HONOR DECEIVES HERSELF.
Honor Beacham was, as I think has been pretty clearly shown, a very
woman in her faults and follies--her quick impulses--her yearning for
love and admiration--her small ambitions--and her dainty phantasies.
“Fine by degrees, and delicately weak”--like Pope’s inferior man--this
semi-Celtic woman was evidently no philosopher at all; and, left to her
own guidance, the chances were terribly in favour of her coming--to use
the not inexpressive nineteenth-century slang--“to grief.”
How long those exquisite blue eyes of hers would have betrayed tokens of
sorrow, had they not been quickly dried by a double-knock at the door of
No. 14, must ever remain a problem. To be seen with red eyelids is an
act of _lèse_ loveliness, which Honor would never, could she avoid it,
have been guilty of committing. Her little coquettish veil, too, was
ready at hand to hide any traces of past emotion that might have been
visible on her countenance; so that Mrs. Norcott, who entered the room
trippingly, and with the attempt at juvenile grace peculiar to that
colonial lady of forty-two, saw no reason to suppose that her country
guest was otherwise than cheerfully and contentedly disposed.
Mrs. Norcott, in her London walking-dress, was not a person to be passed
by without attracting due notice and comment. Attired in light delicate
muslin, of a pattern and make better befitting a demoiselle in her
teens, the fair Elizabeth probably imagined that she looked the
character to which she evidently aspired--namely, a youthful matron in
the pride and glory of early wifehood. A sash, tied behind _à l’enfant_,
and a small hat of the species known as _turban_, served, doubtless, in
her opinion, to complete the illusion.
“How long _have_ you been here?” she exclaimed, coming forward with a
rush, and embracing poor Honor with the impulsiveness popularly known as
gushing. “You’ll be glad to hear that the Colonel is better--really
quite another person than when I wrote to you. But sit down, do. We
didn’t expect you just yet. The trains must be changed, I think, or the
Bradshaw, or something. But how’s your good husband? _So_ kind of him to
let you come!” And Mrs. Norcott, having established her guest by her
side upon the slippery sofa, pressed, in token of matronly sympathy,
the little hand which she still retained within her own. “I am afraid,”
she went on to say, “that you’ll think the Colonel looking ill. When I
wrote to you on Monday he was terribly low, poor fellow; quite
depressed, you may say, about himself. Men are such cowards, you know,
when there is anything the matter with them. Brave as a lion the Colonel
is before the enemy, at least so I’ve heard--but on a sick-bed as
troublesome, and more so, I may say, than a child.”
“You must have had a trying time of it, I am sure,” Honor said
sympathisingly. “I am not much of a nurse, I am afraid, but I will do my
best; and as for sitting up at night, I am sure, though I don’t look
very strong, I should not mind, it in the least; that is, I mean--”
colouring with a recollection of Mrs. Beacham’s jealous guarding over
her rights--“if you and my father would like me to be with him.”
Mrs. Norcott laughed--a little foolishly Honor thought.
“Why, happily for all parties unconcerned,” she said, “the worst is over
now, and no more nursing required for one while. As I told you just now,
Honor--I must call you ‘Honor,’ you know--the Colonel is better--quite
himself, indeed, I may say. Has gone out for the first time to-day
since his illness. I expect him back every moment. Ah! there he is; I
know his way of shutting the hall-door by this time. He never knocks,
the Colonel doesn’t. Gentlemen always will have their latch-keys, you
know,” she added playfully (a joke, by the way, which was lost upon the
young wife, who had so much in the modern Gomorrah to learn and to
unlearn); “and the Colonel, I suspect--there are secrets in all
families--has been a bit of a rake; and--Ah, Colonel,” interrupting
herself as the object of her complimentary remarks threw open the door
_en maître_, and strode towards the sofa; “ah, Colonel, here you are!
And here’s Honor come--looking so well; and--”
He did not allow her to proceed, for, putting her obtruding figure with
scant ceremony aside, he kissed his daughter (who had risen to greet
him) with rather more than necessary warmth. The fervent salute,
administered on both cheeks, brought the ever-ready crimson flush to
Honor’s lovely face. It was a blush that owed its being not to the
demonstrativeness of the paternal embrace, but to the unexpected
presence of one whose advent had never failed in days gone by to call up
that often false tell-tale witness. Close behind Colonel Norcott
followed Arthur Vavasour, the man whose image still lingered in Honor
Beacham’s memory--the agreeable, handsome profligate, who appeared in no
way changed since in the grounds of Danescourt, she, nearly ten months
before, had bidden him a not easily forgotten and rather emotional
farewell.
