Sink or Swim? , Volume II

Honor's first letter to her husband -- which she despatched the day but one after she left the Paddocks -- was not written without a considerable amount of thought and caution. It was not in this young creature's nature to be false. On the contrary, deceit hung like a chain of lead upon her mind -- a chain that was heavy and galling, and which, save when she was diverted from the pain it caused her by the excitement of dissipation, of Arthur Vavasour's society, and, alas, by the admiration of which this true daughter of Eve well knew herself to be the object, Honor's consciousness of her own disloyalty caused her to feel very thoroughly unhappy and remorseful. Her letter to John -- the first which she had ever addressed to him -- caused her even while she wrote it to blush for shame. In it -- while she carefully avoided, or rather ingeniously glossed over, the subject of her father's illness -- any acute observer might have perceived that she was in no hurry to return to Sandyshire. She had found the Colonel better, she wrote; but he was looking ill, and complained a good deal of his head. (This, in Honor's defence, I may remark, was no invention on her part.) Altogether, she felt she was a comfort to her father. He was in very different circumstances from what she (Honor) had imagined him to be. Really quite poor, she almost thought.

They had no house, only a small lodging, and they lived very poorly -- so poorly that Honor was quite sure John would not like it at all; while as for mother she would not be able to exist on the kind of food that was served up in Stanwick-street. As regarded herself, she was -- though she could bear it very well for a time -- extremely uncomfortable. A little attic at the very top of the house! -- an attic with a sloping roof, and no closet to hang her dresses in, and -- But there is no occasion to follow Mrs. John in her filling up of this her first letter with diatribes against her own discomfort, and with comparisons (flattering, as she hoped, to the old lady's pride) between the wretchedness of the furniture and the poverty-stricken nature of the food in Stanwick-street, and the luxuries and comforts which she, the writer, had enjoyed at home. She wound up her letter (a missive in which she had carefully abstained from any allusion to the amusements, both present and to come, which were in readiness for her delectation) with a hope that her father's health would continue to improve; in which case, in a fortnight or ten days, perhaps, Colonel Norcott would let her talk of returning to the Paddocks. Both he and his wife showed her so much kindness and affection that, however much she would like to be at home again, she could not think just at present of speaking about her return.