While they were sitting at dinner on the next day, a Saturday, there came another note from Colonel Osborne.  The servant brought it to his mistress, and she, when she had looked at it, put it down by her plate.  Trevelyan knew immediately from whom the letter had come, and understood how impossible it was for his wife to give it up in the servant’s presence.  The letter lay there till the man was out of the room, and then she handed it to Nora.  ’Will you give that to Louis?’ she said.  ’It comes from the man whom he supposes to be my lover.’

‘Emily!’ said he, jumping from his seat, ’how can you allow words so horrible and so untrue to fall from your mouth?’ ’If it be not so, why am I to be placed in such a position as this?  The servant knows, of course, from whom the letter comes, and sees that I have been forbidden to open it.’  Then the man returned to the room, and the remainder of the dinner passed off almost in silence.  It was their custom when they dined without company to leave the dining-room together, but on this evening Trevelyan remained for a few minutes that he might read Colonel Osborne’s letter, He waited, standing on the rug with his face to the fire-place, till he was quite alone, and then he opened it.  It ran as follows: 

’House of Commons, Saturday.

‘Dear Emily,’ Trevelyan, as he read this, cursed Colonel Osborne between his teeth.

’Dear Emily,

I called this afternoon, but you were out.  I am afraid you will be disappointed by what I have to tell you, but you should rather be glad of it.  They say at the C.O. that Sir Marmaduke would not receive their letter if sent now till the middle of June, and that he could not be in London, let him do what he would, till the end of July.  They hope to have the session over by that time, and therefore the committee is to be put off till next session.  They mean to have Lord Bowles home from Canada, and they think that Bowles would like to be here in the winter.  Sir Marmaduke will be summoned for February next, and will of course stretch his stay over the hot months.  All this will, on the whole, be for the best.  Lady Rowley could hardly have packed up her things and come away at a day’s notice, whatever your father might have done.  I’ll call tomorrow at luncheon time.

Yours always,

F. O.’

There was nothing objectionable in this letter excepting always the ‘Dear Emily’ nothing which it was not imperative on Colonel Osborne to communicate to the person to whom it was addressed.  Trevelyan must now go upstairs and tell the contents of the letter to his wife.  But he felt that he had created for himself a terrible trouble.  He must tell his wife what was in the letter, but the very telling of it would be a renewing of the soreness of his wound.  And then what was to be done in reference to the threatened visit for the Sunday morning?  Trevelyan knew very well that were his wife denied at that hour,