f over their head! That was the nature of
the threat which his words were supposed to convey.

The matter had become so serious, that Mrs. Trevelyan, haughty and
stiff-necked as she was, did not dare to abstain from showing the
letter to her sister. She had no other counsellor, at any rate, till
Lady Milborough came, and the weight of the battle was too great for
her own unaided spirit. The letter had been written late at night, as
was shown by the precision of the date, and had been brought to her
early in the morning. At first she had determined to say nothing
about it to Nora, but she was not strong enough to maintain such a
purpose. She felt that she needed the poor consolation of discussing
her wretchedness. She first declared that she would not see Lady
Milborough. "I hate her, and she knows that I hate her, and she ought
not to have thought of coming," said Mrs. Trevelyan.

But she was at last beaten out of this purpose by Nora's argument,
that all the world would be against her if she refused to see her
husband's old friend. And then, though the letter was an odious
letter, as she declared a dozen times, she took some little
comfort in the fact that not a word was said in it about the baby.
She thought that if she could take her child with her into any
separation, she could endure it, and her husband would ultimately be
conquered.

"Yes; I'll see her," she said, as they finished the discussion. "As
he chooses to send her, I suppose I had better see her. But I don't
think he does much to mend matters when he sends the woman whom he
knows I dislike more than any other in all London."

Exactly at twelve o'clock Lady Milborough's carriage was at the door.
Trevelyan was in the house at the time and heard the knock at the
door. During those two or three days of absolute wretchedness,
he spent most of his hours under the same roof with his wife and
sister-in-law, though he spoke to neither of them. He had had his
doubts as to the reception of Lady Milborough, and was, to tell
the truth, listening with most anxious ear, when her ladyship was
announced. His wife, however, was not so bitterly contumacious as
to refuse admittance to his friend, and he heard the rustle of the
ponderous silk as the old woman was shown up-stairs. When Lady
Milborough reached the drawing-room, Mrs. Trevelyan was alone.

"I had better see her by myself," she had said to her sister.

Nora had then left her, with one word of prayer that sh