"It is not that at all."

"But it is that. How can you tell me that it isn't? And yet you would
have me believe that I am not disgraced!" As he said this Trevelyan
got up, and walked about the room, tearing his hair with his hands.
He was in truth a wretched man, from whose mind all expectation of
happiness was banished, who regarded his own position as one of
incurable ignominy, looking upon himself as one who had been made
unfit for society by no fault of his own. What was he to do with the
wretched woman who could be kept from the evil of her pernicious
vanity by no gentle custody, whom no most distant retirement
would make safe from the effects of her own ignorance, folly, and
obstinacy? "When is she to go?" he asked in a low, sepulchral
tone,--as though these new tidings that had come upon him had been
fatal--laden with doom, and finally subversive of all chance even of
tranquillity.

"When you and she may please."

"That is all very well;--but let me know the truth. I would not have
your mother's house--contaminated; but may she remain there for a
week?"

Stanbury jumped from his seat with an oath. "I tell you what it
is, Trevelyan;--if you speak of your wife in that way, I will not
listen to you. It is unmanly and untrue to say that her presence
can--contaminate any house."

"That is very fine. It may be chivalrous in you to tell me on her
behalf that I am a liar,--and that I am not a man."

"You drive me to it."

"But what am I to think when you are forced to declare that this
unfortunate woman can not be allowed to remain at your mother's
house,--a house which has been especially taken with reference to a
shelter for her? She has been received,--with the idea that she would
be discreet. She has been indiscreet, past belief, and she is to be
turned out,--most deservedly. Heaven and earth! Where shall I find
a roof for her head?" Trevelyan as he said this was walking about
the room with his hands stretched up towards the ceiling; and as
his friend was attempting to make him comprehend that there was no
intention on the part of any one to banish Mrs. Trevelyan from the
Clock House, at least for some months to come,--not even till after
Christmas unless some satisfactory arrangement could be sooner
made,--the door of the room was opened by the boy, who called himself
a clerk, and who acted as Trevelyan's servant in the chambers, and
a third person was shown into the room. That third person was Mr.
Bozz