Acting on this resolution,--for it was a matter of _necessity_ to search actively for Honor, since sitting down quietly under his suspense would drive him mad he thought,--John hurried away down the sweet-brier hedge that ran at right-angles with the porch--hurried away so quickly that his mother had no time to reiterate her urgent entreaty that he would have something to eat before he went. “Just a mouthful, John!” she screamed at the very top of her voice, as she caught a last glimpse of his tall figure turning an angle in the path. But her anxiety was entirely thrown away. A shake of the head was all the answer that John vouchsafed; for the miserably anxious man, whose appetite for his dinner was usually of the healthiest and keenest, felt at that moment that he should not care either to eat or sleep again till he had found the wife that he had lost. CHAPTER XIX. ANOTHER ESCAPE. “A gentleman, please, miss, as wants to see you.” Such was the announcement, on the morning succeeding Honor’s instalment in her new abode, of the fastidious Arthur Vavasour’s visit to that very untempting “bower of beauty.” It was nearly noon, an early hour for _him_ to be abroad; but to Honor--who had passed a sleepless night, and who had been up and about for ages, as it seemed to her--the day appeared to be already well-nigh spent; while as regarded him, and her chance of seeing him in her wretched home, she had begun almost to despair of any such blissful, and now apparently improbable, event. When he _did_ appear therefore, when her hand was clasped in his, and when his kind voice whispered softly, “I could not come before, dear; and now I _am_ come, what a place I find you in!” her heart went forth with grateful joy to meet him, for she felt no longer unprotected and alone. “And so they have been ill-using you, you poor little thing?” he went on softly, her hand still in his, as they sat side by side on what Mrs. Casey called the couch. “I guessed how it would be; I did not like the way he looked when he took you away that night.” “O, but it isn’t John--_indeed_ it isn’t!” Honor said eagerly, her sense of justice roused to defend her husband; “it was his mother, as I told you, who behaved so to me. It was she that made me go. I know it was wrong; but what could I do?” “What indeed?” stroking tenderly the little hand he held in his. “But, Honor, it will never do for you to remain here. The place is not respectable--I am certain it is not; and the woman looks like an ogress. I think I can manage something better for you than this. There is an old servant of my father’s--a Swiss--an excellent man, with one of the cleanest and most cheerful of little wives; and if he happens to have room in his house, I am sure he will be only too delighted to devote himself to making you comfortable. Really, the nicest of old men. I will go there this afternoon, and try to make arrangements for the change.”