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 upstairs.  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 lived in the Mandarin Islands almost since she had been a child, who had lived in one colony or another almost since she had been born, who had had so few of those advantages for which he should have looked in marrying a wife, how was the poor girl to conduct herself properly when subjected to the arts and practised villanies of this viper?  And yet the poor girl was so stiff in her temper, had picked up such a trick of obstinacy in those tropical regions, that Louis Trevelyan felt that he did not know how to manage her.  He too had heard how Jane Marriott had been carried off to Naples after she had become Mrs Poole.  Must he too carry off his wife to Naples in order to place her out of the reach of this hyena?  It was terrible to him to think that he must pack up everything and run away from such a one as Colonel Osborne.  And even were he to consent to do this, how could he explain it all to that very wife for whose sake he would do it?  If she got a hint of the reason she would, he did not doubt, refuse to go.  As he thought of it, and as that visit upstairs prolonged itself, he almost thought it would be best for him to be round with her!  We all know what a husband means when he resolves to be round with his wife.  He began to think that he would not apologise at all for the words he had spoken but would speak them again somewhat more sharply than before.  She would be very wrathful with him; there would be a silent enduring indignation, which, as he understood well, would be infinitely worse than any torrent of words.  But was he, a man, to abstain from doing that which he believed to be his duty because he was afraid of his wife’s anger?  Should he be deterred from saying that which he conceived it would be right that he should say, because she was stiff-necked?  No.  He would not apologise, but would tell her again that it was necessary, both for his happiness and for hers, that all intimacy with Colonel Osborne should be discontinued.