Before Arthur Vavasour took his leave he had thoroughly succeeded in awakening in Honor Beacham’s ambitious and pleasure-loving breast a keen desire to partake of such gaieties and amusements as he might be able to procure for her. On the following morning a riding-habit, borrowed from the wardrobe of the unsuspicious Sophy, was to be altered (if necessary) for Mrs. Beacham’s use; a box at the Opera was to be placed at her disposal, and everything worth either seeing or doing was to be seen and done by the pretty recluse of Updown Paddocks. Honor knew that it was all wrong; but her head was beginning to be turned, and that night as she laid it on her pillow she almost went the length of congratulating herself that she had kept the unsophisticated John in the dark regarding her father’s health. She had every chance of catching a glimpse of the ineffable delights of London in the season, as those delights were imagined in her foolish dreams, and coloured by the man whose words had from the first moment of her acquaintance with him possessed such a strange and unfortunate influence over her still childish mind. CHAPTER XXIII. THE RECTOR COMMITS HIMSELF. Arthur was not far wrong when he averred that his sister Rhoda was the last girl in the world to make a successful _début_ in London society. Shyness--being entirely uncomprehended and believed in--is too often there mistaken for stupidity, or, at best, for a disinclination to be pleased and to be “jolly.” Looking beneath the surface is too long a process for the superficial observers of the present day; summary condemnation takes little time, and lynch-law, in the shape of something very like ostracism, is speedily pronounced. So Rhoda Vavasour--whose mother had been guilty of that terrible social blunder, namely, the non-keeping up of her connections--found herself, although rather pretty and decidedly “nice,” quite thrown away in the West-end world. Under these circumstances, and feeling--gentle though she was, and humble-minded--a little mortified and _délaissée_, Rhoda’s heart naturally turned again towards the man who, being but a country rector, looked up to, loved, and appreciated her. For her--almost partnerless, and left, whether at ball, opera, or party, a good deal to her own resources and reflections--the memory of George Wallingford, together with her pleasant country duties and avocations, was as a gleam of summer sunshine, a green oasis in the peopled desert of her uncongenial life. When, before her departure from Gillingham, the rector, meeting her by chance as she was leaving the door of a poor dependent on her kindness, stopped his horse, and by a few meaning words, and looks more suggestive still, conveyed to her the knowledge that neither time nor absence would erase her image from his heart, he of course committed this disloyal act with eyes wide open to its impropriety. He knew, ay better than did Arthur Vavasour, that he was, in thus secretly tampering