o' bastardy. You cry up the
woman's infamy to hook at a father. You swell and strut on her pickings.
You're a cock forced from the smoke of the dunghill! You shame your
mother, damned adventurer! You train your boy for a swindler after your
own pattern; you twirl him in your curst harlequinade to a damnation as
sure as your own. The day you crossed my threshold the devils danced on
their flooring. I've never seen the sun shine fair on me after it. With
your guitar under the windows, of moonlight nights! your Spanish
fopperies and trickeries! your French phrases and toeings! I was touched
by a leper. You set your traps for both my girls: you caught the brown
one first, did you, and flung her second for t' other, and drove a tandem
of 'em to live the spangled hog you are; and down went the mother of the
boy to the place she liked better, and my other girl here--the one you
cheated for her salvation--you tried to cajole her from home and me, to
send her the same way down. She stuck to decency. Good Lord! you
threatened to hang yourself, guitar and all. But her purse served your
turn. For why? You 're a leech. I speak before ladies or I'd rip your
town-life to shreds. Your cause! your romantic history! your fine figure!
every inch of you 's notched with villany! You fasten on every moneyed
woman that comes in your way. You've outdone Herod in murdering the
innocents, for he didn't feed on 'em, and they've made you fat. One thing
I'll say of you: you look the beastly thing you set yourself up for. The
kindest blow to you 's to call you impostor.'

He paused, but his inordinate passion of speech was unsated: his white
lips hung loose for another eruption.

I broke from my aunt Dorothy to cross over to my father, saying on the
way: 'We 've heard enough, sir. You forget the cardinal point of
invective, which is, not to create sympathy for the person you assail.'

'Oh! you come in with your infernal fine language, do you!' the old man
thundered at me. 'I 'll just tell you at once, young fellow--'

My aunt Dorothy supplicated his attention. 'One error I must correct.'
Her voice issued from a contracted throat, and was painfully thin and
straining, as though the will to speak did violence to her weaker nature.
'My sister loved Mr. Richmond. It was to save her life, because I
believed she loved him much and would have died, that Mr. Richmond--in
pity--offered her his hand, at my wish': she bent her head: 'at my cost.
It was don