It was intense. Sure. When Burt had his talk with Nicholas, he seemed to be in doubt about what he did. And I would not wonder if he is kind o frightened about what exactly he was capable of doing.
"That's why I want you to do it for the right reason." And then he says: "Revenge won't make the pain go away. It lives on way past that." This tells me that that, what he did, has worked in him for a long time - maybe even up to and beyond the ending of chapter #48. Although I cannot accept what he did to Scratch, I fully understand that he did what he did.