‘And be trampled upon?’ said Mrs Trevelyan.

’Yes; and be trampled upon, if he should trample on you, which, however, he is the last man in the world to do.’

’And to endure any insult and any names?  You yourself you would be a Griselda, I suppose.’

‘I don’t want to talk about myself,’ said Nora, ’nor about Griselda.  But I know that, however unreasonable it may seem, you had better give way to him now and tell him what there was in the note to Colonel Osborne.’

’Never!  He has ordered me not to see him or to write to him, or to open his letters having, mind you, ordered just the reverse a day or two before; and I will obey him.  Absurd as it is, I will obey him.  But as for submitting to him, and letting him suppose that I think he is right—­ never!  I should be lying to him then, and I will never lie to him.  He has said that we must part, and I suppose it will be better so.  How can a woman live with a man that suspects her?  He cannot take my baby from me.’

There were many such conversations as the above between the two sisters before Mrs Trevelyan received from her husband the communication with which she had been threatened.  And Nora, acting on her own judgment in the matter, made an attempt to see Mr Trevelyan, writing to him a pretty little note, and beseeching him to be kind to her.  But he declined to see her, and the two women sat at home, with the baby between them, holding such pleasant conversations as that above narrated.  When such tempests occur in a family, a woman will generally suffer the least during the thick of the tempest.  While the hurricane is at the fiercest, she will be sustained by the most thorough conviction that the right is on her side, that she is aggrieved, that there is nothing for her to acknowledge, and no position that she need surrender.  Whereas her husband will desire a compromise, even amidst the violence of the storm.  But afterwards, when the wind has lulled, but while the heavens around are still all black and murky, then the woman’s sufferings begin.  When passion gives way to thought and memory, she feels the loneliness of her position, the loneliness, and the possible degradation.  It is all very well for a man to talk about his name and his honour; but it is the woman’s honour and the woman’s name that are, in truth, placed in jeopardy.  Let the woman do what she will, the man can, in truth, show his face in the world and, after awhile, does show his face.  But the woman may be compelled to veil hers, either by her own fault, or by his.  Mrs Trevelyan was now told that she was to be separated from her husband, and she did not, at any rate, believe that she had done any harm.  But, if such separation did come, where could she live, what could she do, what position in the world would she possess?  Would not her face be, in truth, veiled as effectually as though she had disgraced herself and her husband?