Madame came from New York, without doubt? such was one of his questions, as he stood before them in answer to Howard’s summons, rubbing his hands.  And Honora, with a little thrill, acknowledged the accuracy of his guess.  There was no dish of Alphonse’s they did not taste.  And Howard smilingly paid the bills.  He was ecstatically proud of his wife, and although he did justice to the cooking, he cared but little for the mysterious courtyards, the Spanish buildings, and the novels of Mr. George W. Cable, which Honora devoured when she was too tired to walk about.  He followed her obediently to the battle field of New Orleans, and admired as obediently the sunset, when the sky was all silver-green through the magnolias, and the spreading live oaks hung with Spanish moss, and a silver bar lay upon the Father of Waters.  Honora, with beating heart and flushed cheeks, felt these things:  Howard felt them through her and watched—­not the sunset—­but the flame it lighted in her eyes.

He left her but twice a day, and then only for brief periods.  He even felt a joy when she ventured to complain.

“I believe you care more for those horrid stocks than for me,” she said.  “I—­I am just a novelty.”

His answer, since they were alone in their sitting-room, was obvious.

“Howard,” she cried, “how mean of you!  Now I’ll have to do my hair all over again.  I’ve got such a lot of it—­you’ve no idea how difficult it is.”

“You bet I have!” he declared meaningly, and Honora blushed.

His pleasure of possession was increased when people turned to look at her on the street or in the dining room—­to think that this remarkable creature was in reality his wife!  Nor did the feeling grow less intense with time, being quite the same when they arrived at a fashionable resort in the Virginia mountains, on their way to New York.  For such were the exactions of his calling that he could spare but two weeks for his honeymoon.

Honora’s interest in her new surroundings was as great, and the sight of those towering ridges against the soft blue of the autumn skies inspired her.  It was Indian summer here, the tang of wood smoke was in the air; in the valleys—­as they drove—­the haze was shot with the dust of gold, and through the gaps they looked across vast, unexplored valleys to other distant, blue-stained ridges that rose between them and the sunset.  Honora took an infinite delight in the ramshackle cabins beside the red-clay roads, in the historic atmosphere of the ancient houses and porticoes of the Warm Springs, where the fathers of the Republic had come to take the waters.  And one day, when a north wind had scattered the smoke and swept the sky, Howard followed her up the paths to the ridge’s crest, where she stood like a Victory, her garments blowing, gazing off over the mighty billows to the westward.  Howard had never seen a Victory, but his vision of domesticity was untroubled.