“Mad,--yes, I suppose I am mad,” he said, in answer to a half-reproach from his companion; “but who, I ask, would not be mad--mad as you are beautiful--seeing you as I do, Honor, nearly every day, every hour? It is my fate--for by the heaven above me I _cannot_ help it--to look upon your beautiful face, and see you smile, my love, my darling! Ah, do not, for the love of all that is good and beautiful, be angry with me! From the moment that I saw you first, Honor, I felt as I never felt before for mortal woman--I--” “Don’t say so. All men say that,” put in Honor, who was more versed in the theory of love-making than its practice, and who, while she felt the necessity of checking her admirer’s outpourings, was terribly shy and untutored in the process. “Besides, Mr. Vavasour,”--gathering courage as she proceeded,--“it is very wicked--_terribly_ wicked, both for you to talk and for me to listen to such words. There is your wife at home, poor thing,--I often think of her,--how unhappy she would be could she only guess that you said such things to any woman as I have just been wicked enough to listen to!” Arthur could scarcely repress a sigh as the image of poor neglected Sophy, stretched on her luxurious couch in the gorgeously-furnished back drawing-room in Hyde-park-terrace, presented itself to his mind’s eye. “She knows nothing, guesses nothing,” he said, with an ineffectual effort at carelessness. “Where ignorance is bliss, you know, it’s worse than folly to be wise. I suspect there is a Bluebeard’s closet in almost every house, and as long as women don’t try to look inside, all goes on smoothly.” For a moment, whilst Arthur was imparting to his fair companion this result of his worldly experience, _her_ thoughts glanced back to her own home, and to the marked exception to her lover’s rule which it afforded. At the Paddocks--and well did Honor know that so it was--there could be found no hidden chamber barred off from the investigations of the curious. The wife of true-hearted John Beacham could pry at her own wondering will into any and every corner of his big warm heart, and find there no skeleton of the past, no flesh-covered denizen of the present, warning her with uplifted finger that he was false. Very guilty she felt for a second or two, and humbled and odious, as the consciousness of being a vile deceiver sent a blush to her fair cheek, and checked any answering words that had risen to her tongue. Time, however, for useful reflection was denied her. The sound of her father’s voice announcing that it was five o’clock, and that the boats were waiting at the Castle-stairs, effectually interrupted a reverie of a more wholesome description than might, under the circumstances, have been expected; and, reëntering their respective carriages, the party were soon on their way down the hill so loved by Cockney pleasure-seekers, and so be sung by nature-worshipping poets. * * * * *