Her bosom heaved, and her heart beat very quickly, under the strong firm pressure of his hand; but for all that--and perhaps some of my readers may understand the anomaly--the strongest feeling in Honor Beacham’s mind at that important crisis was one of relief that she was not _alone_ with her adorer. And yet in one sense she loved him. His touch, his lingering gaze into the depths of her blue eyes, exercised--and never more so than at that moment--a strange magnetic influence over her nerves. She could ill have borne a decree that banished Arthur Vavasour from her society, and yet she felt that he was to play no actual part in the misty future of her life--the life which she never doubted she was to spend with John; the life that _might_ be a tolerably happy one when Mrs. Beacham was gathered--not to her forefathers, but to the place allotted to her by her dead husband’s side. Honor, to do her justice, never imagined an existence apart from her husband. She was not happy at home; the life there was unsuited to her, and John, she believed, did not love her well enough to care whether his mother tormented her or not. In London, on the contrary, she _did_ enjoy herself, wildly, feverishly, but with a zest and an impulse that had nothing in it that was natural or lasting. When the day came, she longed for the hour which should bring Arthur Vavasour to her side; but with the longing came a kind of nervous dread--a fear of his impatience, an alarm as of a hunted animal at the thought of finding herself within his power--all which symptoms might have told a more experienced woman that in her love for Arthur Vavasour there was an alloy which, had he imagined its existence, would have deprived the longing for possession of more than half its value. It is often a misfortune to all parties concerned that the same symptoms are indicative of various and opposite complaints. A blush is as often a sign of innocence as of guilt; and a beating heart beneath a _visibly_ agitated bosom may be a token of other emotions besides the tender one of love. When Arthur felt the throbbing pulse bounding beneath the pressure of his hand, he never doubted that, had he been _tête-à-tête_ with that most peerless creature, she would have gladly sighed her love out on his breast, listening in tender ecstasy to his vows of eternal constancy. Nearer and nearer, happy in this blessed conviction, to his heart he held her, secured from observation in a shadowy corner, and _safe_ under the protection of the remainder of the party, who lingered just out of earshot on the terrace.