“Oh, my dear, you may make yourself quite easy,” snorted the old lady. “I’m not the bird to defile my own nest. It won’t be through _me_ if disgrace comes upon the family, and if _you_ like to encourage your wife in her goings on with gentlemen--” “Come, come, mother,” broke in her son; “I must not have my wife spoken of, before she deserves it, as if she was a--a gay woman. I beg your pardon, but you make me more angry than I ought to be; and it isn’t right, mother, God’s book says it ain’t. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ we are told, and grievous words only stir up anger, they do; so let’s keep from ’em while we can. I’m expecting to hear from Honor to-morrow, and if she says she’s coming home and writes about this foolish ride of hers, why we shall be sorry then, poor pretty creature, that we said a word against her.” And John, perfectly unconscious of the strangely mixed feelings, the half fear--a dread unadmitted even to his own breast--that Honor both deserved and would be visited with punishment, wished his mother “good-night,” and left her to her reflections. CHAPTER IV. MRS. BEACHAM WRITES A LETTER. The late post on Monday (the eventful Monday it was--for we have retrograded twenty-four hours in our story in order to recount what happened on that Sabbath afternoon at the Paddocks--the eventful Monday it was which Honor spent with Arthur Vavasour on horseback first, and afterwards in that feverishly enjoyable Richmond dinner), the second post, brought no letter from the truant, and John’s brow grew ominously dark as he turned over his numerous business-like-looking epistles, and amongst them found no dainty missive in a fair running hand, and adorned with an entwined H. B. in mingled shades of brown and blue, by way of monogram. “There now! What did I tell you?” exclaimed his mother triumphantly. “I was as sure as sure could be, she wouldn’t write. Guilty consciences never do. And another time, my dear, I hope you’ll attend to your mother, old as she is, and act accordingly.” John made no reply to this aggravating little speech. Fortunately for him, the day was not one of rest, neither was the hour meal-time; so that the unhappy husband could escape from the irritating attacks of Mrs. Beacham’s “deadly weapon.” In truth, he was in no mood to listen patiently to the “I told you so,” and the “You see, I was right,” of the old lady’s equivocal sympathy. His anger--hard to rouse in downright earnest against the beautiful girl, young enough, as the poor fellow often told himself, to be his daughter--had aroused at last to almost boiling-point; and, as is often the case with self-constrained but naturally passionate men, the change now lay in the probability that he would visit still more heavily than they deserved the indiscretions of the culprit, and that in his anger he would not even _remember_ mercy.