Another week went by and Sir Marmaduke had even yet
not surrendered. He quite understood that Nora
was not to go back to the Islands and had visited
Mr and Mrs Outhouse at St.
Diddulph’s in order
to secure a home for her there, if it might be possible.
Mr Outhouse did not refuse, but gave the permission
in such a fashion as to make it almost equal to a
refusal. ‘He was,’ he said, ’much
attached to his niece Nora, but he had heard that
there was a love affair.’ Sir Marmaduke,
of course, could not deny the love affair. There
was certainly a love affair of which he did not personally
approve, as the gentleman had no fixed income and
as far as he could understand no fixed profession.
’Such a love affair,’ thought Mr Outhouse,
’was a sort of thing that he didn’t know
how to manage at all. If Nora came to him, was
the young man to visit at the house, or was he not?’
Then Mrs Outhouse said something as to the necessity
of an anti-Stanbury pledge on Nora’s part, and
Sir Marmaduke found that that scheme must be abandoned.
Mrs Trevelyan had written from Florence more than
once or twice, and in her last letter had said that
she would prefer not to have Nora with her. She
was at that time living in lodgings at Siena and had
her boy there also. She saw her husband every
other day; but nevertheless, according to her statements,
her visits to Casalunga were made in opposition to
his wishes. He had even expressed a desire that
she should leave Siena and return to England.
He had once gone so far as to say that if she would
do so, he would follow her. But she clearly did
not believe him, and in all her letters spoke of him
as one whom she could not regard as being under the
guidance of reason. She had taken her child with
her once or twice to the house, and on the first occasion
Trevelyan had made much of his son, had wept over
him, and professed that in losing him he had lost
his only treasure; but after that he had not noticed
the boy, and latterly she had gone alone. She
thought that perhaps her visits cheered him, breaking
the intensity of his solitude; but he never expressed
himself gratified by them, never asked her to remain
at the house, never returned with her into Siena,
and continually spoke of her return to England as
a step which must be taken soon, and the sooner the
better. He intended to follow her, he said; and
she explained very fully how manifest was his wish
that she should go, by the temptation to do so which
he thought that he held out by this promise. He
had spoken, on every occasion of her presence with
him, of Sir Marmaduke’s attempt to prove him
to be a madman; but declared that he was afraid of
no one in England, and would face all the lawyers in
Chancery Lane and all the doctors in Savile Row.
Nevertheless, so said Mrs Trevelyan, he would undoubtedly
remain at Casalunga till after Sir Marmaduke should
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He Knew He Was Right from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
