are all aware, that the
outward garments of a domestic deity will be a little scorched; and
when this occurs, the man who is the interloper, will generally find
a gentle consolation in his position, let its interest be ever so
flaccid and unreal, and its troubles in running about, and the like,
ever so considerable and time-destructive.

It was so certainly with Colonel Osborne when he became aware that
his intimacy with Mrs. Trevelyan had caused her husband uneasiness.
He was not especially a vicious man, and had now, as we know, reached
a time of life when such vice as that in question might be supposed
to have lost its charm for him. A gentleman over fifty, popular
in London, with a seat in Parliament, fond of good dinners, and
possessed of everything which the world has to give, could hardly
have wished to run away with his neighbour's wife, or to have
destroyed the happiness of his old friend's daughter. Such wickedness
had never come into his head; but he had a certain pleasure in being
the confidential friend of a very pretty woman; and when he heard
that that pretty woman's husband was jealous, the pleasure was
enhanced rather than otherwise. On that Sunday, as he had left the
house in Curzon Street, he had told Stanbury that Trevelyan had just
gone off in a huff, which was true enough, and he had walked from
thence down Clarges Street, and across Piccadilly to St. James's
Street, with a jauntier step than usual, because he was aware that he
himself had been the occasion of that trouble. This was very wrong;
but there is reason to believe that many such men as Colonel Osborne,
who are bachelors at fifty, are equally malicious.

He thought a good deal about it on that evening, and was still
thinking about it on the following morning. He had promised to go up
to Curzon Street on the Monday,--really on some most trivial mission,
on a matter of business which no man could have taken in hand whose
time was of the slightest value to himself or any one else. But now
that mission assumed an importance in his eyes, and seemed to require
either a special observance or a special excuse. There was no real
reason why he should not have stayed away from Curzon Street for the
next fortnight; and had he done so he need have made no excuse to
Mrs. Trevelyan when he met her. But the opportunity for a little
excitement was not to be missed, and instead of going he wrote to her
the following note:--

Albany, Monday.