Sink or Swim? , Volume II

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.