What wonder that, as she looked round in dumb misery, recognising these things, her eyes grew wild again; or that the shrinking lawyer expected an outburst.  It came, but from another quarter.  The old woman rose and trembling pointed a palsied finger at him.  ‘Yo’ eat your words!’ she said.  ‘Yo’ eat your words and seem to like them.  But didn’t yo’ tell me no farther back than this day five weeks that the law was clear?  Didn’t yo’ tell me it was certain?  Yo’ tell me that!’

‘I did!  God forgive me,’ Mr. Fishwick murmured from the depths of his abasement.

‘Didn’t yo’ tell me fifty times, and fifty times to that, that the case was clear?’ the old woman continued relentlessly.  ’That there were thousands and thousands to be had for the asking?  And her right besides, that no one could cheat her of, no more than me of the things my man left me?’

‘I did, God forgive me!’ the lawyer said.

‘But yo’ did cheat me!’ she continued with quavering insistence, her withered face faintly pink.  ‘Where is the home yo’ ha’ broken up?  Where are the things my man left me?  Where’s the bit that should ha’ kept me from the parish?  Where’s the fifty-two pounds yo’ sold all for and ha’ spent on us, living where’s no place for us, at our betters’ table?  Yo’ ha’ broken my heart!  Yo’ ha’ laid up sorrow and suffering for the girl that is dearer to me than my heart.  Yo’ ha’ done all that, and yo’ can come to me smoothly, and tell me yo’ ha’ made a mistake.  Yo’ are a rogue, and, what maybe is worse, I mistrust me yo’ are a fool!’

‘Mother! mother!’ the girl cried.

‘He is a fool!’ the old woman repeated, eyeing him with a dreadful sternness.  ‘Or he would ha’ kept his mistake to himself.  Who knows of it?  Or why should he be telling them?  ’Tis for them to find out, not for him!  Yo’ call yourself a lawyer?  Yo’ are a fool!’ And she sat down in a palsy of senile passion.  ‘Yo’ are a fool!  And yo’ ha’ ruined us!’

Mr. Fishwick groaned, but made no reply.  He had not the spirit to defend himself.  But Julia, as if all through which she had gone since the day of her reputed father’s death had led her to this point, only that she might show the stuff of which she was wrought, rose to the emergency.

‘Mother,’ she said firmly, her hand resting on the older woman’s shoulder, ’you are wrong—­you are quite wrong.  He would have ruined us indeed, he would have ruined us hopelessly and for ever, if he had kept silence!  He has never been so good a friend to us as he has shown himself to-day, and I thank him for his courage.  And I honour him!’ She held out her hand to Mr. Fishwick, who having pressed it, his face working ominously, retired to the window.

‘But, my deary, what will yo’ do?’ Mrs. Masterson cried peevishly.  ’He ha’ ruined us!’

‘What I should have done if we had never made this mistake,’ Julia answered bravely; though her lips trembled and her face was white, and in her heart she knew that hers was but a mockery of courage, that must fail her the moment she was alone.  ’We are but fifty pounds worse than we were.’