o any one."

"You will tell Louis?"

"No; I will tell no one."

"Dear, dear Emily; pray do not keep anything secret from him."

"What do you mean by secret? There isn't any secret. Only in such
matters as that,--about politics,--no gentleman likes to have his
name talked about!"

A look of great distress came upon Nora's face as she heard this. To
her it seemed to be very bad that there should be a secret between
her sister and Colonel Osborne to be kept from her brother-in-law.

"I suppose you will suspect me next?" said Mrs. Trevelyan, angrily.

"Emily, how can you say anything so cruel?"

"You look as if you did."

"I only mean that I think it would be wiser to tell all this to
Louis."

"How can I tell him Colonel Osborne's private business, when Colonel
Osborne has desired me not to do so. For whose sake is Colonel
Osborne doing this? For papa's and mamma's! I suppose Louis won't
be--jealous, because I want to have papa and mamma home. It would not
be a bit less unreasonable than the other."

CHAPTER III.

LADY MILBOROUGH'S DINNER PARTY.

Louis Trevelyan went down to his club in Pall Mall, the Acrobats, and
there heard a rumour that added to his anger against Colonel Osborne.
The Acrobats was a very distinguished club, into which it was now
difficult for a young man to find his way, and almost impossible
for a man who was no longer young, and therefore known to many. It
had been founded some twenty years since with the idea of promoting
muscular exercise and gymnastic amusements; but the promoters had
become fat and lethargic, and the Acrobats spent their time mostly in
playing whist, and in ordering and eating their dinners. There were
supposed to be, in some out-of-the-way part of the building, certain
poles and sticks and parallel bars with which feats of activity might
be practised, but no one ever asked for them now-a-days, and a man,
when he became an Acrobat, did so with a view either to the whist or
the cook, or possibly to the social excellences of the club. Louis
Trevelyan was an Acrobat;--as was also Colonel Osborne.

"So old Rowley is coming home," said one distinguished Acrobat to
another in Trevelyan's hearing.

"How the deuce is he managing that? He was here a year ago?"

"Osborne is getting it done. He is to come as a witness for this
committee. It must be no end of a lounge for him. It doesn't count as
leave, and he has every shilling paid for him, down to his cab-fares