"You had better not be a messenger in such a cause. If she has anything to say she can say it to myself."
"Am I to understand that you will not listen to me?"
"I had rather not."
"I think you are wrong," said Stanbury.
"In that matter you must allow me to judge for myself. I can easily understand that a young woman like her, especially with her sister to back her, should induce such a one as you to take her part."
"I am taking nobody's part. You wrong your wife, and you especially wrong Miss Rowley."
"If you please, Stanbury, we will say nothing more about it." This Trevelyan said holding the door of the room half open in his hand, so that the other was obliged to pass out through it.
"Good evening," said Stanbury, with much anger.
"Good evening," said Trevelyan, with an assumption of indifference.
Stanbury went away in absolute wrath, though the trouble which he had had in the interview was much less than he had anticipated, and the result quite as favourable. He had known that no good would come of his visit. And yet he was now full of anger against Trevelyan, and had become a partisan in the matter,—which was exactly that which he had resolutely determined that he would not become. "I believe that no woman on earth could live with him," he said to himself as he walked away. "It was always the same with him,—a desire for mastery, which he did not know how to use when he had obtained it. If it were Nora, instead of the other sister, he would break her sweet heart within a month."