The young wife’s heart, as she sat alone upon the hard sofa, pondering, amongst other things, on the unreliableness of the father who had, to all appearance, inveigled her to his house on false pretences, softened greatly towards her straightforward and true-hearted husband; and could she have known him better, could she have looked into the manly honest breast, and read in it all that there was of pain, remorse, and wounded pride, she must--the woman within her being, though vain and foolish, not ignobly constituted--have humbled herself before his better, higher nature, and, owning her many faults, she would have meekly prayed for leave to share his sorrows, as she had once gladly shared his joys. Such a diminishing, however, of John Beacham’s vexations it would not have been easy in this case to have allowed himself. The injury that he had inflicted on Colonel Norcott had, as we are already aware, ever since its perpetration, hung very heavily on his mind; and vile as he justly judged the victim of his ungovernable passion to be, he was none the less the father of his wife; and the conviction that he was bound to make all the reparation in his power for the offence that he had committed did not tend to make John Beacham’s life a happier one. Of all things calculated to injure the temper and depress the cheerful spirit on which the comfort of daily life depends, there is nothing more certain to produce this deplorable result than the retention within the breast of a deep-seated and a painful secret. John Beacham was not the kind of man to talk even to his wife of the inner feelings which he was not sufficiently of a physiologist to understand. His life was one of action--a simple, above-board existence; and till that fatal blow (a blow fatal, that is, to his own peace) was struck, there had been no hidden spot, no closet within closed doors, the chance opening of which caused the man’s heart within him to beat with quickened pulse, or kept him sleepless through the watches of the night. But now, alas! there did exist for his misfortune, in his hidden life, a secret--a secret the preservation of which was not precisely necessary to his reputation, and certainly not expedient for his safety; and yet John Beacham (_why_, for he was no casuist, he could not have explained) would not, for six at least of the best yearlings gaining bone and muscle in his paddocks, have had it known in Sandyshire that it was by a blow from _his_ right-arm that Colonel Norcott had been so nearly sent to his last dread account; and this act of concealment--concealment, too, carried on for months--was revolting to his inborn sense of honour, and jarred against every habit of his previous life.