Sink or Swim? , Volume II

Ten days -- long and anxious ones -- have elapsed since Honor's instalment by her father's bed (for, as may already have been surmised, old Mrs. Beacham and later John himself had been constrained, much against their respective wills, to return to the Paddocks without her), and Colonel Norcott, pronounced out of danger by Dr. Kempshall, has already partially recovered his normal tone of mind. By that time the mystery of Honor's birth had ceased to exist, and all the little world of Gawthorpe, including the equally important and more extended one of Switcham and the surrounding farms, knew her for what she was -- namely, the illegitimate daughter of Colonel Frederick Norcott, formerly of West Lowe Court, Sandyshire. Very little -- _nothing_, it may almost be said -- was ever addressed to John Beacham on the subject of his wife's parentage. Of comparatively humble birth though they were, an instinctive delicacy warned the major part of his friends, that to John any allusion to the subject would be distasteful at least, if not positively offensive. The undefined suspicion also -- strengthened by the fact that, during all the days spent in attendance on her father, John never was known to enter even for a single moment Colonel Norcott's sick room -- that he, John Beacham, was no stranger to the accident from which the gallant Fred was suffering, did not tend to render the shrewd Sandyshire yeomen particularly desirous of probing any hidden mental wounds which he might be desirous of concealing.

But in addition to all these causes for silence, there was a change -- a trifling one, perhaps, and an alteration more to be felt than explained -- in John himself. That he should have been preoccupied and taciturn whilst his wife's father was lying between life and death was easily to be understood; but the dread of a fatal result was over now, and yet John's brow was moody, and his laugh was heard far less frequently, was likewise far less hearty than of yore. The truth was that John Beacham, loving his wife with an entire and all-absorbing devotion, was repining, not only at her absence, but at the changes which, with the clear-sightedness of jealous affection, he foresaw would take place in his relations with Honor. Other feelings too, connected with his recent act, were perplexing, and rendering him ashamed. In proportion as his deadly fear of being a self-condemned murderer diminished, so did his softened feelings towards his late antagonist subside likewise. With the conviction that Colonel Norcott was no longer a sufferer from that burst of passion at first so truly repented of, there returned with redoubled force John's antipathy to the man whom he rightly believed to be dead to every feeling of honour, every elevating sentiment of justice or of pity. From the moment when Colonel Norcott was pronounced out of danger, he had endeavoured, without exactly expressing his desire in words, to make Honor understand his wish that she should return to the Paddocks.