Although it was late in the season, the old-fashioned, rambling hotel was well filled, and people interested Honora as well as scenery—­a proof of her human qualities.  She chided Howard because he, too, was not more socially inclined.

“How can you expect me to be—­now?” he demanded.

She told him he was a goose, although secretly admitting the justice of his defence.  He knew four or five men in the hotel, with whom he talked stocks while waiting for Honora to complete her toilets; and he gathered from two of these, who were married, that patience was a necessary qualification in a husband.  One evening they introduced their wives.  Later, Howard revealed their identity—­or rather that of the husbands.

“Bowker is one of the big men in the Faith Insurance Company, and Tyler is president of the Gotham Trust.”  He paused to light a cigarette, and smiled at her significantly.  “If you can dolly the ladies along once in a while, Honora, it won’t do any harm,” he added.  “You have a way with you, you know,—­when you want to.”

Honora grew scarlet.

“Howard!” she exclaimed.

He looked somewhat shamefaced.

“Well,” he said, “I was only joking.  Don’t take it seriously.  But it doesn’t do any harm to be polite.”

“I am always polite,” she answered a little coldly.

Honeymoons, after all, are matters of conjecture, and what proportion of them contain disenchantments will never be known.  Honora lay awake for a long time that night, and the poignant and ever recurring remembrance of her husband’s remark sent the blood to her face like a flame.  Would Peter, or George Hanbury, or any of the intimate friends of her childhood have said such a thing?

A new and wistful feeling of loneliness was upon her.  For some days, with a certain sense of isolation and a tinge of envy which she would not acknowledge, she had been watching a group of well-dressed, clean-looking people galloping off on horseback or filling the six-seated buckboards.  They were from New York—­that she had discovered; and they did not mix with the others in the hotel.  She had thought it strange that Howard did not know them, but for a reason which she did not analyze she hesitated to ask him who they were.  They had rather a rude manner of staring —­especially the men—­and the air of deriving infinite amusement from that which went on about them.  One of them, a young man with a lisp who was addressed by the singular name of “Toots,” she had overheard demanding as she passed:  who the deuce was the tall girl with the dark hair and the colour?  Wherever she went, she was aware of them.  It was foolish, she knew, but their presence seemed—­in the magnitude which trifles are wont to assume in the night-watches—­of late to have poisoned her pleasure.