no shadow darkling over the past, Honor _Blake_ could have claimed small praise for being cheerful, yielding, and contented. It was in part, perhaps, owing to that very absence of trial that might be traced some of the striking changes that had apparently taken place in her disposition and character. Accustomed to be made much of, and dearly loving the _evidences_ of being appreciated--well aware that her beauty was of that high and uncommon order which can be disputed by none, and that takes the senses, as it were, by storm--Honor, the stay-at-home wife of a staid and almost middle-aged man, had every chance of becoming discontented with the lot which at first sight, and before she had been allowed time to feel its flatness and monotony, had seemed to her all that was to be desired. That Mrs. Beacham--that the jealous mother-in-law, whom an angel from heaven would probably, under similar circumstances, have failed to please--should have had her lines also cast in the pleasant places of the Paddocks, had proved a real misfortune to Honor. “If she were _anywhere_ but here!” had been often and often the girl’s inward cry, when the peace of every moment, and the bright coming of each returning day, were disturbed and darkened by the small aggravations of John’s crabbed and exacting mother. It is wonderful, the power that _one_ person possesses to make or mar the comfort of a household. The constant _fears_ of “something coming,” the dread of words being taken amiss, the fretful answer, or even the mute reproach of shrugged-up shoulders, and a peevish sneer, can make to a sensitive nature the interior of a home that outwardly seems fair enough a daily, hourly purgatory. Poor Honor! As she lay upon her bed, thinking how very near the time had come when she must perforce exchange the delights, mingled though they were with the bitterness of self-reproach, of her present existence for the uncongenial company, the harsh sarcastic words, and the contemptuous looks of her unloving mother-in-law, her heart sank within her with disgust and fear. “I cannot do it!” she said half aloud. “And John, too! What will he say to me?” And at the thought of her husband’s displeasure, the wife who had lacked moral courage to speak the truth began to feel that, rather than face those two outraged and indignant spirits, she would gladly flee to the uttermost parts of the earth, and be at rest. To be alone--to work for her bread--to suffer hardship in every miserable and even degrading fashion--all this appeared to Honor (she being at the age and of the nature to jump at conclusions, and to imagine no evil equal to the present ones) infinitely, ay, a thousand thousand times, preferable to putting her pretty neck again under the yoke of angry Mrs. Beacham’s thrall, and to the endurance, from morning’s dawn to evening’s light, of that unpleasant old lady’s disagreeable form of being good and useful.