“Indeed I will,” said Honor, answering the request, as such questions usually are answered, at random; and in another moment the owner of the dirty net-cap and incipient moustache returned, the impersonation of baffled curiosity, into the underground precincts of the “quiet lodging,” while Honor, Hope having at last come out conqueror over Fear, pursued her way--a thousand conflicting feelings surging in her breast--towards _home_! Home at last, home again, for all that in her husband’s house Honor expected still to find the unloving woman who had once made that home so hard to bear. Home again, though John’s anger might still be hot against her, and though she had her pardon yet to seek. Home once more; for on that never-to-be-forgotten day Honor had discovered that which changed for her, in some mysterious way, the entire aspect of her life, had made sure of that which she fondly hoped would not only make her peace with John, but would perhaps even soften his mother’s stony heart towards her. “They can never, never be hard upon me _now_,” she kept repeating to herself as visions of a great joy yet to come, a joy that would gild over the dark and mournful outlines of the past, rose up before her. Visions they were of a fair child--the peacemaker--a child with tender limbs, rounded and soft, whose little cheek was pressed to hers, John all the while looking at them both, the child and her, in wonder and in love. But, unfortunately for the sustainment of poor Honor’s courage, other and less agreeable thoughts and anticipations took their place as she drew nearer and more near to the home that she was gilding with her own fancy’s rays. At a distance, and buoyed up by the inward consciousness that, in her humble way, she was blessed among women, it had seemed no such hard matter to fall at honest John’s feet and cry, “Husband, I have sinned before thee, and am no more worthy--inasmuch as I have been proud, passionate, and ungrateful--to be called thy wife:” but as the moment for confession approached, stern reality usurped the place of fancy, and the task grew to her thinking very hard indeed to perform. Nor was it rendered easier by the reception--real or imaginary--which awaited her at Switcham--Switcham, where, a twelvemonth before, at that self-same hour, she had returned from her bridal tour in happiness and half in triumph, to her home, and where, now a disgraced and lonely wanderer, she had to endure as best she might cold looks and disrespectful stares, from the sight of which she escaped with eager haste into the first closed carriage that she found in waiting.