‘Good-bye, Stanbury.’

Stanbury paused at the door, and then once more turned round.  ’I suppose it is of no use my saying anything further; but I wish you to understand fully that I regard your wife as a woman much ill-used, and I think you are punishing her, and yourself, too, with a cruel severity for an indiscretion of the very slightest kind.’

CHAPTER XXVII

MR TREVELYAN’S LETTER TO HIS WIFE

Trevelyan, when he was left alone, sat for above a couple of hours contemplating the misery of his position, and endeavouring to teach himself by thinking what ought to be his future conduct.  It never occurred to him during these thoughts that it would be well that he should at once take back his wife, either as a matter of duty, or of welfare, for himself or for her.  He had taught himself to believe that she had disgraced him; and, though this feeling of disgrace made him so wretched that he wished that he were dead, he would allow himself to make no attempt at questioning the correctness of his conviction.  Though he were to be shipwrecked for ever, even that seemed to be preferable to supposing that he had been wrong.  Nevertheless, he loved his wife dearly, and, in the white heat of his anger endeavoured to be merciful to her.  When Stanbury accused him of severity, he would not condescend to defend himself; but he told himself then of his great mercy.  Was he not as fond of his own boy as any other father, and had he not allowed her to take the child because he had felt that a mother’s love was more imperious, more craving in its nature, than the love of a father?  Had that been severe?  And had he not resolved to allow her every comfort which her unfortunate position the self-imposed misfortune of her position would allow her to enjoy?  She had come to him without a shilling; and yet, bad as her treatment of him had been, he was willing to give enough not only to support her, but her sister also, with every comfort.  Severe!  No; that, at least, was an undeserved accusation.  He had been anything but severe.  Foolish he might have been, in taking a wife from a home in which she had been unable to learn the discretion of a matron; too trusting he had been, and too generous but certainly not severe.  But, of course, as he said to himself, a young man like Stanbury would take the part of a woman with whose sister he was in love.  Then he turned his thoughts upon Bozzle, and there came over him a crushing feeling of ignominy, shame, moral dirt, and utter degradation, as he reconsidered his dealings with that ingenious gentleman.  He was paying a rogue to watch the steps of a man whom he hated, to pry into the home secrets, to read the letters, to bribe the servants, to record the movements of this rival, this successful rival, in his wife’s affections!  It was a filthy thing and yet what could he do?  Gentlemen of old, his own grandfather or his father, would have taken such a fellow as Colonel Osborne by the throat and have caned him, and afterwards would have shot him, or have stood to be shot.