‘I wish to have my wife back again.’

’Simply that.  If she will agree to come back, you will make no difficulty.’

’No; not quite simply that.  I shall desire that she shall be guided by my wishes as to any intimacies she may form.’

’That is all very well; but is she to give any undertaking?  Do you intend to exact any promise from her?  It is my opinion that she will be willing enough to come back, and that when she is with you there will be no further cause for quarrelling.  But I don’t think she will bind herself by any exacted promise; and certainly not through a third person.’

’Then say nothing about it.  Let her write a letter to me proposing to come and she shall come.’

’Very well.  So far I understand.  And now what about Colonel Osborne?  You don’t want me to quarrel with him I suppose?’

‘I should like to keep that for myself,’ said Trevelyan, grimly.

‘If you will take my advice you will not trouble yourself about him,’ said Stanbury.  ’But as far as I am concerned, I am not to meddle or make with him?  Of course,’ continued Stanbury, after a pause, ’if I find that he is intruding himself in my mother’s house, I shall tell him that he must not come there.’

’But if you find him installed in your mother’s house as a visitor how then?’

‘I do not regard that as possible.’

‘I don’t mean living there,’ said Trevelyan, ’but coming backwards and forwards going on in habits of intimacy with with ?’ His voice trembled so as he asked these questions, that he could not pronounce the word which was to complete them.

‘With Mrs Trevelyan, you mean.’

’Yes; with my wife.  I don’t say that it is so; but it may be so.  You will be bound to tell me the truth.’

‘I will certainly tell you the truth.’

‘And the whole truth.’

‘Yes; the whole truth.’

’Should it be so I will never see her again never.  And as for him—­but never mind.’  Then there was another short period of silence, during which Stanbury smoked his pipe and sipped his whisky toddy.  ’You must see,’ continued Trevelyan, ’that it is absolutely necessary that I should do something.  It is all very well for you to say that you do not like detectives.  Neither do I like them.  But what was I to do?  When you condemn me you hardly realise the difficulties of my position.’

‘It is the deuce of a nuisance certainly,’ said Stansbury, through the cloud of smoke, thinking now not at all of Mrs Trevelyan, but of Mrs Trevelyan’s sister.

‘It makes a man almost feel that he had better not marry at all,’ said Trevelyan.

’I don’t see that.  Of course there may come troubles.  The tiles may fall on your head, you know, as you walk through the streets.  As far as I can see, women go straight enough nineteen times out of twenty.  But they don’t like being what I call looked after.’

‘And did I look after my wife more than I ought?’