’If you have said all that you have to say,
perhaps you will listen to me,’ said his wife.
‘I will listen to nothing till you have given
me your promise.’ ‘Then I certainly
shall not give it you.’
‘Dear Emily, pray, pray do what he tells you,’
said Nora.
‘She has yet to learn that it is her duty to
do as I tell her,’ said Trevelyan. ’And
because she is obstinate, and will not learn from
those who know better than herself what a woman may
do, and what she may not, she will ruin herself, and
destroy my happiness.’
’I know that you have destroyed my happiness
by your unreasonable jealousy,’ said the wife.
’Have you considered what I must feel in having
such words addressed to me by my husband? If
I am fit to be told that I must promise not to see
any man living, I cannot be fit to be any man’s
wife.’ Then she burst out into an hysterical
fit of tears, and in this condition she got out of
the carriage, entered her house, and hurried up to
her own room.
‘Indeed, she has not been to blame,’ said
Nora to Trevelyan on the staircase.
’Why has there been a secret kept from me between
her and this man; and that too, after I had cautioned
her against being intimate with him? I am sorry
that she should suffer; but it is better that she
should suffer a little now, than that we should both
suffer much by-and-by.’
Nora endeavoured to explain to him the truth about
the committee, and Colonel Osborne’s promised
influence, and the reason why there was to be a secret.
But she was too much in a hurry to get to her sister
to make the matter plain, and he was too much angered
to listen to her. He shook his head when she
spoke of Colonel Osborne’s dislike to have his
name mentioned in connection with the matter.
‘All the world knows it,’ he said with
scornful laughter.
It was in vain that Nora tried to explain to him that
though all the world might know it, Emily herself
had only heard of the proposition as a thing quite
unsettled, as to which nothing at present should be
spoken openly. It was in vain to endeavour to
make peace on that night. Nora hurried up to
her sister, and found that the hysterical tears had
again given place to anger. She would not see
her husband, unless he would beg her pardon; and he
would not see her unless she would give the promise
he demanded. And the husband and wife did not
see each other again on that night.
HUGH STANBURY
It has been already stated that Nora Rowley was not
quite so well disposed as perhaps she ought to have
been to fall in love with the Honourable Charles Glascock,
there having come upon her the habit of comparing
him with another gentleman whenever this duty of falling
in love with Mr Glascock was exacted from her.
That other gentleman was one with whom she knew that
it was quite out of the question that she should fall
