to caution his daughter with severity, to quarrel absolutely with Colonel Osborne, and to let Trevelyan know that this had been done.  As to the child, Mr Outhouse expressed a strong opinion that the father was legally entitled to the custody of his boy, and that nothing could be done to recover the child, except what might be done with the father’s consent.  In fact, Mr Outhouse made himself exceedingly disagreeable, and sent away Sir Marmaduke with a very heavy heart.  Could it really be possible that his old friend Fred Osborne, who seven or eight-and-twenty years ago had been potent among young ladies, had really been making love to his old friend’s married daughter?  Sir Marmaduke looked into himself, and conceived it to be quite out of the question that he should make love to any one.  A good dinner, good wine, a good cigar, an easy chair, and a rubber of whist—­all these things, with no work to do, and men of his own standing around him—­were the pleasures of life which Sir Marmaduke desired.  Now Fred Osborne was an older man than he, and, though Fred Osborne did keep up a foolish system of padded clothes and dyed whiskers, still at fifty-two or fifty-three surely a man might be reckoned safe.  And then, too, that ancient friendship!  Sir Marmaduke, who had lived all his life in the comparative seclusion of a colony, thought perhaps more of that ancient friendship than did the Colonel, who had lived amidst the blaze of London life, and who had had many opportunities of changing his friends.  Some inkling of all this made its way into Sir Marmaduke’s bosom, as he thought of it with bitterness; and he determined that he would have it out with his friend.

Hitherto he had enjoyed very few of those pleasant hours which he had anticipated on his journey homewards.  He had had no heart to go to his club, and he had fancied that Colonel Osborne had been a little backward in looking him up, and providing him with amusement.  He had suggested this to his wife, and she had told him that the Colonel had been right not to come to Manchester Street.  ‘I have told Emily,’ said Lady Rowley, ’that she must not meet him, and she is quite of the same opinion.’  Nevertheless, there had been remissness.  Sir Marmaduke felt that it was so, in spite of his wife’s excuses.  In this way he was becoming sore with everybody, and very unhappy.  It did not at all improve his temper when he was told that his second daughter had refused an offer from Lord Peterborough’s eldest son.  ’Then she may go into the workhouse for me,’ the angry father had said, declaring at the same time that he would never give his consent to her marriage with the man who ‘did dirty work’ for the Daily Record as he, with his paternal wisdom, chose to express it.  But this cruel phrase was not spoken in Nora’s hearing, nor was it repeated to her.  Lady Rowley knew her husband, and was aware that he would on occasions change his opinion.