wn,--good, motherly, discreet women,--who hated the name of Colonel
Osborne, who would not admit him within their doors, who would not
bow to him in other people's houses, who would always speak of him as
a serpent, a hyena, a kite, or a shark. Old Lady Milborough was one
of these, a daughter of a friend of hers having once admitted the
serpent to her intimacy.

"Augustus Poole was wise enough to take his wife abroad," said old
Lady Milborough, discussing about this time with a gossip of hers
the danger of Mrs. Trevelyan's position, "or there would have been a
break-up there; and yet there never was a better girl in the world
than Jane Marriott."

The reader may be quite certain that Colonel Osborne had no
premeditated evil intention when he allowed himself to become the
intimate friend of his old friend's daughter. There was nothing
fiendish in his nature. He was not a man who boasted of his
conquests. He was not a ravening wolf going about seeking whom he
might devour, and determined to devour whatever might come in his
way; but he liked that which was pleasant; and of all pleasant things
the company of a pretty clever woman was to him the pleasantest. At
this exact period of his life no woman was so pleasantly pretty to
him, and so agreeably clever, as Mrs. Trevelyan.

When Louis Trevelyan heard on the stairs the step of the dangerous
man, he got up from his chair as though he too would have gone into
the drawing-room, and it would perhaps have been well had he done so.
Could he have done this, and kept his temper with the man, he would
have paved the way for an easy reconciliation with his wife. But when
he reached the door of his room, and had placed his hand upon the
lock, he withdrew again. He told himself he withdrew because he would
not allow himself to be jealous; but in truth he did so because he
knew he could not have brought himself to be civil to the man he
hated. So he sat down, and took up his pen, and began to cudgel
his brain about the scientific article. He was intent on raising a
dispute with some learned pundit about the waves of sound,--but he
could think of no other sound than that of the light steps of Colonel
Osborne as he had gone up-stairs. He put down his pen, and clenched
his fist, and allowed a black frown to settle upon his brow. What
right had the man to come there, unasked by him, and disturb his
happiness? And then this poor wife of his, who knew so little of
English life, who had l