l Osborne there?"

"No; I had met him in the street a minute or two before."

"Well, now; look here, Stanbury. If you'll take my advice, you'll
keep your hands out of this. It is not but that I regard you as being
as good a friend as I have in the world; but, to own the truth, I
cannot put up with interference between myself and my wife."

"Of course you understand that I only come as a messenger."

[Illustration: "I only come as a messenger."]

"You had better not be a messenger in such a cause. If she has
anything to say she can say it to myself."

"Am I to understand that you will not listen to me?"

"I had rather not."

"I think you are wrong," said Stanbury.

"In that matter you must allow me to judge for myself. I can easily
understand that a young woman like her, especially with her sister to
back her, should induce such a one as you to take her part."

"I am taking nobody's part. You wrong your wife, and you especially
wrong Miss Rowley."

"If you please, Stanbury, we will say nothing more about it." This
Trevelyan said holding the door of the room half open in his hand, so
that the other was obliged to pass out through it.

"Good evening," said Stanbury, with much anger.

"Good evening," said Trevelyan, with an assumption of indifference.

Stanbury went away in absolute wrath, though the trouble which he had
had in the interview was much less than he had anticipated, and the
result quite as favourable. He had known that no good would come of
his visit. And yet he was now full of anger against Trevelyan, and
had become a partisan in the matter,--which was exactly that which he
had resolutely determined that he would not become. "I believe that
no woman on earth could live with him," he said to himself as he
walked away. "It was always the same with him,--a desire for mastery,
which he did not know how to use when he had obtained it. If it were
Nora, instead of the other sister, he would break her sweet heart
within a month."

Trevelyan dined at his club, and hardly spoke a word to any one
during the evening. At about eleven he started to walk home, but
went by no means straight thither, taking a long turn through St.
James's Park, and by Pimlico. It was necessary that he should make
up his mind as to what he would do. He had sternly refused the
interference of a friend, and he must be prepared to act on his own
responsibility. He knew well that he could not begin again with his
wife on