“Here I am!” the very words (a singularity, trifling as it may appear, which struck Honor’s sensitive imagination at once) that Arthur Vavasour had used while accounting for _his_ opportune presence at the farm. The two men were standing one on either side of her, and the marked contrast between them impressed itself for the first time on Honor’s mind and heart. There was John, large-framed and strong of bone; his rather massive features redeemed from plainness by the frank and kind expression which softened and almost idealised them; his skin roughened by exposure to the weather; and his hands, usually guiltless of gloves, brown, muscular, and manly. His very dress, moist and rain-stained, and his shirt-collar limp and blackened with the dingy drippings from the good man’s “wideawake,” told against his personal appearance; whilst, on the contrary, Arthur’s _tout ensemble_, from the crown of his dark waving hair to the tips of his well-made, though not by any means dandified, boots, was as perfect as care and money and taste, to say nothing of an excellent _material_, in the shape of his own handsome face and graceful figure, could make it. Honor _felt_ the contrast, and a pang of self-reproach darted through her breast: of self-reproach and shame; shame that her head had rested, though only for a moment, against that well-made coat; and ah, far more fatal impulse than that which shame can give--the impulse that closed her lips against the avowal of the deed! And yet, in very truth, there was nothing to tell; and, moreover, it would have given the matter far more importance than it deserved, had Honor made a small descriptive narrative, for her husband’s benefit, of what had occurred. And so, for a second time, where her relations with Arthur Vavasour were concerned, she held her peace; and the consciousness that there was this secret between them, albeit that secret was one of so very trivial a description, lent the kind of charm to the intercourse between Honor and Arthur Vavasour which is never without its fruits. Arthur had a sincere regard for John Beacham. The former was what is called an honourable man, but he was only twenty-one, and at that age, though flesh is in one sense weak, it is terribly strong too. Honor was wonderfully fair, and the man had not courage to flee the temptation which the woman, beguiling him in her simple ignorance, was daily so unfortunate as to set before him. Verily it was time that interference came; time that Horace, strong in brotherly affection, spoke his mind without fear of consequences to Arthur Vavasour. CHAPTER XVII. BOYS WILL BE BOYS.