to Mrs Trevelyan that this ancient Lothario had before this made
himself troublesome in more than one family. He was fond of intimacies
with married ladies, and perhaps was not averse to the excitement
of marital hostility. It must be remembered, however, that the
hostility to which allusion is here made was not the hostility of the
pistol or the horsewhip nor indeed was it generally the hostility
of a word of spoken anger. A young husband may dislike the too-friendly
bearing of a friend, and may yet abstain from that outrage on his
own dignity and on his wife, which is conveyed by a word of suspicion.
Louis Trevelyan having taken a strong dislike to Colonel Osborne,
and having failed to make his wife understand that this dislike
should have induced her to throw cold water upon the Colonel's
friendship, had allowed himself to speak a word which probably he
would have willingly recalled as soon as spoken. But words spoken
cannot be recalled, and many a man and many a woman who has spoken
a word at once regretted, are far too proud to express that regret.
So it was with Louis Trevelyan when he told his wife that he did
not wish Colonel Osborne to come so often to his house. He had said
it with a flashing eye and an angry tone; and though she had seen
the eye flash before, and was familiar with the angry tone, she
had never before felt herself to be insulted by her husband. As
soon as the word had been spoken Trevelyan had left the room and
had gone down among his books. But when he was alone he knew that
he had insulted his wife. He was quite aware that he should have
spoken to her gently, and have explained to her, with his arm
round her waist, that it would be better for both of them that this
friend's friendship should be limited. There is so much in a turn
of the eye and in the tone given to a word when such things have to
be said, so much more of importance than in the words themselves.
As Trevelyan thought of this, and remembered what his manner had