“Only for an hour or so--just to smoke a cigar in the open,” he said carelessly. “You’ll be in bed though, Honor, I suppose, before I come back? Beauty-sleep, eh? We mustn’t lose those country roses sooner than we can help, or we shall have John looking us up with that stout stick of his. Gad, how quick he struck, and how it tingled! I can feel it now;” passing his hand playfully over his forehead. “Took one so deucedly by surprise, you know. Hadn’t an idea, of course, that he was going to do anything of the kind. Nothing but a light cane in my hand, talking quietly about old times, when, without a word, down comes the sledge-hammer, and, by Jove! I _was_ floored.” “He was very sorry afterwards, indeed he was,” Honor said pleadingly. “I have heard him say so often. He hardly knew what he did. If he had not been sorry, he would never have let me leave the Paddocks to-day.” “Wouldn’t he?” chucking her under the chin. “Looks sharp after his pretty wife, eh? But as to being sorry, I can believe as much of that as I like. If he had been, he would have answered a letter that I wrote to him some time ago about Rough Diamond; but as he didn’t,” and a very vindictive expression flitted across his bearded face, “I know what to think, and, what is more, shall probably act upon the conviction I have come to.” Honor could only _look_ her surprise at this wholly unexpected outburst. Before, however, she could utter a syllable in extenuation of her husband’s sin against politeness, Colonel Norcott had taken his departure, leaving her to spend the hours till welcome bedtime came in listening to the uncongenial gossip of the woman whose society was by himself so evidently unprized. Honor’s first experience of genteel life in London was certainly neither an amusing nor an instructive one. CHAPTER XXII. THE TURNING OF THE HEAD. “How pretty Rhoda is looking! Arthur, I am sure, in spite of what you say, that she _will_ make a sensation in London. Her features are so regular, and her complexion, though she _is_ pale, is so wonderfully clear and pure. Besides she looks so good, so--” “She had better look _bad_,” growled old Mr. Duberly, in response to his daughter’s sisterly remarks on the personal recommendations of the _debutante_ from Sandyshire. “She had far better look as wicked as the evil one himself if she wants to nobble the young Lunnon gents. A gell who ‘looks good’ has no more chance of what you call getting on there than my Soph,” and he winked at his daughter facetiously, “would have had, if she hadn’t happened to have a few thousand pounds in her pocket, poor gell! There’s that Lady Fy, as they call her, with her dead eyes and painted hair; I wonder where _she_ would be if looking good was the order of the day, and if whalebone didn’t make the woman, and--”