.

SIR HOWARD (recovering his voice and vigor). Justice! I think you mean
vengeance, disguised as justice by your passions.

BRASSBOUND. To many and many a poor wretch in the dock YOU have brought
vengeance in that disguise--the vengeance of society, disguised as
justice by ITS passions. Now the justice you have outraged meets you
disguised as vengeance. How do you like it?

SIR HOWARD. I shall meet it, I trust, as becomes an innocent man and an
upright judge. What do you charge against me?

BRASSBOUND. I charge you with the death of my mother and the theft of my
inheritance.

SIR HOWARD. As to your inheritance, sir, it was yours whenever you came
forward to claim it. Three minutes ago I did not know of your existence.
I affirm that most solemnly. I never knew--never dreamt--that my brother
Miles left a son. As to your mother, her case was a hard one--perhaps
the hardest that has come within even my experience. I mentioned it, as
such, to Mr. Rankin, the missionary, the evening we met you. As to her
death, you know--you MUST know--that she died in her native country,
years after our last meeting. Perhaps you were too young to know that
she could hardly have expected to live long.

BRASSBOUND. You mean that she drank.

SIR HOWARD. I did not say so. I do not think she was always accountable
for what she did.

BRASSBOUND. Yes: she was mad too; and whether drink drove her to madness
or madness drove her to drink matters little. The question is, who drove
her to both?

SIR HOWARD. I presume the dishonest agent who seized her estate did. I
repeat, it was a hard case--a frightful injustice. But it could not be
remedied.

BRASSBOUND. You told her so. When she would not take that false answer
you drove her from your doors. When she exposed you in the street and
threatened to take with her own hands the redress the law denied her,
you had her imprisoned, and forced her to write you an apology and
leave the country to regain her liberty and save herself from a lunatic
asylum. And when she was gone, and dead, and forgotten, you found for
yourself the remedy you could not find for her. You recovered the estate
easily enough then, robber and rascal that you are. Did he tell the
missionary that, Lady Cicely, eh?

LADY CICELY (sympathetically). Poor woman! (To Sir Howard) Couldn't you
have helped her, Howard?

SIR HOWARD. No. This man may be ignorant enough to suppose that when
I was a struggling barrister I could do ev