They shook hands, and at the touch of _his_, Honor’s colour deepened,
and she bowed her head in very conscious shame that so it was. There are
no outward evidences of internal emotion so apt to mislead, and that
dangerously, as the simple and beautiful, yet alas too rare, effort of
nature which is called a _blush_. It is very intelligible that so it
must be. Men who, like Arthur Vavasour, live only (as they estimate
living) in the light of women’s smiles--men who dearly delight in
discovering proofs of their own power to please--will always see in a
pretty woman’s heightened colour a tribute to their sure fascinations.
Instinct--the instinct of self-preservation, bestowed for the protection
of the weak--warned Honor, as it has warned other women before her, of
the existence of this very popular delusion; and the premonition did not
tend to moderate the carnation-hue that Arthur Vavasour gazed at with
even more than the passionate admiration of the days gone by. Nor was
his manner to her--the manner that she had always felt to be so
winning--in any fashion altered; and when he spoke, his voice was as
soft, and his words as full of gentle meaning.
“I heard you were expected, Mrs. Beacham,” he said, and the slow
lingering pressure of his hand, sent, as he intended that it should, a
thrill through Honor’s delicate frame. “How long it is since we have
met!”
“Very long,” Honor contrived to say; and then addressing her father, she
said something that was not very coherent about her pleasure in seeing
him so much recovered from his recent illness.
“Well, yes, I am better,” he said carelessly. “It wasn’t much besides a
cold; but women are so easily frightened: Mrs. Norcott thought I was
going to die, I believe, when she wrote, and was glad enough when your
husband--by the bye, what an uncommon good fellow he must be!--allowed
you to come and nurse me. _Nurse_ me? You will laugh at that. I don’t
look much like an invalid, do I?”
“No, indeed!” Honor said, with the pretty laugh, “restrained by
gracefulness,” and yet which was so thoroughly Hibernian in its
character; “I didn’t think, any more than John did, that you’d be up and
about.”
“I daresay not; but I really was most uncommonly seedy for a week or
so--ask Mrs. N. if I wasn’t; fever at night, and all that kind of
thing.”
“Fever? I believe you!” responded his wife, who had been keeping up a
not very well-sustained conversation with Arthur Vavasour; but who, like
a true wife, was ready to endorse any and everything that fell from her
husband’s lips. “You haven’t an idea how ill the Colonel has been. I
declare, the day I wrote to you, Honor--I’m going to call her Honor,
Colonel, from this out--I was that frightened, I didn’t know which way
to turn. Says I, surely his friends ought to know--and then I thought of
you; says I--”
But Colonel Norcott cut short all further reminiscence by a laugh.
“It’s one of my rules,” he said, “and you ought to know it by this
time--never to go back to anything that’s disagreeable. Live and let
live’s my motto, and forget and forgive is another--and what’s more, I
practise what I preach, eh, Honor? No dwelling upon old grievances with
me. I don’t say that I’m exactly saint enough to turn my second cheek to
the smiter; and what’s more, I didn’t ask your excellent husband--who’s
got a fist like a sledge-hammer--to knock me down a second time; but I
don’t bear malice all the same--not a grain of it; and I shouldn’t
mind--upon my word I shouldn’t--shaking hands with him to-morrow.” At
this conciliatory speech Mrs. Norcott laughed heartily; Honor, on the
contrary, looked very grave. There was something in her father’s words
that jarred terribly against her sense of what was delicate and
becoming. She had not been happy, lately with her husband--he had been
cold and hard, and had not seemed to understand or value her; his want
of outward refinement too had often offended her taste; but for all
that, she both respected his character, and had taught herself to see
nothing degrading in his position. When, therefore, she heard the
Colonel speak in this slightly supercilious tone of the absent John,
Honor felt rather indignant at the liberty taken. It was a very
different affair, allowing herself and permitting others to be
disrespectful to the man to whom she owed so much; so this girl-wife,
whose heart was still in the right place, listened with a countenance
from which the smile was momentarily banished, to the Colonel’s
half-sneering mention of her husband’s name.
She was glad--for she felt called upon to say something--when Arthur
Vavasour, by asking a question connected with the Paddocks, relieved her
from the embarrassment of responding to her father’s flippant sally.
