John and his mother had already left the house when Honor, feeling very proud of her holocaust, and not a little eager to judge of its effect upon those she had endeavoured to please, rushed into the hall. She knew it was late, and moreover Mrs. Beacham was, she felt, precisely the kind of old woman who would not enter a Church after the service had begun for the world; but in spite of these and other excuses that might be made for the disappearance of her companions, Honor did feel it a little hard that they had not waited for her--a trifle provoking that John should have cared so little whether she looked well or ill in that “guy of a thing” that she had put upon her head. She betrayed no outward signs of the foolish, perhaps too it may be called _puerile_, inward struggle--the battle against what I fear might almost be called a “bit of temper” that was rife within her. Overtaking John and his mother walking quietly arm-in-arm, “as if nothing had happened,” it was only natural, I think, that this silly girl should have entertained a vague impression that she, the bride of four weeks old, had been “thrown over”--and that, too, after she had shown herself so willing to “oblige”--for the sake of the “cross,” “fussy” old woman, behind whose broad uncompromising back Honor (and it must be confessed that at the moment she did not greatly love the sight) was trudging across the meadows, with her fair face--that bonnet was so very old-fashioned and ugly!--slightly overshadowed by a passing cloud. It _was_ only a trifle, you will say, that produced this inauspicious result; but need I repeat that trifles make up the sum of human life? Were we all to look back upon some of the most important incidents of our lives, I think--could we all be strictly honest with ourselves--we should be willing to allow that what seemed a mere “nothing” at the time was not without its influence, not only on our conduct, but on that which goes by the name (for want of a better) of our destinies. Honor would have been as incredulous as her neighbours had it been suggested to her that in her present petulance there lay the germ of future peril, and that the apparently insignificant family feud with which that peaceful-seeming Sabbath had been marked was _le commencement de la fin_ of her life’s history; and yet that so it was the events hereafter to be disclosed will greatly tend to prove.