The words in themselves were courteous enough--too courteous, perhaps, as spoken to one whom Colonel Norcott believed to be his inferior. There was condescension mingled with their graciousness; and John, despising as he did from the bottom of his heart the man who uttered them, followed very unwillingly, and with a tolerably ungracious air, this agreeable profligate to a short distance under the branching trees. CHAPTER V. “THAT WAS HONOR’S MOTHER?” 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.