“Thank you--how good you are!” Honor said fervently; “they certainly do not seem like nice people here; but I stopped at the first place where I saw a bill up. I believe I was afraid to meet my father. What I fear most now is his seeing me; for he would perhaps tell John--John would go to him first, you know, and--” “Your father! Why, Honor, haven’t you heard? But I don’t know how you should. Your father is--has--” and then he stopped, feeling it scarcely decent to disclose to Honor the facts that proclaimed her father to be a villain. But his companion, who was _quoad_ curiosity a true daughter of Eve, refused on this occasion to allow her filial feelings to be spared. She insisted (and as a natural consequence not only of that insistence, but of the wronged man’s easily-to-be-comprehended satisfaction in giving at least words to his sorrow) on hearing all that Arthur could tell her of her father. In breathless silence she listened to a detail of his villany; and deep indeed and painful was her regret at the injury which had been done to the man who had so blindly trusted him. As Arthur noted the quivering lip, the turbulent heaving of the pitying breast, he could not but feel he was in one respect a gainer by his loss; for Honor _could_ hardly be hard and distant to the friend who had fallen a victim to the machinations of her father. Arthur felt that he had claim on, an actual right to, her sympathy and kindness now, and therefore did not hesitate to make the very most of the injuries, the losses, and the embarrassments which the Colonel’s baseness had entailed upon him. “I am _so_ sorry--so very grieved. Is there nothing that I could do? Perhaps if I were to see my father, I might--” Arthur interrupted her with a laugh. “See him?” he said; “why, it would require the best detective in London, I suspect, to find him out; and if we did, there is nothing, not even _your_ persuasions, which would be likely to work up such a man as Fred Norcott to his duty. But we have wasted time enough over him, dear Honor: and as I am not my own master just now--since Sophy’s confinement, I mean--”