Rather to Kate’s disappointment, her brother did not enter with much apparent interest into the question of Honor’s illness or her merits. And yet he was interested in John’s pretty, pensive-looking wife, more interested than could well be explained to the young girl walking by his side. There were many circumstances in Honor’s short life which were perforce unknown to the high-born and carefully-reared Katherine, whose secluded life kept her very little _au fait_ of the doings and sayings of the outer world. Of the former intimacy of her brother at Updown Paddocks she had heard little or nothing; nor, though it was more than probable that the “ower true tale” of Honor’s birth had reached Miss Vavasour’s ears, was the subject one which could well be touched upon with a discreetly-brought-up young lady. Under these circumstances, it is only natural that Horace Vavasour should have manifested some unwillingness to pursue the subject touched upon by his sister. Concerning one cause, amongst others, of Mrs. John Beacham’s lowness of spirits he might have entertained his own ideas, but those ideas he, for the moment, wisely kept to himself. CHAPTER XIV. HONOR FEELS LIKE A “LADY.” Of all the many changes that had taken place amongst the characters in my story, none was more thorough, even though its features might be less boldly marked, than that which had gradually crept over the household of excellent John Beacham. From the moment when he dealt the blow that levelled his wife’s worthless parent to the ground, John had never been exactly the same man. A sense of failure, of a disastrous fall in his own esteem, was in some measure the cause of this woeful alteration: but there was more, and for worse than this, at the bottom of his apparent moroseness, of his often sullen temper, and of what his mother called his “silent ways.” There was far worse indeed than this--far worse than any morbid impression that he himself had sunk in the opinion of the world at large; for there was the sight of Honor’s altered face, and a near prospect, nearer day by day, of some cruel domestic change for this honest, single-hearted man, whose youth and manhood had hitherto passed so uneventfully.