ge, from about the date of your snaring my
poor girl and carrying her off behind your postillions--your trotting
undertakers! and the hours of her life reckoned in milestones. She's here
to contradict me, if she can. Dorothy Beltham was your "Government" that
paid the annuity.'

I took Dorothy Beltham into my arms. She was trembling excessively, yet
found time to say, 'Bear up, dearest; keep still.' All I thought and felt
foundered in tears.

For a while I heard little distinctly of the tremendous tirade which the
vindictive old man, rendered thrice venomous by the immobility of the
petrified large figure opposed to him, poured forth. My poor father did
not speak because he could not; his arms dropped; and such was the
torrent of attack, with its free play of thunder and lightning in the
form of oaths, epithets, short and sharp comparisons, bitter home thrusts
and most vehement imprecatory denunciations, that our protesting voices
quailed. Janet plucked at my aunt Dorothy's dress to bear her away.

'I can't leave my father,' I said.

'Nor I you, dear,' said the tender woman; and so we remained to be
scourged by this tongue of incarnate rage.

'You pensioner of a silly country spinster!' sounded like a return to
mildness. My father's chest heaved up.

I took advantage of the lull to make myself heard: I did but heap fuel on
fire, though the old man's splenetic impetus had partly abated.

'You Richmond! do you hear him? he swears he's your son, and asks to be
tied to the stake beside you. Disown him, and I'll pay you money and
thank you. I'll thank my God for anything short of your foul blood in the
family. You married the boy's mother to craze and kill her, and guttle
her property. You waited for the boy to come of age to swallow what was
settled on him. You wait for me to lie in my coffin to pounce on the
strongbox you think me the fool to toss to a young donkey ready to ruin
all his belongings for you! For nine-and-twenty years you've sucked the
veins of my family, and struck through my house like a rotting-disease.
Nine-and-twenty years ago you gave a singing-lesson in my house: the pest
has been in it ever since! You breed vermin in the brain to think of you!
Your wife, your son, your dupes, every soul that touches you, mildews
from a blight! You were born of ropery, and you go at it straight, like a
webfoot to water. What's your boast?--your mother's disgrace! You shame
your mother. Your whole life's a ballad