Explore "Sink or Swim? , Volume II" by Matilda Charlotte Houstoun on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I suppose it must be inferred that John Beacham _was_ slow, for certainly the Colonel's revelation took him entirely by surprise. For a few moments that feeling, joined to one of extreme anger and contempt, kept him silent, and then he said, in a tone which Norcott, hardened as he was, found it difficult to bear patiently,
"I should never have thought that a man would have found it so easy to own himself a villain; for you are a villain, Colonel Norcott, whether you are, or are not -- what I imagine you mean to imply -- the father -- " and his big honest heart throbbed as though it would have burst its bonds -- "of my wife."