“You will ride, of course, Mrs. Beacham, while you are in town,” he
said; “you will enjoy it so much, and Lady Meg would be so immensely
admired. I don’t think I ever saw so many fine horses, or such a number
of pretty women, as there were in the Park to-day; but Lady Meg” (he had
the grace not to say her mistress too) “would whip ’em all to nothing,
as the Yankees say.”
Again the betraying blush rose to Honor’s cheek, as she explained to
Arthur that there was no chance of her joining the equestrians in the
Row. She had neither horse nor habit, she said, in London; and besides,
John had only allowed her to come up on the plea of nursing her father;
and now that he was quite well again, why--she supposed she had only to
go home again.
“Nonsense! home again!” the Colonel said in his pleasant, cheerful way;
“as if such things were to be allowed! Now we’ve got you here, young
lady,” and he patted his daughter’s cheek affectionately, “here we mean
to keep you. And if this John of yours says a word, why we’ll have him
up too, and give him a taste of London life, which he’ll be the better
of.--But I say, Arthur, where are you going to, old fellow? To dine
_tête-à-tête_ with the missis, eh? We’re so far from civilised life in
these confounded diggings, that I suppose it wouldn’t pay taking
pot-luck in this shanty of ours; otherwise, you’re as welcome to what
we’ve got as flowers in May.”
“Thank you, I should like nothing better,” Arthur said, his eyes, which
were fixed admiringly on Honor, giving ample corroboration of his words;
“but there’s a great spread--an awful bore it will be--at old Duberly’s;
and then we have to go to something at Lady Guernsey’s--a drum, I
believe, they call it--a sort of affair where you get stewed to rags,
and pressed like beef-à-la-mode, or some horrid thing of that kind,
afterwards.” Of course they all laughed as they said good-bye to him.
Honor was especially cheerful on the occasion. Especially cheerful,
because her heart was at the moment sinking so heavily within her.
Sinking from an undefined and yet miserable sense that all she saw and
heard was wrong. Wrong on Colonel Norcott’s side, inasmuch as not only
he, but his wife, had, as was almost clear even to Honor’s unsuspicious
mind, been in league together to deceive her--wrong on her own because
it was patent to herself that the deception excited in her mind neither
anger nor regret.
But feeling, as she did, both depressed and frightened at her novel
position, Honor summoned one of her brightest smiles to her lip as her
hand lay for a moment within Arthur’s. Colonel Norcott followed him to
the head of the staircase, and after a short whispered conversation,
returned to the drawing-room. He looked harassed and annoyed; and, now
that the forced smiles and pleasant look had left his face, Honor could
plainly see the marks that age and care had left there.
“Gad, it’s late,” he said, looking at his watch; and then Mrs. Norcott,
in obedience to a private signal from her husband, asked Honor if she
would not like to see her room.
“It’s a good way up,” she said, as they mounted the steep narrow stairs
peculiar to the upper flights of modern-built houses of the calibre of
No. 14 Stanwick-street. “The Colonel, of course, does not attempt it;
but for young legs like yours and mine it’s a mere nothing.”
Honor, as she toiled after this active middle-aged lady, said something
civil and commonplace about London houses being necessarily different
from those in the country. She was very desirous not to seem hard to
please and troublesomely fastidious, but the style of architecture
prevalent in Sandyshire not being of the kind to qualify for alpine
climbing, she was thoroughly out of breath and exhausted on her arrival
at the journey’s end,--an end which, judging from appearances, was
calculated to give rather a poor idea of the means possessed by the
gallant Colonel and his _soi-disant_ heiress wife.
The little attic which Honor was instructed to call her room was
tolerably clean; for, as I said before, the house was one of recent
construction, and the various defilements incidental to a course of
habitation by a succession of fourth-story lodgers had not as yet
rendered the guest-chamber of No. 14 utterly unendurable. But although
even Honor--fresh as she was from God’s blessed country, from farm-house
cleanliness, and from the traditional scents of lavender and
roses--could not have justly called that small upper chamber dirty, it
was nevertheless anything but inviting to the eye. The roof was sloping
and low; the furniture mean and shabby; there was no wardrobe, and the
chest of drawers, as Honor saw at a glance, would scarcely hold even the
limited supply of garments which she had brought with her to
Stanwick-street.
“It _is_ small, as you see,” remarked Mrs. Colonel Norcott
deprecatingly; “but I hope you’ll be comfortable. House-rent is
uncommonly dear in London in the season--and the Colonel likes to have
everything comfortable--and so much expense coming on, you know.”
