’What business is it of yours, Mr Stanbury, whether I have seen that lady or not?’

‘Unhappily for me, her husband has made it my business.’

‘Very unhappily for you, I should say.’

‘And the lady is staying at my mother’s house.’

’I presume the lady is not a prisoner in your mother’s house, and that your mother’s hospitality is not so restricted but that her guest may see an old friend under her roof.’  This, Colonel Osborne said with an assumed look of almost righteous indignation, which was not at all lost upon Bozzle.  They had returned back towards the bookstall, and Bozzle, with his eyes fixed on a copy of the ‘D.  R.’ which he had just bought, was straining his ears to the utmost to catch what was being said.

‘You best know whether you have seen her or not.’

‘I have seen her.’

’Then I shall take leave to tell you, Colonel Osborne, that you have acted in a most unfriendly way, and have done that which must tend to keep an affectionate husband apart from his wife.’

’Sir, I don’t at all understand this kind of thing addressed to me.  The father of the lady you are speaking of has been my most intimate friend for thirty years.’  After all, the Coonel was a mean man when he could take pride in his youth, and defend himself on the score of his age, in one and the same proceeding.

‘I have nothing further to say,’ replied Stanbury.

‘You have said too much already, Mr Stanbury.’

’I think not, Colonel Osborne.  You have, I fear, done an incredible deal of mischief by going to Nuncombe Putney; and, after all that you have heard on the subject, you must have known that it would be mischievous.  I cannot understand how you can force yourself about a man’s wife against the man’s expressed wish.’

’Sir, I didn’t force myself upon anybody.  Sir, I went down to see an old friend and a remarkable piece of antiquity.  And, when another old friend was in the neighbourhood, close by, one of the oldest friends I have in the world, wasn’t I to go and see her?  God bless my soul!  What business is it of yours?  I never heard such impudence in my life!’ Let the charitable reader suppose that Colonel Osborne did not know that he was lying—­that he really thought, when he spoke, that he had gone down to Lessboro’ to see the remarkable piece of antiquity.

‘Good morning,’ said Hugh Stanbury, turning on his heels and walking away.  Colonel Osborne shook himself, inflated his cheeks, and blew forth the breath out of his mouth, put his thumbs up to the armholes of his waistcoat, and walked about the platform as though he thought it to be incumbent on him to show that he was somebody, somebody that ought not to be insulted, somebody, perhaps, whom a very pretty woman might prefer to her own husband, in spite of a small difference in age.  He was angry, but not quite so much angry as proud.  And he was safe, too.  He thought that he was safe.  When he should come to account for himself and his actions to his old friend, Sir Marmaduke, he felt that he would be able to show that he had been, in all respects, true to friendship.  Sir Marmaduke had unfortunately given his daughter to a jealous, disagreeable fellow, and the fault all lay in that.  As for Hugh Stanbury he would simply despise Hugh Stanbury, and have done with it.