She turned and ran, ran upstairs to her own room, flung herself on her knees beside the bed, dragged a locket from her bosom and fell to kissing George’s portrait, passionately crying it for pardon.  She was wicked, base; while he lived she had misprised him; and this was her abiding punishment, that not even repentance could purge her heart of dishonouring thoughts, that her love for him now could never be stainless though washed with daily tears. “’He that is unjust, let him be unjust still.’ Must that be true, Father of all mercies?  I misjudged him, and it is too late for atonement.  But I repent and am afflicted.  Though the dead know nothing—­though it can never reach or avail him—­give me back the power to be just!”

Late that afternoon Honoria passed an hour piously in turning over the dead man’s wardrobe, shaking out and brushing the treasured garments and folding them, against moth and dust, in fresh tissue paper.  It was a morbid task, perhaps, but it kept George’s image constantly before her, and this was what her remorseful mood demanded.  Her nerves were unstrung and her limbs languid after the recent tempest.  By-and-by she locked the doors of the wardrobe, and passing into her own bedroom, flung herself on a couch with a bundle of papers—­old bills, soiled and folded memoranda, sporting paragraphs cut from the newspapers—­scraps found in his pockets months ago and religiously tied by her with a silken ribbon.  They were mementoes of a sort, and George had written few letters while wooing—­not half a dozen first and last.

Two or three receipted bills lay together in the middle of the packet—­one a saddler’s, a second a nurseryman’s for pot-plants (kept for the sake of its queer spelling), a third the reckoning for an hotel luncheon.  She was running over them carelessly when the date at the head of this last one caught her eye.  “August 3rd “—­it fixed her attention because it happened to be the day before her birthday.

August 3rd—­such and such a year—­the August before his death; and the hotel a well-known one in Plymouth—­the hotel, in fact, at which he had usually put up. . . .  Without a prompting of suspicion she turned back and ran her eye over the bill.  A steak, a pint of claret, vegetables, cheese, and attendance—­never was a more innocent bill.

Suddenly her attention stiffened on the date.  George was in Plymouth the day before her birthday.  But no; as it happened, George had been in Truro on that day.  She remembered, because he had brought her a diamond pendant, having written beforehand to the Truro jeweller to get a dozen down from London to choose from.  Yes, she remembered it clearly, and how he had described his day in Truro.  And the next morning—­her birthday morning—­he had produced the pendant, wrapped in silver paper.  He had thrown away the case; it was ugly, and he would get her another. . . .

But the bill?  She had stayed once or twice at this hotel with George, and recognised the handwriting.  The bookkeeper, in compliment perhaps to a customer of standing, had written “George Vyell, Esq.” in full on the bill-head, a formality omitted as a rule in luncheon-reckonings.  And if this scrap of paper told the truth—­ why, then George had lied!