She spoke the last words in a kind of confidential whisper, throwing a
degree of playful significance over the implied suggestion. Honor, who
did not know, but who felt that there was a _dessus les cartes_, could
only look with a slightly puzzled air at her mysterious hostess;
whereupon that lady, with what was intended for a pretty air of
confusion, said:
“Another time, when we know each other better, being both matrons--there
need be no secrets between us. Ah, I see, there is hot water--the girl
of the house is generally so careless--you will come down when you are
ready. The Colonel is particular about his hours: so don’t be long,
there’s a dear. The Colonel always goes to his club after dinner, and
you wouldn’t like to keep him waiting. Can I do anything for you? No.
Well, then, I will leave you to beautify;” and so saying, Mrs. Norcott
betook herself to her own, namely, the adjoining and equally
unprepossessing-looking sleeping chamber.
Honor sat down on the edge of her narrow iron bedstead, and felt for the
moment like one dazed. All that during the last hour had occurred was so
widely different from her previous imaginings. Where was the sick-room,
the wasted invalid, the atmosphere of physic-bottles and of gloom?
Instead, had she not been received with chaff and cheerfulness? Was not
her father in apparently perfect health? And already, simultaneously
almost with her arrival, had not a visitor appeared, an intimacy with
whom her conscience warned her had better be avoided, and regarding
whom, as she was well aware, her mother-in-law had already thrown out
hints as uncalled for as they were offensive? And then, closely
following on these mental communings, there came the more searching
questions of, “What would John think of all this mean deceit? Would he
not, in his indignation at the trick, instantaneously require her
return?” Instantaneously? Yes! Honor felt well assured of that; John
Beacham was the last man in the world to suffer patiently such a
deception as had been practised upon him. He hated--of that too his wife
was well aware--the man who had deceived him, with as much of rancorous
feeling as he was capable of entertaining; and therefore any further
sojourn on her part under her father’s roof would, were John to become
cognisant of the truth, have been indignantly protested against. But, on
the other hand, Honor herself, though aware that she had been lured
under a false presence to Stanwick-street, was by no means disposed to
disclose this fact to one so deeply interested as was John in all that
so nearly concerned her safety and well-being. She was conscious, on the
contrary, of a very decided inclination to remain, for the present at
least, where she was. Of course this inclination--the mere passing of
the desire through her heart, to say nothing of the yielding to it--was
wrong, selfish, and unwifely to the most unpardonable extent. Honor,
too, was well aware that she was guilty in not driving from her, at the
very first onslaught, the tempter who assailed her. There was little
excuse, save in the weakness of our most imperfect human nature, for the
taking of this first dearly-bought step in wrong. It cost but little
trouble putting that wrong foot foremost. She had but to be passive,
nothing could be easier, and the affair, one might almost say, righted
itself. But facile as it all had seemed, and scarcely out of the common
order of things, the time came when that poor weak woman would have
given all of life that remained to her, could she have, by so doing,
annulled the decision of a moment, and thus averted all the terrible
consequences that followed thereupon.
She would not write--so Honor, with very little hesitation, decided--to
inform John Beacham that her father was well in health, and that her
longer stay in London was uncalled for. It was wonderful, whilst acting
thus, how many specious arguments she made use of to persuade herself
that she was less guilty than she seemed. No one could imagine--so she
told herself (sitting before the small painted mirror, with her fair
hair hanging loosely about her neck and shoulders)--no one could by any
possibility imagine that she _could_ be there for her own pleasure.
Such a wretched room as they had given her! Room, indeed! Would anyone
in his or her senses at Peartree-house have called that closet of a
place by such an inappropriate name? And then her father, though his
bodily health was acknowledged to be satisfactory, yet betrayed, in
Honor’s opinion, evident symptoms of a mind ill at ease at least, if not
diseased. His pecuniary affairs, too, struck his inexperienced daughter
as being in no flourishing condition. The smallness and _mesquinerie_ of
the house (a part of which only was occupied by her relations); the
absence of a man-servant--for Honor had picked up a good deal of the
knowledge of “life” from the pages of three-volume novels; to say
nothing of the dress, cheap though showy, of her hostess, betrayed to
Honor the fact that either money was far less plentiful in her father’s
than her husband’s home, or that penuriousness was a vice indulged in to
a large extent among her newly-found connections.
“If my father were rich and prosperous,” she said to herself--and, to do
her only justice, this ingenious though unconscious sophist firmly
believed in the honesty of her excuses--“if my father were rich and
prosperous, I should act differently, and write at once to tell John he
is well. I should mind in that case less, I think, the making him have
a still worse opinion of my poor father than I know he has at present.
