’Disgraced him!  I have never disgraced him.  It is he that has disgraced me.  Correspondence!  Yes he shall see it all.  Unjust, ignorant, foolish man!  He does not remember that the last instructions he really gave me, were to bid me see Colonel Osborne.  Take my boy away!  Yes.  Of course, I am a woman and must suffer.  I will write to Colonel Osborne, and will tell him the truth, and will send my letter to Louis.  He shall know how he has ill-treated me!  I will not take a penny of his money, not a penny.  Maintain you!  I believe he thinks that we are beggars.  Leave this house because of my conduct!  What can Mrs Stanbury have said?  What can any of them have said?  I will demand to be told.  Free himself from the connection!  Oh, Nora, Nora! that it should come to this! that I should be thus threatened, who have been as innocent as a baby!  If it were not for my child, I think that I should destroy myself!’

Nora said what she could to comfort her sister, insisting chiefly on the promise that the child should not be taken away.  There was no doubt as to the husband’s power in the mind of either of them; and though, as regarded herself, Mrs Trevelyan would have defied her husband, let his power be what it might, yet she acknowledged to herself that she was in some degree restrained by the fear that she would find herself deprived of her only comfort.

‘We must just go where he bids us till papa comes,’ said Nora.

’And when papa is here, what help will there be then?  He will not let me go back to the islands with my boy.  For myself I might die, or get out of his way anywhere.  I can see that.  Priscilla Stanbury is right when she says that no woman should trust herself to any man.  Disgraced!  That I should live to be told by my husband that I had disgraced him by a lover!’

There was some sort of agreement made between the two sisters as to the manner in which Priscilla should be interrogated respecting the sentence of banishment which had been passed.  They both agreed that it would be useless to make inquiry of Mrs Stanbury.  If anything had really been said to justify the statement made in Mr Trevelyan’s letter, it must have come from Priscilla, and have reached Trevelyan through Priscilla’s brother.  They, both of them, had sufficiently learned the ways of the house to be sure that Mrs Stanbury had not been the person active in the matter.  They went down, therefore, together, and found Priscilla seated at her desk in the parlour.  Mrs Stanbury was also in the room, and it had been presumed between the sisters that the interrogation should be made in that lady’s absence; but Mrs Trevelyan was too hot in the matter for restraint, and she at once opened out her budget of grievance.

‘I have a letter from my husband,’ she said and then paused.  But Priscilla, seeing from the fire in her eyes that she was much moved, made no reply, but turned to listen to what might further be said.  ’I do not know why I should trouble you with his suspicions,’ continued Mrs Trevelyan, ‘or read to you what he says about Colonel Osborne.’  As she spoke she was holding her husband’s letter open in her hands.  ’There is nothing in it that you do not know.  He says I have corresponded with him.  So I have and he shall see the correspondence.  He says that Colonel Osborne visited me.  He did come to see me and Nora.’