John had decided not to part with his wife till he saw her safe under her father’s roof. At the Leigh station, where in less time than was usually employed in the _trajet_, the pair duly arrived, Will Snelling was in waiting to drive back the horse and trap to the Paddocks. “Walk him up and down a bit, Will,” John said, as his faithful henchman gently stroked the old gray’s quarters, which gave manifest tokens of hardish driving. “I fancied we were late; clocks at the house too fast, I suppose. There, take that trunk, my man,” to a porter who seemed to have nothing more interesting to do than to suck a dirty straw while he stared at the heaving flanks of John’s thoroughbred steed. “Take that trunk, and look alive. The up-train’s late to-day, isn’t it?” He seemed determined not to trust himself with Honor. Like most men, especially those of a thoroughly manly stamp, he hated scenes, and the sight of a woman in even the smallest amount of grief or distress was especially annoying to him. Of what avail, besides, would it be to talk to Honor now on the only subject which contained interest for him? The die was cast. She was about to do the thing which he had thought and talked himself into believing that he most hated upon earth. His wife was to undergo the contamination of Norcott’s society; to mix with his associates; to listen to the conversation of men of his stamp and strain; and to return to him--ah, _that_ was the rub! _There_ was where the shoe pinched most! How would Honor return to him, and to the dull country life which alone he had to offer her? Would she be less of a fine lady, as his mother (and John had begun to think, with some degree of truth) had so often called her within the last few well-remembered months? Would she smile upon him more, talk more, be more interested in her home, and--thought poor John Beacham, with a sigh, as the train rushed onward at express speed to London, would she shrink less from his touch--the touch of one who loved her, for all his lack of refinement, his red hands, and his country-made coat, with a love which was not for an hour only, not for the brief space of a summer holiday, but for all the years that should be allotted to him upon the earth? “Pleasant day for the end of April,” John remarked; “an east wind that cuts through you like a knife. Pin your shawl, Honor; you’d better;” and he drew up the railway-carriage window with an impatient jerk.