’Not to-night.  I think he goes to bed almost as the sun sets.  I am never there myself after four or five in the afternoon.  I told him that you should be there tomorrow alone.  I have hired a little carriage, and you can take it.  He said specially that I was not to come with you.  Papa goes certainly on next Saturday?’ It was a Saturday now, this day on which Stanbury had arrived at Siena.

‘He leaves town on Friday.’

’You must make him believe that.  Do not tell him suddenly, but bring it in by degrees.  He thinks that I am deceiving him.  He would go back if he knew that papa were gone.’

They spent a long evening together, and Stanbury learned all that Mrs Trevelyan could tell him of her husband’s state.  There was no doubt, she said, that his reason was affected; but she thought the state of his mind was diseased in a ratio the reverse of that of his body, and that when he was weakest in health, then were his ideas the most clear and rational.  He never now mentioned Colonel Osborne’s name, but would refer to the affairs of the last two years as though they had been governed by an inexorable Fate which had utterly destroyed his happiness without any fault on his part.  ‘You may be sure,’ she said, ’that I never accuse him.  Even when he says terrible things of me, which he does, I never excuse myself.  I do not think I should answer a word if he called me the vilest thing on earth.’  Before they parted for the night many questions were of course asked about Nora, and Hugh described the condition in which he and she stood to each other.  ’Papa has consented, then?’

‘Yes, at four o’clock in the morning, just as I was leaving them.’

‘And when is it to be?’

’Nothing has been settled, and I do not as yet know where she will go to when they leave London.  I think she will visit Monkhams when the Glascock people return to England.’

’What an episode in life to go and see the place, when it might all now have been hers!’

’I suppose I ought to feel dreadfully ashamed of myself for having marred such promotion,’ said Hugh.

’Nora is such a singular girl, so firm, so headstrong, so good, and so self-reliant, that she will do as well with a poor man as she would have done with a rich.  Shall I confess to you that I did wish that she should accept Mr Glascock, and that I pressed it on her very strongly?  You will not be angry with me?’

‘I am only the more proud of her and of myself.’

’When she was told of all that he had to give in the way of wealth and rank, she took the bit between her teeth and would not be turned an inch.  Of course she was in love.’

‘I hope she may never regret it, that is all.’

’She must change her nature first.  Everything she sees at Monkhams will make her stronger in her choice.  With all her girlish ways, she is like a rock; nothing can move her.’