Intensely as John Beacham admired his wife’s beauty, he had, somewhat strange to say, been awake for the first time that day to a sense of its effect on others. His wrath--the natural wrath of a man and a husband--had been grievously stirred within him at the sight of Fred Norcott’s bold stare into Honor’s modest eyes. He had noted the crimson flush that made her look so passing lovely, and feared--not without good cause--that the hardened profligate, who had never had the grace to hide under a bushel his solitary talent (the truly Mephistophelian one of beguiling fond and foolish women to their own destruction), would discover in Honor’s rising colour only another proof, if proof were wanting, of his own irresistible power to fascinate. At that moment--so unjust does personal annoyance often render even the best amongst us--John felt half angry with his wife for this additional proof, had proof been wanting, of a delicacy and reserve which repelled with indignation the coarse incense offered for her acceptance. It certainly was wrong on John’s part; but then you must remember that he was not a fashionable husband--was, in fact, only a clod, as Colonel Norcott’s might have said; and being only a clod, he may be excused for holding certain anti-Mormon and old-world ideas. For instance, this stupid, selfish fellow, entertaining the barbaric notion of keeping his wife’s beauty for his own delectation, would, I fear, have strongly objected to seeing that well-conducted young woman join in the “voluptuous waltz”-- “The only dance that teaches girls to think”-- while the faintest suspicion that, even in a dream (an involuntary indiscretion suggested by the example of the upper ten thousand), wife of his might be capable of putting in an appearance at opera or ball in the dress _à la mode_, which, for want of a proper name, we will call _costume de Paradis_, would have taken away honest John’s breath to entertain. An _exhibition des beaux arts_, in the shape of his fair young wife’s bust and shoulders, for the benefit of amateurs, would have been simply shameful in the eyes of that unsophisticated horse-breeder; and this being the good man’s turn of mind, it was with something of irritated jealousy that he took up his mother’s words, inquiring of her thus by implication what Honor had been about. “Looking after Colonel Norcott! I don’t understand what you can mean, mother; I--” But before he could proceed any further in his inquiries, he was interrupted by a slight tap on the shoulder, and by the voice of the man whose name he had just uttered, whispering in his ear: “I am glad to have found you at last, Mr. Beacham; and I shall be glad if you will step this way, and allow me the favour of a few minutes’ conversation.”