“DEAR JOHN,--I hope you will forgive me for not being able to stay at the Paddocks any longer. I could have lived with you, and perhaps have been happy; for I know you are good, and you would not have been hard upon my silliness. What drives me away I leave it to yourself to guess. I have had a good deal to bear; but what hurt me the most was your mother telling me that you meant to be hard upon me too. Do not, please, try to find out where I am. I shall go into service, and try to keep an honest name, though your mother says I have brought disgrace on hers. I should like to think that you forgave me, John. Perhaps I shall some day; or I may not till we are both in another world, where I pray that we may meet, and that you may be happier without me than they say I have made you here. I cannot keep from crying over this letter; for, John, we might have been happy, if only your mother had not had bad thoughts of me from the beginning. God bless you, John; and believe that I am your foolish, but not your wicked wife, as your mother says I am, “HONOR BEACHAM.” By the time that this letter was finished it wanted but an hour of noon (they kept old farmhouse hours at the Paddocks), and the striking by the big hall-clock of the time o’ day warned Honor that if she wished to catch a certain train that touched, on its way to London, for a few minutes at the small station of Switcham, she must waste no more time, either in thinking over her plans, or in making ready for her journey. Accordingly, with a steadiness which, under the circumstances, was surprising, she put together a very few articles of dress--and leaving behind her the simple ornaments, poor John’s wedding-gifts--over which she was so little of a heroine that she heaved a faint sigh of regret--this wife of little more than a year left the shelter of her husband’s roof, and, apparently with the intention of taking one of the quiet country walks to which she was accustomed, sauntered slowly, till she was out of sight of the Peartree-house occupants, across the fields that lay between them and the village.