“Yes, that was Honor’s mother, and--well, man, haven’t you begun to guess? I think you’re rather slow--the girl that Fred Norcott--meaning _me_,” he added airily--“was more awfully spoony on than he was on any woman in his life.” CHAPTER VI. THE COLONEL GETS HIS QUIETUS. 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.” “I am her father, as surely as we stand here together under God’s heaven,” Norcott said almost solemnly; “and, being her father, I have perhaps some claim to be treated civilly. I can excuse a good deal from a man in your situation, a little struck on a heap, too, as you must have been, but I can’t allow of any bad language; and if you attempt anything of the sort again,” he went on passionately, and losing sight, in his indignation at what he considered John’s insolence, of his own interests, “why, you will have to be taught how to conduct yourself before gentlemen. In the mean time, I have only to say--” “You will say nothing, sir, till I have spoken--nothing till I have told you my mind about your behaviour in this miserable business! You think, perhaps, because forsooth you call yourself a gentleman, that I am to be glad, proud even maybe, of this--this connection. But I swear to you, by my honour as a man, that I am nothing of the kind; nay, so far am I from that,” and he drew himself up, and set his strong white teeth firmly together, “that I would rather know my wife to be the daughter of the poorest man who walks the earth, if so be he was an honest one, than the child of such a gentleman as you--one whose name is a byword for profligacy and dishonour, and whose blood is black with the taint of sin and shame!”