at she would rid the
house of her presence as soon as possible.

One thing, however, was done on that melancholy day. Mrs. Trevelyan
wrote to her husband, and enclosed Colonel Osborne's letter to
herself, and a copy of her reply. The reader will hardly require to
be told that no such further letter had been written by her as that
of which Bozzle had given information to her husband. Men whose
business it is to detect hidden and secret things, are very apt to
detect things which have never been done. What excuse can a detective
make even to himself for his own existence if he can detect nothing?
Mr. Bozzle was an active-minded man, who gloried in detecting, and
who, in the special spirit of his trade, had taught himself to
believe that all around him were things secret and hidden, which
would be within his power of unravelling if only the slightest clue
were put in his hand. He lived by the crookednesses of people, and
therefore was convinced that straight doings in the world were quite
exceptional. Things dark and dishonest, fights fought and races run
that they might be lost, plants and crosses, women false to their
husbands, sons false to their fathers, daughters to their mothers,
servants to their masters, affairs always secret, dark, foul, and
fraudulent, were to him the normal condition of life. It was to be
presumed that Mrs. Trevelyan should continue to correspond with her
lover,--that old Mrs. Stanbury should betray her trust by conniving
at the lover's visit,--that everybody concerned should be steeped to
the hips in lies and iniquity. When, therefore, he found at Colonel
Osborne's rooms that the Colonel had received a letter with the
Lessboro' post-mark, addressed in the handwriting of a woman, he
did not scruple to declare that Colonel Osborne had received, on
that morning, a letter from Mr. Trevelyan's "lady." But in sending
to her husband what she called with so much bitterness, "the
correspondence," Mrs. Trevelyan had to enclose simply the copy of one
sheet note from herself.

But she now wrote again to Colonel Osborne, and enclosed to her
husband, not a copy of what she had written, but the note itself. It
was as follows:--

Nuncombe Putney, Wednesday, August 10.

MY DEAR COLONEL OSBORNE,

My husband has desired me not to see you, or to write to
you, or to hear from you again. I must therefore beg you
to enable me to obey him,--at any rate till papa comes to
England.

Your