‘D n and b t it all for ever!’ said Trevelyan, gnashing his teeth, and moving away into Union Street as fast as he could walk.  And he did go away, leaving Bozzle standing in the middle of Stony Walk.

’He’s disturbed in his mind quite ‘orrid,’ Bozzle said when he got back to his wife.  ‘He cursed and swore as made even me feel bad.’

‘B.,’ said is wife, ’do you listen to me.  Get in what’s a howing and don’t you have any more to do with it.’

CHAPTER LX

ANOTHER STRUGGLE

Sir Marmaduke and Lady Rowley were to reach England about the end of March or the beginning of April, and both Mrs Trevelyan and Nora Rowley were almost sick for their arrival.  Both their uncle and aunt had done very much for them, had been true to them in their need, and had submitted to endless discomforts in order that their nieces might have respectable shelter in their great need; but nevertheless their conduct had not been of a kind to produce either love or friendship.  Each of the sisters felt that she had been much better off at Nuncombe Putney; and that either the weakness of Mrs Stanbury, or the hardness of Priscilla, was preferable to the repulsive forbearance of their clerical host.  He did not scold them.  He never threw it in Mrs Trevelyan’s teeth that she had been separated from her husband by her own fault; he did not tell them of his own discomfort.  But he showed it in every gesture, and spoke of it in every tone of his voice, so that Mrs Trevelyan could not refrain from apologising for the misfortune of her presence.

‘My dear,’ he said, ’things can’t be pleasant and unpleasant at the same time.  You were quite right to come here.  I am glad for all our sakes that Sir Marmaduke will be with us so soon.’

She had almost given up in her mind the hope that she had long cherished, that she might some day be able to live again with her husband.  Every step which he now took in reference to her seemed to be prompted by so bitter an hostility, that she could not but believe that she was hateful to him.  How was it possible that a husband and his wife should again come together, when there had been between them such an emissary as a detective policeman?  Mrs Trevelyan had gradually come to learn that Bozzle had been at Nuncombe Putney, watching her, and to be aware that she was still under the surveillance of his eye.  For some months past now she had neither seen Colonel Osborne, nor heard from him.  He had certainly by his folly done much to produce the ruin which had fallen upon her; but it never occurred to her to blame him.  Indeed she did not know that he was liable to blame.  Mr Outhouse always spoke of him with indignant scorn, and Nora had learned to think that much of their misery was due to his imprudence.  But Mrs Trevelyan would not see this, and, not seeing it, was more widely separated from her husband than she would have been had she acknowledged that any excuse for his misconduct had been afforded by the vanity and folly of the other man.