He stopped abruptly at this crisis in his discourse,--stopped because, his momentary passion being over, the old feeling of inferiority to his wife, the undefinable consciousness of her refinement, her delicacy, her “good blood,” her _ladyhood_, as opposed to his roughness and plebeian birth, gained ground again, and checked the well-deserved reproaches that were hovering on his lips. Had Honor been at that moment clad in her customary dress of neatly-made linsey, had there been no blue flowers in her rippling hair, and had there been no “jewelled cross” glittering on her “snow-white breast,” John would have been twice the man he was--twice the man, that is, in his power to speak out to his young giddy wife the truth which it was good for her to know. But this simple-minded rustic felt, as we all of us more or less have probably done, the influence of show, of adornment, of superior dress, above all of a soft, gentle _retenue_ of manner which puts to shame and utterly condemns the violence of the more impulsive and the outspoken. Angry, justly angry as he had so lately felt with Honor, John’s courage failed him when he commenced to reason with her on her shortcomings, and he paused, not knowing how to pursue a subject which could not fail to be displeasing to the youthful beauty whom he had so lately seen the admired of all beholders in the London playhouse. John little guessed--well would it have been for all parties had it been otherwise--what a very coward was at that moment the woman who, all unconsciously to herself, was making a poltroon of him. Trembling, shivering inwardly at the thought of the dreaded interview with her stern and relentless judge, Honor would have given much at that moment to have been certain of a friend and ally in her husband. It was her ignorance on this point, and not, as John suspected, the increased “fine-ladyism” which, unknown to herself, was evident in her air and tone, that kept her silent, even from mild words of apology and self-justification. Ashamed, frightened, and thoroughly detesting the companionship to which her husband was about to condemn her, it was little to be wondered at that John Beacham, believing her to have taken refuge in a “fit of the sulks,” relapsed into a silence which lasted till the wheels of the lumbering, misnamed vehicle, after grating for a few seconds along the well-known gravel, came to a stand before the ivy-covered porch of Pear-tree House. If Hannah had seen that often-talked-of object of her awe and curiosity, an actual ghost, she could hardly have been frightened into a more violent start than that which jerked her stoutly-built person at the sight of her young mistress. “My good gracious me! Who ever would have thought it?” she exclaimed, as she followed Honor’s lagging footsteps into the little parlour. “Why missus never expected you, mum, not for a moment--and everything going on so quiet! Dear, dear! it was only this very day as missus was a saying--”