While Emily is living at Nuncombe Putney, Colonel Osborne visits her in person and Louis's jealousy intensifies until he employs the former policeman Bozzle to watch his wife, transforming a marital disagreement that might have been resolved through trust into an obsessive search for reports, evidence, and proof of wrongdoing. Emily refuses to submit to what she considers an unjust demand because she knows herself to be innocent, while Louis insists that reconciliation can occur only after she acknowledges his authority, and their separation becomes more firmly established when Emily and Nora move to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Outhouse. Meanwhile Dorothy begins to develop feelings for Brooke Burgess, and Nora increasingly chooses the comparatively poor Hugh Stanbury over the wealthy and socially advantageous Mr. Glascock, allowing relationships founded on trust and personal choice to develop in sharp contrast with the Trevelyans' collapsing marriage.
