and consternation which the certainty of her flight would cause. She found herself for the first time in her life alone; alone, and left solely to her own resources, not only for the support of existence (that was to be an after and less important consideration), but left to provide her own thoughts, to steady her own nerves--the nerves on which a few short hours of loneliness were beginning to tell; left, in short, to what is so unnatural a condition for the young and feeble--left to be mistress of herself. Two circumstances alone enabled Honor in that dreary upper chamber, smelling of the stale tobacco used by a very inferior class of “gentlemen lodgers,” and displaying in its dingy furniture and generally shabby gentility unfailing evidences of wear and tear as well as of slovenly and uncleanly habits--two circumstances alone enabled Honor to bear with tolerable patience the situation in which she had voluntarily plunged herself. In the first place, so prone are we to judge and draw our decisions from effects without seeking after causes, Honor still took a curious kind of comfort from the conviction that she was, in her humble way, a martyr and a victim. This belief, which she hugged perseveringly to her heart, was for a time a decided but gradually lessening set-off against the _ennui_ which, creeping gradually over her spirits, caused her to long exceedingly for the second and more tangible form of consolation--namely, the advent of the only friend that in that vast metropolis she could boast of possessing. The ideas of this young woman from the country regarding the time requisite to convey a letter from one district to another were somewhat vague and methodless; and therefore it was that, long before the dainty little epistle, which she trusted would bring Arthur to her side, had (in all probability) been taken from the pillar-box into which she had thrown it, Honor had begun to hope that her friend would ere long be by her side. In thus hoping it never occurred to her that she was acting wickedly. It was true that Arthur had, at the commencement of their friendship, uttered foolish words that had startled, if not angered her; but she had given him to understand plainly, though kindly, that such words were an offence and an annoyance, and since that he had never--no, _never_, Honor repeated to herself as the recollection of certain meaning glances and too tender pressings of her yielded hand crowded thick upon her, and gave the lie (deny the impeachment though she might) to her assertion--he had _never_ once appeared to view her in any other light than as a valued friend. Of the birth of Arthur’s little son, and of the semi-imprisonment to the house to which Mr. Vavasour had in consequence been condemned, Honor knew nothing. To her the fact of his being a father, one with such a title to respect and consideration as that name bestowed, would, had she been aware of the event that had occurred in Hyde-park-gardens, have