If I could hope that John would make excuses for them, I should know
better what to do; but he would be simply furious. I know that he would
never have let me come, if he had not believed that my father was
suffering from the effects of that horrid blow; and perhaps, after all,
he _was;_ and besides, if he did make the worst of his illness for the
purpose of having me with him, where was the mighty harm? It only shows
that my poor father loves me,” added Honor, sadly, to the wilful tender
little heart, which was, alas, so likely to be led astray by its own
warm womanly impulses.
It was with such false reasonings as these, that Honor persuaded herself
to keep the real state of things a secret, _pro tem._ at least, from her
husband. He would never, she decided--even if he lived to the age of
Methuselah--understand her feelings, or see things (even if she wrote to
him about her father) as she saw them; and so, after sighing a little
over her husband’s small amount of solicitude and comprehension
regarding the trifling things that so much make or mar the happiness of
a young and childless woman, Honor entered on her course of deception.
She was interrupted in her cogitations--cogitations which so materially
affected the future happiness of one who, albeit he wore his heart, as
the saying is, on his sleeve, Honor had proved herself to be so little
capable of comprehending--by a hasty knock from the “girl of the
house”--the “young person,” whose back hair was thrust into a greasy
net, and whose upper woman was clothed in a red Garibaldi that had
evidently seen service, which warned the visitor from the country that
by indulging herself in reflection, she was doing the wrong thing at the
wrong time. Dinner was “on table,” as the parlour-maid (to whom Colonel
Fred was in the habit of saying civil things) with no great show of
respect informed her; and Honor, in some trepidation--for she did not
feel exactly at home in her father’s house--hastily put the finishing
touches to her simple toilette, and hurriedly, two steps at a time, in
very unmatronly fashion, descended the many flights of stairs to the
drawing-room. Colonel Norcott was standing on the hearthrug with his
back to the fireless grate, when his daughter entered with an apology on
her lips, and a pretty deprecating smile lighting up her face. Mrs.
Norcott had already taken her seat at the round table, which had been
cleared for dinner, and was gazing with large anxious eyes, anticipative
of evil, on the pewter dish-cover, not one of the brightest specimens of
its kind, that graced the simple board.
“I am so sorry,” Honor was beginning; “I had my trunk to unpack; and my
hair was so tumbled that I was obliged to undo it, and--”
“And you couldn’t have been quicker if you’d done it for a bet,” said
the Colonel good humouredly. “So now for the miserable meal we call
dinner. You’ll wish yourself back at the farm-house, I suspect, when you
taste the nastiness that Mrs. Thingummy treats us with. You get rather
different grub at home--eh, Miss Honor?”
His daughter laughed lightly as she took her place beside him. It amused
her greatly to be called “Miss Honor,” just as if she were a girl. And
then he looked at, and spoke so kindly to her that she was already
beginning to feel at home in the Stanwick-street lodging. With the
large-boned, youthfully-dressed matron, dispensing with an air that was
intended to be genteel, the ill-dressed, London-flavoured whiting from
the scantily-filled dish before her, Honor did not expect to feel much
kindred sympathy. Mrs. Norcott was, however, to judge from external
appearances at least, good-natured, and _facile à vivre_. If she had
ever enjoyed the prestige of being that often self-reliant and arrogant
character yclept an heiress (a fact of the truth of which Honor began to
doubt), there had as yet cropped out no signs either of a love of
domination or a purse-proud spirit. A harmless vanity, joined to a
blind worship for the Colonel, had hitherto struck Honor as the most
distinguishing feature in the Australian lady’s idiosyncrasy.
“If you can eat that stuff it’s more than I can,” said the master of the
house, pushing away his plate with disgust. “You see, my dear child,
what it is to have a father who hasn’t one shilling to rub against
another. I--”
“Now, Colonel, I am surprised to hear you talk in this way,” put in his
wife. “There are a precious good many shillings in three hundred pounds
a-year, or I am a good deal more out in my arithmetic than I think I am.
The idea of talking in this way before your daughter! Why, she’ll think
she’s come among beggars, to hear the way you’re going on.”
Fred laughed sardonically. “Not much need to talk about it, I think.
