For the first time, on hearing this expression of her husband’s resolution, the idea of danger to him flashed across her mind; and with it a sudden pang of self-reproach curdled her blood painfully. Rising from her chair, she laid her hand gently on his shoulder. She knew, _felt_ also, how good and true he was, and at that moment he seemed of more value to her than a hundred fathers. “O, John,” she said, “_dear_ John! they couldn’t hurt you for it! That would be worse than everything;” and overcome by vague visions of imprisonment, transportation, and even (for she was very young and ignorant) of death, she burst into a passion of tears, and lay with her fair head on John’s broad breast, sobbing like a child. He soothed her as best he could, stroking her glossy golden hair with a touch tender as a woman’s. There was little to fear for him, he said; there was no malice on his part, no intention, that would be easily proved, to kill. At the worst it would be “manslaughter,” and, he thought, probably _no_ punishment. No punishment--ah, poor John!--save that of the gnawing worm within which never dies, and the torturing fire that not rivers of remorseful tears can quench! But for all John’s love and pity for Honor, and both were very great, he could not be brought to say that it was in any respect advisable that Honor should remain at Gawthorpe. The telegraph, he argued, both could and should bring her constant intelligence of Colonel Norcott’s condition, and in the mean time _she_ (a point on which John was more anxious than he allowed to appear) would be secure from public observation, and from the remarks, ill-natured or otherwise, of the curious. The idea that his wife’s close relationship to the man lying in danger of death so very near to them might by some possibility transpire was very painful to the former. In that relationship he saw nothing but disgrace both to Honor and to himself, and he was, therefore, almost morbidly desirous of removing her from the spot where at any moment observation might be turned towards her, and she might be spoken of, _ex hypothesi_ at least, if not openly and decidedly, as the illegitimate daughter of a gambler and a reprobate. That there were reasons which John could not well bring to bear on his wife’s powers of comprehension, the reader will readily understand. Setting aside the fact that _he_ was not the man to throw a stone at his prostrate enemy, there was the wholesome old-fashioned faith in the divine right of parents to be set aside; a faith in which John Beacham, and his fathers before him, had been born and bred. Disowned and deserted--unrecognised as well by the laws of the land as by the man to whom she owed her birth, owing _him_ nothing save the inheritance of shame--John would yet have shrunk, now that excitement had subsided and his blood was cooled, from saying aught to Honor that could lessen either her respect or her newly-born affection for her father.