If they had but been alone, those two, if there had not been seated opposite to them a garrulous old woman and her maid, Honor might have said her say; John might have softened at the sight of her swollen eyelids, and all might have been well, or at least better, between them. The fellow-traveller, however, proved an effectual barrier to any such beneficial result. She did not come under the head of a strong-minded female, but was, on the contrary, one of the numerous unprotected travellers who divide their interests between their sherry-flask and the anticipation of an immediate and dreadful railway accident. “I suppose there won’t be any signals, sir,” she said, addressing John nervously, for, as they neared London, the smoke floating on the breezeless air bore a striking and disagreeable resemblance to a November fog. “The railway people are so terribly careless. I declare, there’s no punishment too bad for them. We might all be robbed and murdered, and not one among ’em would trouble his head about the matter.” In this way the old lady, after the fashion of her kind, maundered on, while nearer and more near to the head-quarters of dirt and smoke and crime the travellers rushed. Honor sat mute, and with a sad and troubled countenance, by her husband’s side. She dreaded and yet longed for the moment when she would be freed from the miserable restraint, the almost unendurable combat within her, which was induced by his presence. Once alone--once safe in the cab which was to convey her far from him and from the associations connected with the painful past--she would breathe, she thought, more freely, and would be better able to prepare herself for the interview with her father and her father’s wife which was now so very near at hand. Honor now knew (none could have known better) that she had not done, in the spirit as well as to the letter, her duty to her husband. In thought she had strayed from him; in her daily life she had not cared to study his wishes; and above all--but that was happily, long ago now, and over--she had allowed the image of another man to stand between her and the husband who so loved and trusted her. To confess all this would have been more than Honor would have found moral strength and courage for, so she came to a compromise, after the fashion of the cowardly, with her conscience, and made an inward resolve that on her return, at a convenient season she would--not exactly make a clean breast of it to John, but that she would show him by her conduct, ay by her words if necessary, that she repented of her past proceedings, and intended, as much as in her lay, to make ample amends for it in the time to come.