Sink or Swim? , Volume II by Matilda Charlotte Houstoun

After Colonel Norcott's short interview with Arthur, and the decision to / which he had arrived regarding the extent of the latter's insane passion / for Honor Beacham, the astute and thoroughly unprincipled man to whom / that unsuspecting young person owed her birth very soon made up his mind / to impart, with certain reservations and under the seal of secrecy, the / history of Honor's birth to the husband who was so entirely ignorant of / his young bride's antecedents. For more reasons than one it was his / object, and for his interest, to keep a hold, as he would have termed / it, both on Arthur Vavasour and the quondam owner of the Derby / favourite. To obtain such a hold, he had planned, and thought, and / plotted; and now (it really did look as if Providence was about at last / to favour him) there turned up, without an effort on his part, the very / thing that was required to set the wheel of fortune briskly turning in / his favour. But with all his effrontery, and in spite of his / much-boasted _savoir vivre_, Colonel Norcott did not feel quite at his / ease as he strode along the greensward with that honest John by his / side. Now that he was on the verge of making his confession, it did not / seem quite so easy as it had appeared at first to reveal to a moral and / _possibly_ -- for he knew very little about John's principles and / professions -- a religious man that little episode in his bygone life in / which the horse-breeder was, although he remained in ignorance of the / fact, so deeply interested.

He had made up his mind -- solely from interested motives -- to disclose to / John Beacham the fact that he, Fred Norcott, was the father of his wife. / He felt no shame (in the abstract) for having so long neglected the / daughter who owed to him the very doubtful blessing of her birth. Had / Honor been a plain girl, coarse-featured and large-footed, it would have / been long enough before Fred Norcott would have taken the trouble to own / his paternity; but being, as she was, beautiful exceedingly, and withal / possessing that indescribable air of good breeding without which / loveliness loses half its value, the man who knew so well how to turn / "circumstances" to good account saw at once that advantage might accrue / to himself through the agency of his neglected child. Had the man whom / he was about to make his confidant been one of his own class and kind, / Norcott would, instead of awkwardness, have experienced a comfortable / feeling of satisfaction while revealing the history of the past, as that / history was connected with the pretty Irish girl. It was not a new / story, neither did its details differ greatly from the most ordinary and / commonplace records of, alas, the commonest crime that is or is not made / public, as the case may be, in the dismal registers of misery and vice.