“How glad I am that you remembered the Park,” Honor said, as they, the carriages following at a foot’s pace, sauntered slowly along the beautiful wooded brow beyond Pembroke Lodge; “I would not have missed this view for the world.”
They were together now,—those two who had been better far had the wide seas divided them—those two who could not but have owned that so it was, had any put the question to them in the rare sober moments which nineteen and twenty-one, in the heyday of folly and of love, are blessed with. The rest had strolled away in pairs; so that Arthur could speak as well as look his love into the bewildering eyes of his friend’s lovely wife.
“Mad,—yes, I suppose I am mad,” he said, in answer to a half-reproach from his companion; “but who, I ask, would not be mad—mad as you are beautiful—seeing you as I do, Honor, nearly every day, every hour? It is my fate—for by the heaven above me I cannot help it—to look upon your beautiful face, and see you smile, my love, my darling! Ah, do not, for the love of all that is good and beautiful, be angry with me! From the moment that I saw you first, Honor, I felt as I never felt before for mortal woman—I—”
“Don’t say so. All men say that,” put in Honor, who was more versed in the theory of love-making than its practice, and who, while she felt the necessity of checking her admirer’s outpourings, was terribly shy and untutored in the process. “Besides, Mr. Vavasour,”—gathering courage as she proceeded,—“it is very wicked—terribly wicked, both for you to talk and for me to listen to such words. There is your wife at home, poor thing,—I often think of her,—how unhappy she would be could she only guess that you said such things to any woman as I have just been wicked enough to listen to!”
Arthur could scarcely repress a sigh as the image of poor neglected Sophy, stretched on her luxurious couch in the gorgeously-furnished back drawing-room in Hyde-park-terrace, presented itself to his mind’s eye. “She knows nothing, guesses nothing,” he said, with an ineffectual effort at carelessness. “Where ignorance is bliss, you know, it’s worse than folly to be wise. I suspect there is a Bluebeard’s closet in almost every house, and as long as women don’t try to look inside, all goes on smoothly.”
For a moment, whilst Arthur was imparting to his fair companion this result of his worldly experience, her thoughts glanced back to her own home, and to the marked exception to her lover’s rule which it afforded. At the Paddocks—and well did Honor know that so it was—there could be found no hidden chamber barred off from the investigations of the curious. The wife of true-hearted John Beacham could pry at her own wondering will into any and every corner of his big warm heart, and find there no skeleton of the past, no flesh-covered denizen of the present, warning her with uplifted finger that he was false.
Very guilty she felt for a second or two, and humbled and odious, as the consciousness of being a vile deceiver sent a blush to her fair cheek, and checked any answering words that had risen to her tongue. Time, however, for useful reflection was denied her. The sound of her father’s voice announcing that it was five o’clock, and that the boats were waiting at the Castle-stairs, effectually interrupted a reverie of a more wholesome description than might, under the circumstances, have been expected; and, reëntering their respective carriages, the party were soon on their way down the hill so loved by Cockney pleasure-seekers, and so be sung by nature-worshipping poets.
Once in the large comfortable wherry which had been hired for the occasion, Arthur found very little opportunity, beyond that of paying the most devoted attention to her personal comfort, of making himself agreeable to his lady-love. That there was one subject, at least, besides herself of real and almost absorbing interest to Arthur Vavasour soon became evident to Honor; and that subject was the approaching Derby race. Since her instalment in Stanwick-street, Honor had heard more talk of that all-important annual event than—horse-breeder’s wife though she was—she had listened to through all the many months of her married life; and naturally enough, seeing that the “favourite” was her father’s property, and that Arthur Vavasour appeared deeply interested in the triumph of Rough Diamond, the success of that distinguished animal became one of the most anxious wishes of Mrs. John Beacham’s heart.
“O, I do so hope he’ll win!” she exclaimed enthusiastically; “he is such a wonderfully beautiful creature. And he has a brother who, they think, will be more perfect still;—no, not a brother quite, a half-brother, I think he is; and I used to watch him every day led out to exercise, looking so wild and lovely. He is only a year old, and his name is Faust; and they say he is quite sure to be a Derby horse.”
Poor Honor! In her eagerness on the subject, and her intense love of the animal whose varied charms and excellences were to be seen in such perfection in her husband’s home, she had been inadvertently “talking shop” for the amusement of the spurious fine ladies, whose supercilious glances at each other were not, even by such a novice as Honor Beacham, to be mistaken. In a moment—for the poison of such glances is as rapid as it is insidious—two evil spirits, the spirits of anger and of a keen desire to be avenged, took possession of our heroine. She saw herself despised, and—so true is it that we cannot scarcely commit the smallest sin without doing an injury as well to our neighbours as to ourselves—she resolved, to the utter extinction of the very inferior beauties near her, to make the most of the wondrous gift of loveliness which she was conscious of possessing. Hitherto she had “borne her faculties meekly;” the consciousness that she was, by marriage, without the pale of the “upper ten thousand” had, together with an innate modesty which was one of her rarest charms, kept her silent and somewhat subdued when in what is called “company.” It had required the looks of contempt which she had seen passing between the well-got-up sisters to rouse the spirit of display in Honor Beacham’s heart; but, once aroused, the intoxication of success encouraged her to proceed, and the demon of Coquetry was found hard indeed to crush.