’Yes and he will pay the rent; and we shall be a drag upon him, as though he had been fool enough to have a wife and a family of his own.  And what good have we done?  We had not strength enough to say that that wicked man should not see her when he came, for he is a wicked man.’

‘If we had done that she would have been as bad then as she is now.’

’Mother, we had no business to meddle either with her badness or her goodness.  What had we to do with the wife of such a one as Mr Trevelyan, or with any woman who was separated from her husband?’

‘It was Hugh who thought we should be of service to them.’

’Yes and I do not blame him.  He is in a position to be of service to people.  He can do work and earn money, and has a right to think and to speak.  We have a right to think only for ourselves, and we should not have yielded to him.  How are we to get back again out of this house to our cottage?’

‘They are pulling the cottage down, Priscilla.’

’To some other cottage, mother.  Do you not feel while we are living here that we are pretending to be what we are not?  After all, Aunt Stanbury was right, though it was not her business to meddle with us.  We should never have come here.  That poor woman now regards us as her bitter enemies.’

‘I meant to do for the best,’ said Mrs Stanbury.

‘The fault was mine, mother.’

‘But you meant it for the best, my dear.’

’Meaning for the best is trash.  I don’t know that I did mean it for the best.  While we were at the cottage we paid our way and were honest.  What is it people say of us now?’

‘They can’t say any harm.’

’They say that we are paid by the husband to keep his wife, and paid again by the lover to betray the husband.’

‘Priscilla!’

’Yes it is shocking enough.  But that comes of people going out of their proper course.  We were too humble and low to have a right to take any part in such a matter.  How true it is that while one crouches on the ground, one can never fall.’

The matter was discussed in the Clock House all day, between Mrs Stanbury and Priscilla, and between Mrs Trevelyan and Nora, in their rooms and in the garden; but nothing could come of such discussions.  No change could be made till further instructions should have been received from the angry husband; nor could any kind of argument be even invented by Priscilla which might be efficacious in inducing the two ladies to remain at the Clock House, even should Mr Trevelyan allow them to do so.  They all felt the intolerable injustice, as it appeared to them, of their subjection to the caprice of an unreasonable and ill-conditioned man; but to all of them it seemed plain enough that in this matter the husband must exercise his own will at any rate, till Sir Marmaduke should be in England.  There were many difficulties throughout the day.  Mrs Trevelyan would not go down to dinner, sending