“My poor darling,” John said soothingly, “I know it’s hard. You are such a child to be told such things, too; so young to learn about such wickedness. Not that _she_ was wicked; no--no--I’ll not believe it--not if it was proved before a judge and jury--_I’d_ not believe, Honor, that _your_ mother--precious--the poor thing who is gone to God so long ago, was a wicked girl!” They were quite alone--as solitary under the spreading trees, with the high bracken sending up its pungent odour beneath their tread, as if they had been walking between the high banks of the quiet lanes at home. Half in confusion of mind, and half from a desire to screen his wife from observation, John had chosen that pathless cut through a little-frequented portion of the park; and greatly, as in deep pity he witnessed her uncontrollable emotion, did he congratulate himself on the precautions he had taken. Poor little Honor! Poor foolish, ambitious girl! The mystery that she had so earnestly yearned to fathom was at last cleared up, and she knew--what one less innocent and unworld-taught than herself might long since have surmised--that where there is concealment there is almost certain to be guilt, and that she, alas, was the child of sin and shame! Very bitter, and yet not _all_ bitter, were the tears she shed. There was something soothing after all--and in spite of the hard things that John had said of Colonel Norcott, he _was_ a gentleman and a man of fashion--there was something soothing in the idea that she was not utterly relationless, not completely a lone waif, cast on the waters of life fatherless and forlorn. Her poor young mother, John had given her to understand, was dead. For _her_ there was no more sorrowing or shame; in the grave she had found rest from her great griefs, so the tears that Honor shed for the parent whom she had never known were pitying rather than regretful ones. On the whole--and in that she did not greatly differ from the generality of those who are young to suffering--Honor was selfish in her sorrow. The few minutes which she had spent, watching in agonised alarm what seemed to her inexperienced eyes the death-pangs of her father, had awakened in her breast feelings of the most powerful filial interest and love. It was not unnatural that so it should have been. Lying there at her feet wan and senseless, the peculiar elegance of his form and figure made conspicuous by the unconscious grace of the attitude into which he had fallen, every trace of ignoble passion removed from the face, which in its calm immobility looked so very like to death, what wonder was it that Honor’s heart should have swelled with emotions of tenderness and pity towards the parent so lately found, and found, perhaps, only that she might, under circumstances peculiarly painful, mourn his, to her, irreparable loss?