room, leaving him with his
sister-in-law, his temper had become too hot for him, and he had
suddenly left the house, declaring that he would not walk with the
two women on that day. "Why not, Louis?" his wife had said, coming up
to him. "Never mind why not, but I shall not," he had answered; and
then he left the room.

"What is the matter with him?" Colonel Osborne had asked.

"It is impossible to say what is the matter with him," Mrs. Trevelyan
had replied. After that she had at once gone up-stairs to her child,
telling herself that she w