It was not till some hours later, and when Jack--who had been walked over every acre of the Paddocks, and been encouraged to linger longer than visitor had ever lingered before in each loose box and stall--that John Beacham and his mother, each in their several elbow-chairs, consumed their meal of herbs--_id est_, their tea and bread-and-butter--in silence and in gloom. John had delayed, with a cowardice very unusual to his open, natural, fearless character, the moment, dreaded beyond any previous moment of his life,--_that_, namely, when Honor’s conduct, her duplicity, her shamelessness, and worst of all, her dislike to him and to her home, would infallibly come under discussion between himself and his mother. To describe John’s sensations during the revelations of Mr. Winthrop would be impossible. To hear that _his_ Honor,--the fair young wife whom he had pictured to himself living a secluded life in her father’s dull and poverty-stricken home,--to hear, I say, from authority undeniable, that she was recreating herself with horse exercise in the Lady’s Mile with a young gentleman,--_the_ young gentleman of whose designs, or rather the report of whose designs, upon his wife’s affections, Mrs. Beacham had already more than once irritated him by hinting at,--was to receive a stab sharp and cruel, as it was wholly unexpected, in the warm honest heart that still contained within it such a wealth of love for the backsliding absent one. He had made no sign--it was his way (a misfortune in some cases) to make no sign till such time as the gathering stream of passion, defying all control, burst through its bonds, and spent itself in outward fury--he made no sign of what he was enduring whilst Honor’s sin of _suppressio veri_ (to use the mildest term) was shown up in glaring colours by his officious visitor. From his manner--but then Jack was not an observant character,--that sporting individual would never have imagined that his old friend was undergoing torture very difficult to endure with outward composure; and that John Beacham did so endure it was partly owing to his dread that the old lady, who was not famous for concealing what she called her “feelings,” might, by an outburst of indignation, betray the mortifying fact that his young wife was wronging and deceiving him. That such a manifestation was to the last degree unadvisable was so clearly and intentionally demonstrated by John’s demeanour, that Mrs. Beacham, though sorely against her will, limited the expression of her wrath to an “Ah, well!” followed by the compressed lips which so often betray that wrath “to be kept warm” is being nursed within the breast.