‘It is very hard for a woman to know what to do,’ continued Emily, ’but if she is to marry, I think she had better marry a fool.  After all, a fool generally knows that he is a fool, and will trust some one, though he may not trust his wife.’

‘I will never wittingly marry a fool,’ said Nora.

’You will marry Mr Glascock, of course.  I don’t say that he is a fool; but I do not think he has that kind of strength which shows itself in perversity.’

‘If he asked me, I should not have him, and he will never ask me.’

’He will ask you, and, of course, you’ll take him.  Why not?  You can’t be otherwise than a woman.  And you must marry.  And this man is a gentleman, and will be a peer.  There is nothing on earth against him, except that he does not set the Thames on fire.  Louis intends to set the Thames on fire some day, and see what comes of it.’

’All the same, I shall not marry Mr Glascock.  A woman can die, at any rate,’ said Nora.

’No, she can’t.  A woman must be decent; and to die of want is very indecent.  She can’t die, and she mustn’t be in want, and she oughtn’t to be a burden.  I suppose it was thought necessary that every man should have two to choose from; and therefore there are so many more of us than the world wants.  I wonder whether you’d mind taking that downstairs to his table?  I don’t like to send it by the servant; and I don’t want to go myself.’

Then Nora had taken the letter down, and left it where Louis Trevelyan would be sure to find it.

He did find it, and was sorely disappointed when he perceived that it contained no word from his wife to himself.  He opened Colonel Osborne’s note, and read it, and became, as he did so, almost more angry than before.  Who was this man that he should dare to address another man’s wife as ‘Dear Emily’?  At the moment Trevelyan remembered well enough that he had heard the man so call his wife, that it had been done openly in his presence, and had not given him a thought.  But Lady Rowley and Sir Marmaduke had then been present also; and that man on that occasion had been the old friend of the old father, and not the would-be young friend of the young daughter.  Trevelyan could hardly reason about it, but felt that whereas the one was not improper, the other was grossly impertinent and even wicked.  And then, again, his wife, his Emily, was to show to him, to her husband, or was not to show to him, the letter which she received from this man, the letter in which she was addressed as ‘Dear Emily,’ according to this man’s judgment and wish, and not according to his judgment and wish—­not according to the judgment and wish of him who was her husband, her lord, and her master!  ’Of course, you will tell T. now.’  This was intolerable to him.  It made him feel that he was to be regarded as second, and this man to be regarded as first.  And then he began to recapitulate all the good things he had done for his wife, and all the causes which he had