But Honor--nervous, excited, and scarcely mistress of her actions--waited to hear no more. With a cry like that of a hare hard pressed by the hounds, she rushed from the room, leaving the startled old woman to ponder with some trepidation on the mischief she had wrought. Long, and not very comfortably, did she think over her words; but after a considerable amount of putting two and two together, and no little leaning towards herself as an oracle to be respected, the balance of opinion being on the whole decidedly in favour of her own proceedings, Mrs. Beacham arrived at the conclusion that she was fully justified in speaking as she had done to the erring Honor. Judging that strong-minded woman according to the average truthfulness of her sex, John’s respected parent could not, on the whole, be accused, while quoting John’s indignant words, of the sin of mendacity. According to the letter of those words, she was justified in repeating as a fact her son’s awful threat--the one which more than any other of her angry vituperations had told upon Honor’s feelings--the threat, namely, that her husband would, instigated thereto by his mother, bring his pretty young wife “to her senses.” There was something very vague and terrible in this menace; and Honor, after locking the door of the pretty bedroom which John, little more than one short year before, had taken such pleasure in making ready for his darling, brooded over them with a sick heart and miserably. She was utterly in the dark, as I have already and more than once endeavoured to explain, regarding her husband’s character generally, and his feelings towards herself in particular. Could anyone at that particular moment--when she was brooding over her wrongs--over her husband’s coldness of heart and heat of temper; over his cruelty in delivering her over to the tormentor, _id est_, the mother who bore him, and her own misery in being condemned to live _en tiers_ with two people who disliked and despised her--had anyone, I repeat, at that especial moment whispered in Honor Beacham’s ear that John the _in-compris_ possessed in reality the very tenderest of hearts; that his apparent coldness towards herself was the result of a keen sense of personal and educational inferiority; and that a few sweet smiles on her dear lips, and a few kind loving words whispered in his ear, would make poor John not only the happiest, but the most demonstrative of husbands, Honor would simply have told that well-intentioned comforter that he knew not what he said, and, turning on her restless pillow, would have sternly refused to credit the fact that she was otherwise than a victim.