Lady Milborough's mind was uneasy about Colonel Osborne.
"My dear," said she, "was not your father very intimate with that Colonel Osborne ?" "He is very intimate with him, Lady Milborough." "Ah, yes; I thought I had heard so.

That makes it of course natural that you should know him." "We have known him all our lives," said Emily, forgetting probably that out of the twenty-three years and some months which she had hitherto lived, there had been a consecutive period of more than twenty years in which she had never seen this man whom she had known all her life.
"That makes a difference, of course; and I don't mean to say anything against him." "I hope not, Lady Milborough, because we are all especially fond of him." This was said with so much of purpose, that poor, dear old Lady Milborough was stopped in her good work.

She knew well the terrible strait to which Augustus Poole had been brought with his wife, although nobody supposed that Poole's wife had ever entertained a wrong thought in her pretty little heart.

Nevertheless he had been compelled to break up his establishment, and take his wife to Naples, because this horrid Colonel would make himself at home in Mrs.
Poole's drawing-room in Knightsbridge.

Augustus Poole, with courage enough to take any man by the beard, had taking by the beard been possible, had found it impossible to dislodge the Colonel.