sgraceful a manner."

"You refuse to obey me?"

"I will refuse nothing, and will promise nothing."

"Then we must part;--that is all. I will take care that you shall
hear from me before to-morrow morning."

So saying, he left the room, and, passing through the hall, saw that
the letter had been taken away.

CHAPTER XI.

LADY MILBOROUGH AS AMBASSADOR.

"Of course, I know you are right," said Nora to her sister;--"right
as far as Colonel Osborne is concerned; but nevertheless you ought to
give way."

"And be trampled upon?" said Mrs. Trevelyan.

"Yes; and be trampled upon, if he should trample on you;--which,
however, he is the last man in the world to do."

"And to endure any insult and any names? You yourself--you would be a
Griselda, I suppose."

"I don't want to talk about myself," said Nora, "nor about Griselda.
But I know that, however unreasonable it may seem, you had better
give way to him now and tell him what there was in the note to
Colonel Osborne."

"Never! He has ordered me not to see him or to write to him, or to
open his letters,--having, mind you, ordered just the reverse a day
or two before; and I will obey him. Absurd as it is, I will obey him.
But as for submitting to him, and letting him suppose that I think
he is right;--never! I should be lying to him then, and I will never
lie to him. He has said that we must part, and I suppose it will be
better so. How can a woman live with a man that suspects her? He
cannot take my baby from me."

There were many such conversations as the above between the two
sisters before Mrs. Trevelyan received from her husband the
communication with which she had been threatened. And Nora, acting on
her own judgment in the matter, made an attempt to see Mr. Trevelyan,
writing to him a pretty little note, and beseeching him to be kind to
her. But he declined to see her, and the two women sat at home, with
the baby between them, holding such pleasant conversations as that
above narrated. When such tempests occur in a family, a woman will
generally suffer the least during the thick of the tempest. While
the hurricane is at the fiercest, she will be sustained by the most
thorough conviction that the right is on her side, that she is
aggrieved, that there is nothing for her to acknowledge, and no
position that she need surrender. Whereas her husband will desire a
compromise, even amidst the violence of the storm. But afterwards,
when the wind has lulle