The well-weighed decision of Miss Stanbury respecting the Stanbury Trevelyan arrangement at Nuncombe Putney had been communicated to Dorothy as the two walked home at night across the Close from Mrs MacHugh’s house, and it was accepted by Dorothy as being wise and proper.  It amounted to this.  If Mrs Trevelyan should behave herself with propriety in her retirement at the Clock House, no further blame in the matter should be attributed to Mrs Stanbury for receiving her at any rate in Dorothy’s hearing.  The existing scheme, whether wise or foolish, should be regarded as an accepted scheme.  But if Mrs Trevelyan should be indiscreet if, for instance, Colonel Osborne should show himself at Nuncombe Putney then, for the sake of the family, Miss Stanbury would speak out, and would speak out very loudly.  All this Dorothy understood, and she could perceive that her aunt had strong suspicion that there would be indiscretion.

‘I never knew one like her,’ said Miss Stanbury, ’who, when she’d got away from one man, didn’t want to have another dangling after her.’

A week had hardly passed after the party at Mrs MacHugh’s, and Mrs Trevelyan had hardly been three weeks at Nuncombe Putney, before the tidings which Miss Stanbury almost expected reached her ears.

‘The Colonel’s been at the Clock House, ma’am,’ said Martha.

Now, it was quite understood in the Close by this time that ’the Colonel’ meant Colonel Osborne.

‘No!’

‘I’m told he has though, ma’am, for sure and certain.’

‘Who says so?’

  ‘Giles Hickbody was down at Lessboro’, and see’d him hisself a portly,
  middle-aged man not one of your young scampish-like lovers.’

‘That’s the man.’

’Oh, yes.  He went over to Nuncombe Putney, as sure as anything hired Mrs Clegg’s chaise and pair, and asked for Mrs Trevelyan’s house as open as anything.  When Giles asked in the yard, they told him as how that was the married lady’s young man.’

‘I’d like to be at his tail so I would with a mop-handle,’ said Miss Stanbury, whose hatred for those sins by which the comfort and respectability of the world are destroyed, was not only sincere, but intense.  ‘Well; and what then?’

’He came back and slept at Mrs Clegg’s that night at least, that was what he said he should do.’

Miss Stanbury, however, was not so precipitate or uncharitable as to act strongly upon information such as this.  Before she even said a word to Dorothy, she made further inquiry.  She made very minute inquiry, writing even to her very old and intimate friend Mrs Ellison, of Lessboro’ writing to that lady a most cautious and guarded letter.  At last it became a fact proved to her mind that Colonel Osborne had been at the Clock House, had been received there, and had remained there for hours had been allowed access to Mrs Trevelyan, and had slept the night at the inn at Lessboro’.  The thing was so terrible to Miss Stanbury’s mind, that even false hair, Dr Colenso, and penny newspapers did not account for it.