There was not a grain (as I am sure must be by this time apparent to the reader) of that very common weakness popularly known as flunkyism in John Beacham’s honest, unaspiring nature. His wife, who was not, in ordinary cases, a mean judge of character, might have felt well satisfied, could she have often chanced to be present during John’s familiar interviews with men of rank and note, that subserviency was foreign to his nature, and that he was equally at his ease with the peer as with the peasant. It was only with the female sex--when that sex happened to be represented by an arrogant fine lady--that John Beacham, feeling completely out of his element, seemed awkward and constrained; so awkward and constrained that Honor, disposed to see everything _en noir_ as regarded her husband’s manners, rashly decided him to be vulgarly in awe of the haughty grandeur of her friend Arthur’s mother. That honest John would at any time have willingly gone a mile or two out of his way to avoid a chance meeting with the great lady of Gillingham, was undoubtedly true. Want of habit--for fine ladies of any stamp came very little in his way--was quite sufficient to account for this peculiarity; but the moral cowardice betrayed by this shrinking from a subjection to Lady Millicent’s queenly airs and condescending graciousness had often been a source of mortification to Honor. Since the memorable epoch of the Danescourt fête the foolish girl had thought herself into the irrational belief that she might aspire to visit on terms of equality the upper ten thousand of the county. Before the most unfortunate discovery which had so fully developed the germs of ambition lying latent in her breast, Honor had more than once felt inclined to resent Lady Millicent’s supercilious notice--her over-civil inquiries, when church was over, after Mrs. Beacham’s health; and, worse than all, the occasional patronising calls at the Paddocks, when any heavy-on-hand visitors among the rare guests at the Castle chanced to express a wish for an introduction to Mr. John Beacham’s far-famed breeding stud. But if such had been Mrs. John’s feelings when stirred thereto partly by Mr. Vavasour’s head-turning attentions, and partly by the entirely vague but pleasingly deluding surmise that she was a “lady” born, how much more was she inclined to chafe against Lady Millicent’s offensive condescension when the to her blissful truth was no longer doubtful, and when Honor knew herself to be the daughter of a well-born gentleman, and the great-granddaughter (it was wonderful how soon she made herself acquainted with the family pedigree) of a baronet!