How far these, perhaps morbid, feelings reacted on those which he was beginning to entertain for his young wife, it would be hard to say; that they rendered him outwardly cold, and even irritable towards the woman whom he loved with such a devoted and unselfish love, was unfortunately but too true. Men of John Beacham’s stamp are poor dissemblers. He was ill at ease, provoked both with himself and her, and in some way or other needs must that the discontent caused by this weight of care cropped out, and that Honor, ignorant of the cause of his _maussaderie_, attributed it to any other than the right one. Very frigid indeed and stern he often seemed, when a word or a smile from her might have dispelled the gathering clouds--might, perhaps, have caused him to forget the mortifying truth that it was _her_ father who shared his mortifying secret--her father, who, though base and unprincipled, was, compared to him, a high-born gentleman, and whose well-bred air, together with the potent charm of manner (a charm which, without comprehending, John was still capable of appreciating) had descended with added grace to his neglected child. I have dwelt perhaps too long, and returned with perhaps too much pertinacity to the causes of an estrangement which may appear to some (who are not in the habit of considering the vast power of apparently trifling causes) as, under the circumstances, to be unnatural, if not indeed impossible. But I have wished in some decree to extenuate the faults and mistakes of my poor heroine. I have done so from a conviction that in judging others we not only see but often suspect little of the latent causes of the sins which seem to us, and which in truth are, so flagrant and so disastrous. Blessed be He who seeth into the darkest places of the hearts of his failing creatures, and who, being himself perfect, can yet find pardon and mercy for those whom erring man forgiveth not! CHAPTER XXI. HONOR DECEIVES HERSELF. Honor Beacham was, as I think has been pretty clearly shown, a very woman in her faults and follies--her quick impulses--her yearning for love and admiration--her small ambitions--and her dainty phantasies. “Fine by degrees, and delicately weak”--like Pope’s inferior man--this semi-Celtic woman was evidently no philosopher at all; and, left to her own guidance, the chances were terribly in favour of her coming--to use the not inexpressive nineteenth-century slang--“to grief.”