"How I hate that word severe, when applied to a woman."
"I dare say you do,—when applied to another man's wife. But there will be no severity in my first proposition. As for the child,—if I approve of the place in which she lives, as I do at present,—he shall remain with her for nine months in the year till he is six years old. Then he must come to me. And he shall come to me altogether if she sees or hears from that man. I believe that £800 a year will enable her to live with all comfort under your mother's roof."
"As to that," said Stanbury, slowly, "I suppose I had better tell you at once, that the Nuncombe Putney arrangement cannot be considered as permanent."
"Why not?"
"Because my mother is timid and nervous, and altogether unused to the world."
"That unfortunate woman is to be sent away,—even from Nuncombe Putney!"
"Understand me, Trevelyan."
"I understand you. I understand you most thoroughly. Nor do I wonder at it in the least. Do not suppose that I am angry with your mother, or with you, or with your sister. I have no right to expect that they should keep her after that man has made his way into their house. I can well conceive that no honest, high-minded lady would do so."
"It is not that at all."
"But it is that. How can you tell me that it isn't? And yet you would have me believe that I am not disgraced!" As he said this Trevelyan got up, and walked about the room, tearing his hair with his hands. He was in truth a wretched man, from whose mind all expectation of happiness was banished, who regarded his own position as one of incurable ignominy, looking upon himself as one who had been made unfit for society by no fault of his own. What was he to do with the wretched woman who could be kept from the evil of her pernicious vanity by no gentle custody, whom no most distant retirement would make safe from the effects of her own ignorance, folly, and obstinacy? "When is she to go?" he asked in a low, sepulchral tone,—as though these new tidings that had come upon him had been fatal—laden with doom, and finally subversive of all chance even of tranquillity.