pain to the man whose respect and affection for his dead landlord would end but with his life; his wish, therefore, that Arthur had been and was no more to Honor than the companion, in all innocence, of her girlish follies, was the father to the conjecture as well as to the belief that so it was. Probably, had John been returning for business purposes that day to the Paddocks, the idea which did then and there occur to him, of hurrying off to the New Adelphi, in order to _judge for himself_--as if in such a case any man could judge justly!--of Honor’s conduct and proceedings, would never have entered his head. It was a sore temptation only to look again, sooner than he had expected, at his wife’s beautiful face; and as, in memory as well as in anticipation, he dwelt upon it, the strong man’s heart softened towards the weak child-like creature whom he had sworn to honour as well as to love, and it would have required but one smile from her lips, one pressure of her tender arms, to persuade him once again that _she_ was perfect, and that if fault or folly there had been, the error lay in himself alone. Perhaps in all that crowded house--amongst that forest of faces that filled the boxes and gallery to the roof--there was not one, save that honest countryman, whose attention was not fixed and absorbed that night on one of the most sensational melodramas that have ever drawn tears from weak human eyes. At another time and under other circumstances John Beacham who, strong-bodied and iron-nerved man though he was, could never keep from what he called making a fool of himself at a dismal play, would not have seen unmoved the wondrous tragic acting of one of the very best (alas, that we must speak of him in the past!) of our comic actors: but John Beacham, on the night in question, was not in the mood to listen with interest to the divinest display of eloquence that ever burst from human lips. He was there for another and less exalted purpose: there as a spy upon the actions of another--there to feast his eyes (for, as I said before, in spite of all her errors, his heart was very soft towards the one woman whom he loved) on the wife who had defied his authority, and, possibly, made him an object of ridicule. He had not been long in the unconspicuous place he had chosen before, not far removed from him--in a box, as I before said, on the pit tier--he descried his unsuspecting wife. Such a start as he gave when first he saw her! Such a start that, had not his neighbours on the next seat been fully occupied with the Stage, they must have perceived and wondered at his agitation. At first he could hardly bring himself to believe--so changed was she, and so wondrously beautified--that it could in reality be his own Honor whom he saw there, radiant in her glorious loveliness, and with that loveliness--ah, poor, poor John Beacham!--displayed, in a manner which almost took away his breath, to the gaze of hundreds upon hundreds of admiring eyes.