There had, of course, been many family consultations as to the manner in which this meeting should be arranged.  Should Sir Marmaduke accompany his wife or, perhaps, should Sir Marmaduke go alone?  Lady Rowley had been very much in favour of meeting Mr Trevelyan without any one to assist her in the conference.  As for Sir Marmaduke, no meeting could be concluded between him and his son-in-law without a personal, and probably a violent quarrel.  Of that Lady Rowley had been quite sure.  Sir Marmaduke, since he had been home, had, in the midst of his various troubles, been driven into so vehement a state of indignation against his son-in-law as to be unable to speak of the wretched man without strongest terms of opprobrium.  Nothing was too bad to be said by him of one who had ill-treated his dearest daughter.  It must be admitted that Sir Marmaduke had heard only one side of the question.  He had questioned his daughter, and had constantly seen his old friend Osborne.  The colonel’s journey down to Devonshire had been made to appear the most natural proceeding in the world.  The correspondence of which Trevelyan thought so much had been shown to consist of such notes as might pass between any old gentleman and any young woman.  The promise which Trevelyan had endeavoured to exact, and which Mrs Trevelyan had declined to give, appeared to the angry father to be a monstrous insult.  He knew that the colonel was an older man than himself, and his Emily was still to him only a young girl.  It was incredible to him that anybody should have regarded his old comrade as his daughter’s lover.  He did not believe that anybody had, in truth, so regarded the man.  The tale had been a monstrous invention on the part of the husband, got up because he had become tired of his young wife.  According to Sir Marmaduke’s way of thinking, Trevelyan should either be thrashed within an inch of his life, or else locked up in a mad-house.  Colonel Osborne shook his head, and expressed a conviction that the poor man was mad.

But Lady Rowley was more hopeful.  Though she was as confident about her daughter as was the father, she was less confident about the old friend.  She, probably, was alive to the fact that a man of fifty might put on the airs and assume the character of a young lover; and acting on that suspicion, entertaining also some hope that bad as matters now were they might be mended, she had taken care that Colonel Osborne and Mrs Trevelyan should not be brought together.  Sir Marmaduke had fumed, but Lady Rowley had been firm.  ‘If you think so, mamma,’ Mrs Trevelyan had said, with something of scorn in her tone ‘of course let it be so.’  Lady Rowley had said that it would be better so; and the two had not seen each other since the memorable visit to Nuncombe Putney.  And now Lady Rowley was about to meet her son-in law with some slight hope that she might arrange affairs.  She was quite aware that present indignation, though certainly a gratification, might be indulged in at much too great a cost.  It would be better for all reasons that Emily should go back to her husband and her home, and that Trevelyan should be forgiven for his iniquities.