“Mother,” he said desperately, “let bygones be bygones. Honor has been foolish enough, I know, and she had better not have made things out different from what they were; but there’s no manner of use hammering on about what’s past and over. So, Honor--there’s a good girl--just tell mother you’re sorry for what’s happened, and let us all be friends again. It’s the best way, to my thinking, times and over.” He laid his hand very lightly on his wife’s bare shoulder as he spoke, giving the slightest of impulses to his touch; but, to his dismay, Honor, instead of obeying that impulse, recoiled from the pressure of his hand, and said in a low tone, but resolutely: “I have done no harm. I am sorry, of course, if she is angry; but, John, you do not know--if you did, you would understand it all better--what your mother wrote to me. I would do anything for you--I would, indeed,” she added passionately; “but _she_ hates me--she always did; and I will not--no, I _will_ not humble myself before her!” “You _will_ not? There’s for you!” cried the indignant old woman, roused to fury by Honor’s resistance to her husband’s wishes. “Didn’t I tell you how it would be? Didn’t I say that you had got rather more than you could manage in milady there? Why, only to look at her is enough, and more than enough for me. If _you_ call _that_”--and she pointed with a fierce trembling finger at Honor’s polished shoulders--“if you call _that_ the dress of a modest woman, why you are a bigger fool, John, than I took you for. I should have liked to see _my_ husband’s face if _I_ had made such a wanton of myself as to--” “Come, come, mother, enough said,” interposed John. “I don’t like the way that young women get themselves up nowadays a bit better than you do; but she’s in the fashion--Honor is, and anyway I won’t have her called hard names even by you.--Honey, my dear,” he went on more gently, as he noticed his wife’s quivering lip, “you mustn’t be so foolish as to think what you said just now. Mother doesn’t hate you; she couldn’t be so wicked, letting alone that you’re not one that the worst woman--which God knows she isn’t--could dislike. So, now _do_, for Heaven’s sake, let us have done with it all. You’re looking as pale and as cold”--wrapping the opera-cloak round her carefully, in order to conceal the smooth white shoulders which were so obnoxious in his mother’s sight--“as cold as death, my dear. Here, take a cup of tea; and, mother, suppose you have a drop of something warm?--Here, Hannah, bring in the ‘matarials’--as Joe Connor calls ’em--and let’s make ourselves comfortable.” His voice--it was a very pleasant one at all times--sounded loud and cheerful through the ill-lighted room--it was a voice that his old mother dearly loved to hear; but, just then, so uncongenial were her own feelings, and so hardened was her heart against the girl whom she _really_ believed to be “gay and giddy,” if not worse, that she refused to be softened by her son’s cordial tones.