For a time Honor had lamented in secret over what she wrongfully believed to be her father’s forgetfulness of her existence. She had thought of, and hoped so much of happiness from her new ties, that when all that had occurred during that summer fortnight seemed likely to pass away as a dream that is forgotten, she sorrowed over it in exceeding heaviness of heart. Nor had the Colonel’s attempts to astonish the weak mind of his daughter, by opening out to her view some of the wonders of the, to her, unknown world, been without their effect in unhinging that mind, and unfitting it for a while for the everyday duties of her simple and uneventful life. Honest John was not far wrong when he decided that the “scoundrelly colonel” was beguiling the hours of sickness by describing to Honor something of the world of which she knew so little; but while surmising this, the worthy yeoman was quite incapable of fathoming the real motives of a deed that seemed so simple. How was he to imagine it possible that this man, who had voluntarily confessed to him (John) the heartless crime of which he had been guilty, should have done so solely with the design of reaping from his daughter’s beauty a harvest of advantage to himself? And yet, improbable as well as repulsive as this must appear, it was no other than the truth. There existed perhaps no accurately-defined plan in this model parent’s brain for the gathering to himself individual advantage from the judicious display of Honor’s loveliness; but it is none the less true that he had heard, and recollected with satisfaction, certain hints, corroborated by the evidence of his own senses, of Arthur Vavasour’s passionate admiration for John Beacham’s wife. That he was in some distant way connected with the prodigal heir of Gillingham--connected, that is, through the sale and purchase of John Beacham’s promising yearling, the reader may perhaps remember; how and to what purpose that connection was afterwards improved, remains to be made apparent. * * * * * The period to which I have brought my story, is, as has already been shown, the middle of the month of April. Honor had been nearly a year a wife, and the season, after the long and severe winter, seemed likely to be a genial one. On Wednesday morning, the Wednesday of which mention was made in the preceding chapter, a letter (no very common occurrence) had arrived for Mrs. John Beacham by the morning’s post. It was a large and somewhat portentous-looking missive, directed in a hand unknown at the Paddocks, and when Honor came down to breakfast she found it lying ostentatiously upon her plate; while the old lady, eyeing it askance, was waiting, with as much patience as she could summon to her aid, the moment of disclosure.