protection, the desire to see her once again, by stealth or otherwise, was stronger than any other feeling, and to remain in the neighbourhood of the woman he adored was the dearest wish of his unregenerate heart. Meanwhile, what was the reality regarding Honor Beacham’s whereabouts, what her feelings, and how had her husband’s sudden exertion of marital power affected her conduct? The night-train by which she and John travelled homewards was due about midnight at Leigh, at which town it stopped for a few hurried minutes only, and then proceeded at express speed on its course south-westward. Happily for Honor, they were not _tête-à-tête_ in their compartment. Childlike, she caught at any delay, any postponement of the explanation which was the inevitable consequence of her folly and--in some sort--her falsehood. To keep back the truth--not to tell that “whole,” when on that “whole” depends the _spirit_ of the facts left half undisclosed and to be guessed at--is, disguise it, mystify ourselves with what sophistry we may, _to lie unto our neighbour_, and to deceive the one who trusts us. It was the consciousness that she had so lied and deceived, together with a certain amount of uninvestigated self-reproach as regarded the delight which Arthur Vavasour’s society had afforded her, that caused Honor to shrink with nervous trepidation not only from her husband’s questionings, but from the very sight of the keen-witted and sharp-tongued old woman who already, as Honor had every reason to believe, looked on her with no favourable eyes. Under these circumstances, the presence in the carriage which they occupied of a sleepy old gentleman and a wideawake young girl, who was in all probability his daughter, was a relief not only to Honor but to John; for he too, with all an honest, strong-nerved Englishman’s dislike to tears and domestic tragedies, recoiled from the duty of saying harsh words to the young wife, whose worst offence he felt inclined to believe had been a love of hitherto undreamt-of gaieties, the consequence of which very natural tastes was the sin--one of omission rather than commission--of giving a false colouring to the state of affairs in Stanwick-street. Already, so kindly was the man’s nature, and so strong was his dislike to being what he called “ill friends” with those about him,--already had his displeasure begun to subside, and already had he begun to accuse himself of harshness in thus summarily dealing out hard measures against his wife. As she sat there silently by his side, the outline of her perfect profile just visible under the scarlet hood of her opera-cloak, and her pale lips quivering with the effort to conceal her emotion and check the tears that from moment to moment were on the point of escaping from their “briny bed,” it would have required but little to persuade the strong man near her that in his dealings with that frail but fairest flower he had been little better than a brute.