Honor coloured to the roots of her fair hair at this uncompromising epithet. For a single instant she thought that John was speaking of Arthur Vavasour; and, despite the corroborative evidence of her own ears, a sudden pang of anger against her plain outspoken husband shot through her brain. In another second, however, the current of her ideas was checked; for John continued: “How these fine people can allow such a fellow as Colonel Norcott to come inside their doors passes _my_ understanding! A man that has a way of looking at ’em that no modest woman ought to bear; and then there’s the things he’s known to have done, and the--But I’m not going into all that. Someone told me he was married and going to reform--a thing I won’t believe till I see it; but in the mean time he’s trying it on to scrape acquaintance with me. Sent me a message by Clay’s eldest little chap, to say he should be glad before I left Danescourt to have a few minutes conversation with me--the impudence of the fellow! And yet I’m curious now, bad as I think of him, to know what he can have to say. I wasn’t over civil an hour or two ago to the fellow, so it’s odd, ain’t it, altogether? He never said where he’d be neither, nor where I should be likely to find him; and the odd thing is--and what _did_ put me out till I came to think for certain it wasn’t true--one of the little chaps that I asked if he’d seen the Colonel said that--hang him! you may well look alive, mother--he had been walking about among the trees with Honor there!” “How absurd!” Honor said. “My dear John, I never set eyes on him after you told me who he was.” “Yes, indeed, I can answer for _that_,” put in Mrs. Beacham. “Honor has been better amused, John, by a good deal than in looking after Colonel Norcott.” “Looking after” and “better amused”--what did it all mean? John was not the most perspicacious of mortals, yet even he could perceive the something in his mother’s speech which meant more than met the ear. After all, what is easier than to stir into a blaze an already well-laid fire? while to “hint a fault, and hesitate dislike,” are means well suited to raise a storm; and is it not too sadly true that in the simplest _sounding_ words, the kindest and least-designing nature can, if his mood he attuned to suspicion, sometimes read a volume?