“Four o’clock already!” he exclaimed, “and I have so much to do for you, Honor! It is impossible for you to remain here. I could not answer for the consequences. I only wish that I had met you at the Waterloo station, and prevented your coming here at all. However, I am off now to see about old Schmidt, and directly I have settled anything, I will return. In the mean time, do not leave the house, and if you can, avoid seeing the woman that it belongs to.” “I can hardly help seeing her,” Honor said with a smile; for she was both amused and flattered by his solicitude on her behalf. “She _will_ bring in the few things that I want herself, and--” “Your poor little dinner solitary among the rest, I suppose?” said Arthur pityingly. “O Honor!” he continued--and how at that moment he longed for the hundredth time to take her in his arms and whisper to her his love, the object of that love was happily never destined to know--“O Honor!” he said, “my love, my darling! how unfitted you are to do battle for yourself in this rough, wicked world! It is so hard to leave you, so hard to think of you, in this sordid miserable place, alone, unprotected, and--God help both you and me!--so very, very beautiful!” He drew a long, almost a gasping breath, as the last passionate words burst from his white quivering lips, and, almost before Honor could even look her surprise at the utterly unexpected outburst, the door had closed upon his retreating figure, and Honor once more found herself alone. CHAPTER XX. POOR SOPHY! “I am so glad they have let me see you, though I _am_ only to speak in a whisper, and to stay just one half-hour and no more. You darling thing! How pretty you look in that dear little cap!” And Katie Vavasour, who had been allowed, as a great favour, to visit her much-loved sister-in-law, pressed her fresh young lips to the invalid’s forehead, and took her seat beside the bed preparatory to a “quiet talk.” “I am glad you came too, dear,” Sophy rejoined. “It is so dull without Arthur, and he has been gone away so long--many hours, I am sure. What o’clock is it now? Three, I am sure; and he left me long before twelve. Where do you think he is?” “O, I don’t know. Gone somewhere about horses, I daresay,” rejoined Kate, who was rather glad of Arthur’s absence, since it enabled her to have Sophy to herself. “But tell me, does he love the baby _very_ much? Does he often kiss it?” “No, not often; indeed, I don’t think he ever has; but I shouldn’t mind that, if he would but come back,” said poor Sophy, whose nerves were weak (a malady which her young sister-in-law found it hard to understand), and whose impatience at her husband’s absence was often a little trying to those about her.