As Hugh Stanbury went over to Lessboro’, and from thence to Nuncombe Putney, he thought more of himself and Nora Rowley than he did of Mr and Mrs Trevelyan. As to Mrs Trevelyan and Colonel Osborne, he felt that he knew everything that it was necessary that he should know. The man had been there, and had seen Mrs Trevelyan. Of that there could be no doubt. That Colonel Osborne had been wickedly indifferent to the evil consequences of such a visit, and that all the women concerned had been most foolish in permitting him to make it, was his present conviction. But he did not for a moment doubt that the visit had in itself been of all things the most innocent. Trevelyan had sworn that if his wife received the man at Nuncombe Putney, he would never see her again. She had seen him, and this oath would be remembered, and there would be increased difficulties. But these difficulties, whatever they might be, must be overcome. When he had told himself this, then he allowed his mind to settle itself on Nora Rowley.
Hitherto he had known Miss Rowley only as a fashionable girl living with the wife of an intimate friend of his own in London. He had never been staying in the same house with her. Circumstances had never given to him the opportunity of assuming the manner of an intimate friend, justifying him in giving advice, and authorising him to assume that semi-paternal tone which is by far the easiest preliminary to love-making. When a man can tell a young lady what she ought to read, what she ought to do, and whom she ought to know, nothing can be easier than to assure her that, of all her duties, her first duty is to prefer himself to all the world. And any young lady who has consented to receive lessons from such a teacher, will generally be willing to receive this special lesson among others. But Stanbury had hitherto had no such opportunities. In London Miss Rowley had been a fashionable young lady, living in Mayfair, and he had been well, anything but a fashionable young man. Nevertheless, he had seen her often, had sat by her very frequently, was quite sure that he loved her dearly, and had, perhaps, some self-flattering idea in his mind that had he stuck to his honourable profession as a barrister, and were he possessed of some comfortable little fortune of his own, he might, perhaps, have been able, after due siege operations, to make this charming young woman his own. Things were quite changed now. For the present, Miss Rowley certainly could not be regarded as a fashionable London young lady. The house in which he would see her was, in some sort, his own. He would be sleeping under the same roof with her, and would have all the advantages which such a position could give him. He would have no difficulty now in asking, if he should choose to ask; and he thought that she might be somewhat softer, somewhat more likely to yield at Nuncombe Putney, than she would have been in London. She was at Nuncombe in weak circumstances, to a certain degree friendless; with none of the excitement of society around her, with no elder sons buzzing about her and filling her mind, if not her heart, with the glories of luxurious primogeniture. Hugh Stanbury certainly did not dream that any special elder son had as yet been so attracted as to have made a journey to Nuncombe Putney on Nora’s behalf. But should he on this account, because she would be, as it were, without means of defence from his attack, should he therefore take advantage of her weakness? She would, of course, go back to her London life after some short absence, and would again, if free, have her chance among the favoured ones of the earth. What had he to offer to her? He had taken the Clock House for his mother, and it would be quite as much as he could do, when Mrs Trevelyan should have left the village, to keep up that establishment and maintain himself in London, quite as much as he could do, even though the favours of the ‘D. R.’ should flow upon him with their fullest tides. In such circumstances, would it be honourable in him to ask a girl to love him because he found her defenceless in his mother’s house?
‘If there bain’t another for Nuncombe,’ said Mrs. Clegg’s Ostler to Mrs Clegg’s Boots, as Stanbury was driven off in a gig.
‘That be young Stanbury, a-going of whome.’
‘They be all a-going for the Clock House. Since the old ‘ooman took to thick there house, there be folk a-comin’ and a-goin’ every day loike.’
‘It’s along of the madam that they keeps there, Dick,’ said the Boots.
‘I didn’t care if there’d be madams allays. They’re the best as is going for trade anyhow,’ said the ostler. What the ostler said was true. When there comes to be a feeling that a woman’s character is in any way tarnished, there comes another feeling that everybody on the one side may charge double, and that everybody on the other side must pay double, for everything. Hugh Stanbury could not understand why he was charged a shilling a mile, instead of ninepence, for the gig to Nuncombe Putney. He got no satisfactory answer, and had to pay the shilling. The truth was, that gigs to Nuncombe Putney had gone up, since a lady, separated from her husband, with a colonel running after her, had been taken in at the Clock House.
‘Here’s Hugh!’ said Priscilla, hurrying to the front door. And Mrs Stanbury hurried after her. Her son Hugh was the apple of her eye, the best son that ever lived, generous, noble, a thorough man, almost a god!
‘Dear, dear, oh dear! Who’d have expected it? God bless you, my boy! Why didn’t you write? Priscilla, what is there in the house that he can eat?’
‘Plenty of bread and cheese,’ said Priscilla, laughing, with her hand inside her brother’s arm. For though Priscilla hated all other men, she did not hate her brother Hugh. ‘If you wanted things nice to eat directly you got here, you ought to have written.’
‘I shall want my dinner, like any other Christian in due time,’ said Hugh. ‘And how is Mrs Trevelyan and how is Miss Rowley?’
He soon found himself in company with those two ladies, and experienced some immediate difficulty in explaining the cause of his sudden coming. But this was soon put aside by Mrs Trevelyan.
‘When did you see my husband?’ she asked.
‘I saw him yesterday. He was quite well.’
‘Colonel Osborne has been here,’ she said.
‘I know that he has been here. I met him at the station at Exeter. Perhaps I should not say so, but I wish he had remained away.’
‘We all wish it,’ said Priscilla.
Then Nora spoke. ‘But what could we do, Mr Stanbury? It seemed so natural that he should call when he was in the neighbourhood. We have known him so long; and how could we refuse to see him?’
‘I will not let any one think that I’m afraid to see any man on earth,’ said Mrs Trevelyan. ‘If he had ever in his life said a word that he should not have said, a word that would have been an insult, of course it would have been different. But the notion of it is preposterous. Why should I not have seen him?’
‘I think he was wrong to come,’ said Hugh.
‘Of course he was wrong, wickedly wrong,’ said Priscilla.
Stanbury, finding that the subject was openly discussed between them, declared plainly the mission that had brought him to Nuncombe. ‘Trevelyan heard that he was coming, and asked me to let him know the truth,’
‘Now you can tell him the truth,’ said Mrs Trevelyan, with something of indignation in her tone, as though she thought that Stanbury had taken upon himself a task of which he ought to be ashamed.
‘But Colonel Osborne came specially to pay a visit to Cockchaffington,’ said Nora, ‘and not to see us. Louis ought to know that.’
‘Nora, how can you demean yourself to care about such trash?’ said Mrs Trevelyan. ‘Who cares why he came here? His visit to me was a thing of course. If Mr Trevelyan disapproves of it, let him say so, and not send secret messengers.’
‘Am I a secret messenger?’ said Hugh Stanbury.
‘There has been a man here, inquiring of the servants,’ said Priscilla. So that odious Bozzle had made his foul mission known to them! Stanbury, however, thought it best to say nothing of Bozzle, not to acknowledge that he had ever heard of Bozzle. ‘I am sure Mrs Trevelyan does not mean you,’ said Priscilla.
‘I do not know what I mean,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.
‘I am so harassed and fevered by these suspicions that I am driven nearly mad.’ Then she left the room for a minute and returned with two letters. ‘There, Mr Stanbury; I got that note from Colonel Osborne, and wrote to him that reply. You know all about it now. Can you say that I was wrong to see him?’
‘I am sure that he was wr............