The fêtes--it was now past the middle of July--were to commence in three days’ time, and the certainty that her friend would take no part in them had thrown a little damp on Honor’s highly-wrought expectations. The pretty new dress, another of John’s expensive _cadeaux_, was not to her the “thing of beauty” that it had been when she had wondered to herself, in all innocence (Honor’s thoughts and mind were pure as yet as unsunned snow), whether Mr. Vavasour would think her well-dressed--dressed “like a lady,” in short, which was Honor’s _ne plus ultra_ of ambition. It would be a pretty sight--she could look forward to that; and it was very good of John to give up a whole afternoon--two even, he said, if it would please her and his mother (ah, Honor, how silly it was to half resent this sharing of your husband’s attentions!)--to see the “tomfooleries” at Danescourt. But although Mrs. John Beacham would of course make her appearance on the croquet and the archery ground, yet the zest, the charm of the day’s amusement, seemed, in some to her incomprehensible way, to have momentarily departed, if not to be utterly extinct. But it was when on horseback, and during the long rides, longer than ever now, which she took during those sweet summer afternoons, that Honor the most missed and regretted her companion. She had no “young friends,” no intimate associates of her own rank and degree, with whom to exchange the nothings or the _somethings_, as the case may be, which are of interest to juvenile matrons, whose housekeeping is in its infancy, and whose husbands are rich enough to make the _ménage_, trouble a source of pleasure and of pride. Honor stood, for her misfortune, very much alone at the Paddocks. There was something, as I once before explained, anomalous in her husband’s position--a something which, even had his wife _not_ been what the neighbours called a little inclined to be “set up,” would have prevented her being “hand-and-glove” with such personages as the widows Thwaytes and Tamfrey, or even with Miss Parsons, who sold caps and bonnets at a “high figure” at Leigh, and dignified her shop-girls with the title of young ladies. It was unfortunate, I repeat, that young Mrs. Beacham, for the reasons aforesaid, found herself companionless in the home which John had hoped to make so pleasant for her; and it was doubly unfortunate in that, by eschewing as intimates those with whom her husband’s mother did not consider herself too good (forsooth!) to consort, Honor contrived without much difficulty to provide herself with more than one very efficacious enemy.