Osborne best were generally willing to declare that no harm was
intended, and that the evils which arose were always to be attributed
to mistaken jealousy. He had, his friends said, a free and pleasant
way with women which women like, a pleasant way of free friendship;
that there was no more, and that the harm which had come had always
come from false suspicion. But there were certain ladies about the
town--good, motherly, discreet women--who hated the name of Colonel
Osborne, who would not admit him within their doors, who would not
bow to him in other people's houses, who would always speak of him
as a serpent, a hyena, a kite, or a shark. Old Lady Milborough was
one of these, a daughter of a friend of hers having once admitted
the serpent to her intimacy.

'Augustus Poole was wise enough to take his wife abroad,' said old
Lady Milborough, discussing about this time with a gossip of hers
the danger of Mrs Trevelyan's position, 'or there would have been
a breakup there; and yet there never was a better girl in the world
than Jane Marriott.'

The reader may be quite certain that Colonel Osborne had no
premeditated evil intention when he allowed himself to become the
intimate friend of his old friend's daughter. There was nothing
fiendish in his nature. He was not a man who boasted of his
conquests. He was not a ravening wolf going about seeking whom he
might devour, and determined to devour whatever might come in his
way; but he liked that which was pleasant; and of all pleasant things
the company of a pretty clever woman was to him the pleasantest.
At this exact period of his life no woman was so pleasantly pretty
to him, and so agreeably clever, as Mrs Trevelyan.