s niece, Nora, begging him to take her into his parsonage till Sir
Marmaduke should arrive in the course of the spring, and hinting
also a wish that her uncle Oliphant should see Mr. Trevelyan and
if possible arrange that his other niece should also come to the
parsonage, he was very much perturbed in spirit. There was a long
consultation between him and his wife before anything could be
settled, and it may be doubted whether anything would have been
settled, had not Mr. Trevelyan himself made his way to the parsonage,
on the second day of the family conference. Mr. and Mrs. Outhouse had
both seen the necessity of sleeping upon the matter. They had slept
upon it, and the discourse between them on the second day was so
doubtful in its tone that more sleeping would probably have been
necessary had not Mr. Trevelyan appeared and compelled them to a
decision.

"You must remember that I make no charge against her," said
Trevelyan, after the matter had been discussed for about an hour.

"Then why should she not come back to you?" said Mr. Outhouse,
timidly.

"Some day she may,--if she will be obedient. But it cannot be now.
She has set me at defiance; and even yet it is too clear from the
tone of her letter to me that she thinks that she has been right to
do so. How could we live together in amity when she addresses me as a
cruel tyrant?"

"Why did she go away at first?" asked Mrs. Outhouse.

"Because she would compromise my name by an intimacy which I did not
approve. But I do not come here to defend myself, Mrs. Outhouse. You
probably think that I have been wrong. You are her friend; and to
you, I will not even say that I have been right. What I want you to
understand is this. She cannot come back to me now. It would not be
for my honour that she should do so."

"But, sir,--would it not be for your welfare, as a Christian?" asked
Mr. Outhouse.

"You must not be angry with me, if I say that I will not discuss that
just now. I did not come here to discuss it."

"It is very sad for our poor niece," said Mrs. Outhouse.

"It is very sad for me," said Trevelyan, gloomily;--"very sad,
indeed. My home is destroyed; my life is made solitary; I do not even
see my own child. She has her boy with her, and her sister. I have
nobody."

"I can't understand, for the life of me, why you should not live
together just like any other people," said Mrs. Outhouse, whose
woman's spirit was arising in her bosom. "When people are marr