Lady Rowley took her candle and went to bed, professing to herself that she could not understand it.  But what did it signify?  It was, at any rate, certain now that the man had put himself out of Nora’s reach, and if he chose to marry a republican virago, with a red nose, it could now make no difference to Nora.  Lady Rowley almost felt a touch of satisfaction in reflecting on the future misery of his married life.

CHAPTER LXXVIII

CASALUNGA

Sir Marmaduke had been told at the Florence post-office that he would no doubt be able to hear tidings of Trevelyan, and to learn his address, from the officials in the post-office at Siena.  At Florence he had been introduced to some gentleman who was certainly of importance, a superintendent who had clerks under him and who was a big man.  This person had been very courteous to him, and he had gone to Siena thinking that he would find it easy to obtain Trevelyan’s address or to learn that there was no such person there.  But at Siena he and his courier together could obtain no information.  They rambled about the huge cathedral and the picturesque market-place of that quaint old city for the whole day, and on the next morning after breakfast they returned to Florence.  They had learned nothing.  The young man at the post-office had simply protested that he knew nothing of the name of Trevelyan.  If letters should come addressed to such a name, he would keep them till they were called for; but, to the best of his knowledge, he had never seen or heard the name.  At the guard-house of the gendarmerie they could not, or would not, give him any information, and Sir Marmaduke came back with an impression that everybody at Siena was ignorant, idiotic, and brutal.  Mrs Trevelyan was so dispirited as to be ill, and both Sir Marmaduke and Lady Rowley were disposed to think that the world was all against them.  ’You have no conception of the sort of woman that man is going to marry,’ said Lady Rowley.

‘What man?’

’Mr Glascock!  A horrid American female, as old almost as I am, who talks through her nose, and preaches sermons about the rights of women.  It is incredible!  And Nora might have had him just for lifting up her hand.’  But Sir Marmaduke could not interest himself much about Mr Glascock.  When he had been told that his daughter had refused the heir to a great estate and a peerage, it had been matter of regret; but he had looked upon the affair as done, and cared nothing now though Mr Glascock should marry a transatlantic Xantippe.  He was angry with Nora because by her obstinacy she was adding to the general perplexities of the family, but he could not make comparisons on Mr Glascock’s behalf between her and Miss Spalding as his wife was doing, either mentally or aloud, from hour to hour.  ’I suppose it ‘is too late now,’ said Lady Rowley, shaking her head.

’Of course it is too late.  The man must marry whom he pleases.  I am beginning to wonder that anybody should ever want to get married.  I am indeed.’