‘It is cruel very cruel,’ said Trevelyan.  ’No man living could love his child better than I love mine or, for the matter of that, his wife.  It is very cruel.’

‘The remedy is in your own hands, Trevelyan,’ said Stanbury, as he marched off with the boy in his arms.

Trevelyan had now become so accustomed to being told by everybody that he was wrong, and was at the same time so convinced that he was right, that he regarded the perversity of his friends as a part of the persecution to which he was subjected.  Even Lady Milborough, who objected to Colonel Osborne quite as strongly as did Trevelyan himself, even she blamed him now, telling him that he had done wrong to separate himself from his wife.  Mr Bideawhile, the old family lawyer, was of the same opinion.  Trevelyan had spoken to Mr Bideawhile as to the expediency of making some lasting arrangement for a permanent maintenance for his wife; but the attorney had told him that nothing of the kind could be held to be lasting.  It was clearly the husband’s duty to look forward to a reconciliation, and Mr Bideawhile became quite severe in the tone of rebuke which he assumed.  Stanbury treated him almost as though he were a madman.  And as for his wife herself when she wrote to him she would not even pretend to express any feeling of affection.  And yet, as he thought, no man had ever done more for a wife.  When Stanbury had gone with the child, he sat waiting for him in the parlour of the public-house, as miserable a man as one could find.

He had promised himself something that should be akin to pleasure in seeing his boy but it had been all disappointment and pain.  What was it that they expected him to do?  What was it that they desired?  His wife had behaved with such indiscretion as almost to have compromised his honour; and in return for that he was to beg her pardon, confess himself to have done wrong, and allow her to return in triumph!  That was the light in which he regarded his own position; but he promised to himself that let his own misery be what it might he would never so degrade him.  The only person who had been true to him was Bozzle.  Let them all look to it.  If there were any further intercourse between his wife and Colonel Osborne, he would take the matter into open court, and put her away publicly, let Mr Bideawhile say what he might.  Bozzle should see to that and as to himself, he would take himself out of England and hide himself abroad.  Bozzle should know his address, but he would give it to no one else.  Nothing on earth should make him yield to a woman who had ill-treated him nothing but confession and promise of amendment on her part.  If she would acknowledge and promise, then he would forgive all, and the events of the last four months should never again be mentioned by him.  So resolving he sat and waited till Stanbury should return to him.