Life, as has been said a thousand times, is made up of contrasts--healthy, invigorating contrasts sometimes--contrasts which, while they often jar upon the feelings, and even sometimes tinge with a faint and humiliating colouring of ridicule the “situations” which they mar, are, nevertheless, as I said before, highly useful in their way, acting as a mental _douche_, the benefit of which may be as lasting as it is immediate. It was such a shock as this, a trifling one in appearance, yet not altogether without its use, that roused Honor from the kind of trance of despair into which she had fallen. The sound of Mrs. Casey’s voice, and the commonplace inquiry of “Please, _miss_, is there anything partiklar that you’d like for dinner?” smote upon Honor’s ear like a summons from a world that she had left, and in the interests of which she had ceased to have a share. But although this _was_ the case, and albeit her grief and repentance were as deep and scarcely less agonising than they had been at first, the necessity of rising from her knees, of hiding the traces of her agitation, and, more than all, the obligation under which she lay, both of replying to Mrs. Casey’s well-meant inquiries, and of baffling as best she might that investigating person’s very natural curiosity, all these things were, to a certain extent, good for Honor. That they were beneficial was evidenced by the fact that, after Mrs. Casey had, with a very dissatisfied look, which increased the always somewhat repulsive expression of her face, left her lodger to herself, that, to the landlady’s thinking, very mysterious and unsatisfactory young person felt far more equal than she had done ten minutes before to the task of thinking, with some degree of calmness and common sense, not only on the difficulties and necessities of her present position, but on what manner it had become her duty at this crisis of her affairs to act.