The revolution that was taking place seemed indeed a startling one to that quiet stay-at-home family. To Honor, now that her vague wishes seemed on the point of being gratified, now that she was _not_ to return to her tranquil home at the Paddocks, but, instead, was to be suddenly thrown into the presence and society of strangers, the variety in her life did not appear in quite so attractive a light as she had anticipated. She knew nothing whatever of Mrs. Baker; nothing, that is to say, beyond the fact that she was old, religious, and a lady; none of which qualities tended, it must be confessed, to render the prospect of the approaching, and now not to be evaded, meeting particularly agreeable in Honor’s sight. To make matters worse, Mrs. Beacham--her short-lived compassion for her daughter-in-law being brought to a sudden conclusion--took it into her head to be more than usually jealous and hard to manage on the occasion. Now that Honor was about to be “taken up,” as the cantankerous old lady phrased it, “by the grandees,” all the milk of human kindness in Mrs. Beacham’s breast seemed turned to gall; and very short and snappish were the only replies that either her son or Honor could extract from her. “Well, mother,” John said, with a poor attempt at sportiveness, “here we are together again!” He had just returned from leaving his agitated wife at the door of Mrs. Baker’s sitting-room; and--it was morbid, foolish, perhaps, on his part--he could not wholly divest himself of a very miserable, but quite undefinable, sensation that the curtain had fallen on the first act of his married life, and that the happiest portion of it was at an end for ever.