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. But, though neither new nor striking, Fred’s story was still one which, told in his lively fashion, would probably have been listened to greedily enough by the lovers of such piquant narratives. The dark shades--there generally are dark shades in that description of story--would have been softened down as a matter of course, but the facts, as the Colonel would have put them, contained enough to interest, without having recourse to the lachrymose. There was Winifred to describe--“such a glorious girl, by Jove!” And “then, you know, such a number of fellows had tried it on, and failed!” By the ruffian’s own account, too, how fond this woman, whom he had left to die a miserable death, had been of him!--“would have gone through fire and water for me, by George! _That_ kind of girl, you know. But what is one to do?” appealing to his friend’s sympathy with a slightly injured air, as though aware that the aggressive nature of a woman’s fondness is a legitimate ground of complaint against that weak and troublesome sex. “What can one do in cases of that sort? Nothing, that I know of, but _skedaddle_; and that’s a bore sometimes, if one happens to be fond of the girl, which one isn’t, you know, nine cases out of ten.”