’I have considered, Lady Milborough.  It cannot be a wife’s duty to acknowledge that she has been wrong in such a matter as this.’

Then Lady Milborough made her curtsey and got herself away in some manner that was sufficiently awkward, and Mrs Trevelyan curtseyed also as she rang the bell; and, though she was sore and wretched, and, in truth, sadly frightened, she was not awkward.  In that encounter, so far as it had gone, she had been the victor.

As soon as she was alone and the carriage had been driven well away from the door, Mrs Trevelyan left the drawing-room and went up to the nursery.  As she entered she clothed her face with her sweetest smile.  ‘How is his own mother’s dearest, dearest, darling duck’ she said, putting out her arms and taking the boy from the nurse.  The child was at this time about ten months old, and was a strong, hearty, happy infant, always laughing when he was awake and always sleeping when he did not laugh, because his little limbs were free from pain and his little stomach was not annoyed by internal troubles.  He kicked, and crowed, and sputtered, when his mother took him, and put up his little fingers to clutch her hair, and was to her as a young god upon the earth.  Nothing in the world had ever been created so beautiful, so joyous, so satisfactory, so divine!  And they told her that this apple of her eye was to be taken away from her!  No that must be impossible.  ’I will take him into my own room, nurse, for a little while—­you have had him all the morning,’ she said; as though the ‘having baby’ was a privilege over which there might almost be a quarrel.  Then she took her boy away with her, and when she was alone with him, went through such a service in baby-worship as most mothers will understand.  Divide these two!  No; nobody should do that.  Sooner than that, she, the mother, would consent to be no more than a servant in her husband’s house.  Was not her baby all the world to her?

On the evening of that day the husband and wife had an interview together in the library, which, unfortunately, was as unsatisfactory as Lady Milborough’s visit.  The cause of the failure of them all lay probably in this, that there was no decided point which, if conceded, would have brought about a reconciliation.  Trevelyan asked for general submission, which he regarded as his right, and which in the existing circumstances he thought it necessary to claim, and though Mrs Trevelyan did not refuse to be submissive she would make no promise on the subject.  But the truth was that each desired that the other should acknowledge a fault, and that neither of them would make that acknowledgment.  Emily Trevelyan felt acutely that she had been ill-used, not only by her husband’s suspicion, but by the manner in which he had talked of his suspicion to others, to Lady Milborough and the cook, and she was quite convinced that she was right herself, because he had been so vacillating in his conduct about Colonel