and will not come up.'

'Tell Richard to say you are not at home.'

'Yes; and everybody will understand why. And for what am I to deny
myself in that way to the best and oldest friend I have? If any
such orders are to be given, let him give them and then see what
will come of it.'

Mrs Trevelyan had described Colonel Osborne truly as far as words
went, in saying that he had known her since she was a baby, and
that he was an older man than her father. Colonel Osborne's age
exceeded her father's by about a month, and as he was now past
fifty, he might be considered perhaps, in that respect, to be a
safe friend for a young married woman. But he was in every respect
a man very different from Sir Marmaduke. Sir Marmaduke, blessed and
at the same time burdened as he was with a wife and eight daughters,
and condemned as he had been to pass a large portion of his life
within the tropics, had become at fifty what many people call
quite a middle-aged man. That is to say, he was one from whom the
effervescence and elasticity and salt of youth had altogether passed
away. He was fat and slow, thinking much of his wife and eight
daughters, thinking much also of his dinner. Now Colonel Osborne
was a bachelor, with no burdens but those imposed upon him by his
position as a member of Parliament, a man of fortune to whom the
world had been very easy. It was not therefore said so decidedly
of him as of Sir Marmaduke, that he was a middle-aged man, although
he had probably already lived more than two-thirds of his life.
And he was a good-looking man of his age, bald indeed at the top of
his head, and with a considerable sprinkling of grey hair through