Perhaps the strongest feeling (next to her own bitter self-reproach) which she was conscious of entertaining was one of deep compassion for, and sympathy with poor John’s wholly undeserved sorrows. All that had passed, and the deeds which had led with such fearful rapidity to fatal and irretrievable results, appeared in all their miserable distinctness to Honor’s mind. She could understand now that John, in his eagerness to discover her whereabouts, had found his way to the house where Arthur lived; and that, then and there, worked up to unjust suspicion by his mother’s hints and accusations, he had with the vehemence of unbridled passion uttered the words which, overheard by Arthur’s wife, had proved a death-blow to that ill-fated woman. How deeply and how lastingly the remorse of such a deed (all-unintentional though it was) would crush down the spirit of one of whose tenderness of heart Honor had had abundant proofs, she did not need in that unhappy hour to be reminded; while to act to the best of her ability the part of comforter, to strive with all the means in her power to obtain her pardon, and to induce her husband to _believe_ her, and to forget the past, were now the dearest wishes of her heart. But would he--ah! there lay the _one_ terrible and ever-recurring thought--would he, even after he had read the letters which “poor” Arthur, with what Honor was still weak enough to style his “unselfish kindness”--had returned to her--credit the truth that her worst faults were those of folly, of vanity; her most unpardonable errors those arising from a quick and rebellious temper? If she could but see him, Honor sometimes told herself, it would not be _very_ difficult--in defiance of his mother--to make John judge her rightfully; but though in her more sanguine moments this was the poor girl’s persuasion, there were other, and far more frequent occasions when she despaired of forgiveness, and when a dread of even a chance meeting with her husband made her heart sink within her for fear. In this miserable fashion, alternating between hope and depression, haunted by night as well as by day with the memory of the dead, and with her heart made every hour sorer by thinking on the living, four more painful days and nights sped by.