It was with curiously different feelings that the mother and son awaited the time when Honor’s conduct, as revealed by Jack Winthrop, should be in solemn conclave sat in judgment on, and, as a matter of course, condemned. For that time--for the _auspicious_ moment when John should have returned from that interminable walk, when his Brother farmer, “drat him” (I am afraid that, Sunday though it was, the worthy old lady did indulge in a mild imprecation or two on the head of her unconscious visitor), should have taken his departure, and when they two should be sitting comfortably (?) over their tea, Mrs. Beacham longed with a feverish and impatient craving. It was so hard, so very hard upon her, that she was perforce obliged to keep this weighty discovery within the limits of her own breast. A secret, like a very young man’s forbidden love affair, is worth nothing unless you can divulge it to the one friend who promises with such solemn vows to keep it closely (as closely, poor confiding one, as you have done yourself); and had the widow Thwaytes chanced to “drop in” that Sunday afternoon--a step which that scandal-lover would infallibly have taken could the remotest surmise of the delightful existing field for gossip have reached her ears--the delinquencies of the absent Honor would very soon have become public property at Switcham. Such luck, however, as a visit from her congenial humble friend was not, on that day at least, in store for the busy irate old woman, who, strong in the strength of her Sabbath silk gown and great in her conscious dignity of mistress regent at the Paddocks, sat prepared to make--certainly not the _best_ of her young daughter-in-law’s shortcomings. “Well, John, what do you think of _this_?” was her startling exordium when Hannah had left the room, and John--poor John--had no escape, and no longer even a reprieve from listening to abuse--abuse, it was to be feared, only too well merited--of his beloved one. “Well, John, this looks nice, doesn’t it? So milady stays in Lunnon, not to nurse her father, as she’d have us believe, but to go tearing about Hyde Park with Mr. Vavasour! Pretty doings, upon my word! I declare to goodness, if you take no notice of _this_, I shall think you’re just gone clean out of your mind, and are only fit for an asylum, so you are.”