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Foolish he might have
been, in taking a wife from a home in which she had been unable to
learn the discretion of a matron; too trusting he had been, and too
generous but certainly not severe. But, of course, as he said to
himself, a young man like Stanbury would take the part of a woman with
whose sister he was in love. Then he turned his thoughts upon Bozzle,
and there came over him a crushing feeling of ignominy, shame, moral
dirt, and utter degradation, as he reconsidered his dealings with that
ingenious gentleman. He was paying a rogue to watch the steps of a man
whom he hated, to pry into the home secrets, to read the letters, to
bribe the servants, to record the movements of this rival, this
successful rival, in his wife's affections! It was a filthy thing and
yet what could he do? Gentlemen of old, his own grandfather or his
father, would have taken such a fellow as Colonel Osborne by the throat
and have caned him, and afterwards would have shot him, or have stood
to be shot.
All that was changed now, but it was not his fault that it was changed.


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