CHAPTER XCI

FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Another week went by and Sir Marmaduke had even yet not surrendered.  He quite understood that Nora was not to go back to the Islands and had visited Mr and Mrs Outhouse at St. Diddulph’s in order to secure a home for her there, if it might be possible.  Mr Outhouse did not refuse, but gave the permission in such a fashion as to make it almost equal to a refusal.  ‘He was,’ he said, ’much attached to his niece Nora, but he had heard that there was a love affair.’  Sir Marmaduke, of course, could not deny the love affair.  There was certainly a love affair of which he did not personally approve, as the gentleman had no fixed income and as far as he could understand no fixed profession.  ’Such a love affair,’ thought Mr Outhouse, ’was a sort of thing that he didn’t know how to manage at all.  If Nora came to him, was the young man to visit at the house, or was he not?’ Then Mrs Outhouse said something as to the necessity of an anti-Stanbury pledge on Nora’s part, and Sir Marmaduke found that that scheme must be abandoned.  Mrs Trevelyan had written from Florence more than once or twice, and in her last letter had said that she would prefer not to have Nora with her.  She was at that time living in lodgings at Siena and had her boy there also.  She saw her husband every other day; but nevertheless, according to her statements, her visits to Casalunga were made in opposition to his wishes.  He had even expressed a desire that she should leave Siena and return to England.  He had once gone so far as to say that if she would do so, he would follow her.  But she clearly did not believe him, and in all her letters spoke of him as one whom she could not regard as being under the guidance of reason.  She had taken her child with her once or twice to the house, and on the first occasion Trevelyan had made much of his son, had wept over him, and professed that in losing him he had lost his only treasure; but after that he had not noticed the boy, and latterly she had gone alone.  She thought that perhaps her visits cheered him, breaking the intensity of his solitude; but he never expressed himself gratified by them, never asked her to remain at the house, never returned with her into Siena, and continually spoke of her return to England as a step which must be taken soon, and the sooner the better.  He intended to follow her, he said; and she explained very fully how manifest was his wish that she should go, by the temptation to do so which he thought that he held out by this promise.  He had spoken, on every occasion of her presence with him, of Sir Marmaduke’s attempt to prove him to be a madman; but declared that he was afraid of no one in England, and would face all the lawyers in Chancery Lane and all the doctors in Savile Row.  Nevertheless, so said Mrs Trevelyan, he would undoubtedly remain at Casalunga till after Sir Marmaduke should