When he read that letter over to himself a second time he felt quite sure that he had not committed himself.  Even if his friend were to send the letter to her husband, it could not do him any harm.  He was aware that he might have dilated more on the old friendship between himself and Sir Marmaduke, but he experienced a certain distaste to the mention of things appertaining to years long past.  It did not quite suit him in his present frame of mind to speak of his regard in those quasi-paternal terms which he would have used had it satisfied him to represent himself simply as her father’s friend.  His language therefore had been a little doubtful, so that the lady might, if she were so minded, look upon him in that tender light in which her husband had certainly chosen to regard him.

When the letter was handed to Mrs Trevelyan, she at once took it with her up to her own room, so that she might be alone when she read it.  The handwriting was quite familiar to her, and she did not choose that even her sister should see it.  She had told herself twenty times over that, while living at Nuncombe Putney, she was not living under the guardianship of Mrs Stanbury.  She would consent to live under the guardianship of no one, as her husband did not choose to remain with her and protect her.  She had done no wrong, and she would submit to no other authority, than that of her legal lord and master.  Nor, according to her views of her own position, was it in his power to depute that authority to others.  He had caused the separation, and now she must be the sole judge of her own actions.  In itself, a correspondence between her and her father’s old friend was in no degree criminal or even faulty.  There was no reason, moral, social, or religious, why an old man, over fifty, who had known her all her life, should not write to her.  But yet she could not say aloud before Mrs Stanbury, and Priscilla, and her sister, that she had received a letter from Colonel Osborne.  She felt that the colour had come to her cheek, and that she could not even walk out of the room as though the letter had been a matter of indifference to her.

And would it have been a matter of indifference had there been nobody there to see her?  Mrs Trevelyan was certainly not in love with Colonel Osborne.  She was not more so now than she had been when her father’s friend, purposely dressed for the occasion, had kissed her in the vestry of the church in which she was married, and had given her a blessing, which was then intended to be semi-paternal as from an old man to a young woman.  She was not in love with him never would be, never could be in love with him.  Reader, you may believe in her so far as that.  But where is the woman, who, when she is neglected, thrown over, and suspected by the man that she loves, will not feel the desire of some sympathy, some solicitude, some show of regard from another man?  This woman’s life, too, had not hitherto been of such a nature