This was intended well by Nora, but it did not have the desired effect.  Trevelyan, who had no command over his own features, frowned, and showed that he was displeased.  He hesitated a moment, thinking whether he would ask Nora any question as to this report about her father and mother; but, before he had spoken, his wife was in the room.

‘We are all late, I fear,’ said Emily.

‘You, at any rate, are the last,’ said her husband.

‘About half a minute,’ said the wife.

Then they got into the hired brougham which was standing at the door.

Trevelyan, in the sweet days of his early confidence with his wife, had offered to keep a carriage for her, explaining to her that the luxury, though costly, would not be beyond his reach.  But she had persuaded him against the carriage, and there had come to be an agreement that instead of the carriage there should always be an autumn tour.  ’One learns something from going about; but one learns nothing from keeping a carriage,’ Emily had said.  Those had been happy days, in which it had been intended that everything should always be rose-coloured.  Now he was meditating whether, in lieu of that autumn tour, it would not be necessary to take his wife away to Naples altogether, so that she might be removed from the influence of, of, of, of—­no, not even to himself would he think of Colonel Osborne as his wife’s lover.  The idea was too horrible!  And yet, how dreadful was it that he should have, for any reason, to withdraw her from the influence of any man!

Lady Milborough lived ever so far away, in Eccleston Square, but Trevelyan did not say a single word to either of his companions during the journey.  He was cross and vexed, and was conscious that they knew that he was cross and vexed.  Mrs Trevelyan and her sister talked to each other the whole way, but they did so in that tone which clearly indicates that the conversation is made up, not for any interest attached to the questions asked or the answers given, but because it is expedient that there should not be silence.  Nora said something about Marshall and Snellgrove and tried to make believe that she was very anxious for her sister’s answer.  And Emily said something about the opera at Covent Garden, which was intended to show that her mind was quite at ease.  But both of them failed altogether, and knew that they failed.  Once or twice Trevelyan thought that he would say a word in token, as it were, of repentance.  Like the naughty child who knew that he was naughty, he was trying to be good.  But he could not do it.  The fiend was too strong within him.  She must have known that there was a proposition for her father’s return through Colonel Osborne’s influence.  As that man at the club had heard it, how could she not have known it?  When they got out at Lady Milborough’s door he had spoken to neither of them.