Those horrible whitings fried in black grease render all further
explanation on the subject nugatory. I don’t suppose that any
affectation of superfluity is likely to deceive Mrs. Beacham; and, in my
opinion, it is always better to be plain-spoken. You’ve got a poor devil
of a father, my dear child, who finds it hard enough, I can assure you,
to make both ends meet. Of course you will be uncomfortable here, I
expect _that_; but I do flatter myself that you won’t throw me over,
Honor, because I’m a poor man. I’ve trusted in women all my life, and
never had cause to repent it yet; so here’s your health, my dear, and
may you enjoy health and wealth and happiness long after your poor old
father has been laid under the sod.”
He had taken advantage of Lydia’s momentary absence to utter this
pathetic speech, and as the red Garibaldi was not there to mar by force
of contrast the Colonel’s paternal platitudes, he got through his toast
swimmingly. In another moment, and before Honor’s hand, which had been
lovingly extended to meet her father’s, could be withdrawn, the
parlour-maid, in whose roguish black eyes the “first-floor front” was
certainly no hero, had bounced back into the room, bearing before her a
large specimen of that economical and succulent dish known to
housekeepers as a juicy leg of mutton. Nothing overcome at the sight of
this delicacy, Mrs. Norcott pressed a slice, cut with the gravy in, on
Honor’s acceptance.
“What, not a mouthful? Dear me now, how sorry I am! Is there nothing we
could tempt you with? It’s because the mutton’s raw, perhaps, that your
stomach turns a little at it. Lydia, can you get nothing from the larder
for Mrs. John Beacham? That knuckle of ham, now--”
Miss Lydia grinned broadly. “You’ll never see that there mouthful of ’am
again, ’m,” she said pertly, and after the fashion of one accustomed to
speak her mind. “The Kunnle he ate _that_ for his breakfast this morning
afore he went out;” and having so said, she went on briskly with the
important duties of her calling.
To Honor, accustomed as she was to “the land flowing with milk and
honey” of the old farm-house at Updown Paddocks, the state of the
Stanwick-street larder appeared a most deplorable affair indeed. As for
her father--her high-bred, distinguished-looking father, with his
delicate aristocratic hands, his dainty golden sleeve-buttons, and, in
her opinion, his warm paternal heart--she could hardly refrain from
tears as she looked upon his futile efforts to eat the nauseous food
that was set before him. She had not been reared, as we know, in the
school of over-refinement, and to do violence to her own feelings in
order to spare the self-love of another was one of the consequences on
an advanced state of civilisation which had not, as yet, made itself
felt in the somewhat _arrière_ parish of Switcham. To feign an appetite
if she had it not was not therefore amongst the small deceptions which
Mrs. Beacham felt called upon to practise, and for that reason the poor
girl rose dinnerless, or, as she would in her ignorance have called it,
supperless, from that untempting board. No sooner had the energetic
Lydia retired, closing the door upon all (save its unwelcome perfume)
that remained of that highly-unsatisfactory repast, than Colonel
Norcott, taking his hat from a side table, announced his intention of
going out.
“Only for an hour or so--just to smoke a cigar in the open,” he said
carelessly. “You’ll be in bed though, Honor, I suppose, before I come
back? Beauty-sleep, eh? We mustn’t lose those country roses sooner than
we can help, or we shall have John looking us up with that stout stick
of his. Gad, how quick he struck, and how it tingled! I can feel it
now;” passing his hand playfully over his forehead. “Took one so
deucedly by surprise, you know. Hadn’t an idea, of course, that he was
going to do anything of the kind. Nothing but a light cane in my hand,
talking quietly about old times, when, without a word, down comes the
sledge-hammer, and, by Jove! I _was_ floored.”
“He was very sorry afterwards, indeed he was,” Honor said pleadingly. “I
have heard him say so often. He hardly knew what he did. If he had not
been sorry, he would never have let me leave the Paddocks to-day.”
“Wouldn’t he?” chucking her under the chin. “Looks sharp after his
pretty wife, eh? But as to being sorry, I can believe as much of that
as I like. If he had been, he would have answered a letter that I wrote
to him some time ago about Rough Diamond; but as he didn’t,” and a very
vindictive expression flitted across his bearded face, “I know what to
think, and, what is more, shall probably act upon the conviction I have
come to.”
Honor could only _look_ her surprise at this wholly unexpected outburst.
Before, however, she could utter a syllable in extenuation of her
husband’s sin against politeness, Colonel Norcott had taken his
departure, leaving her to spend the hours till welcome bedtime came in
listening to the uncongenial gossip of the woman whose society was by
himself so evidently unprized. Honor’s first experience of genteel life
in London was certainly neither an amusing nor an instructive one.