’She’s the person—­one of your petticoat “Government”—­who paid—­do you hear me, Richmond?—­the money to help you to keep your word:  to help you to give your Balls and dinners too.  She—­I won’t say she told you, and you knew it—­she paid it.  She sent it through her Mr. Bannerbridge.  Do you understand now?  You had it from her.  My God! look at the fellow!’

A dreadful gape of stupefaction had usurped the smiles on my father’s countenance; his eyes rolled over, he tried to articulate, and was indeed a spectacle for an enemy.  His convulsed frame rocked the syllables, as with a groan, unpleasant to hear, he called on my aunt Dorothy by successive stammering apostrophes to explain, spreading his hands wide.  He called out her Christian name.  Her face was bloodless.

’Address my daughter respectfully, sir, will you!  I won’t have your infernal familiarities!’ roared the squire.

‘He is my brother-in-law,’ said Dorothy, reposing on the courage of her blood, now that the worst had been spoken.  ’Forgive me, Mr. Richmond, for having secretly induced you to accept the loan from me.’

‘Loan!’ interjected the squire.  ’They fell upon it like a pair of kites.  You’ll find the last ghost of a bone of your loan in a bill, and well picked.  They’ve been doing their bills:  I’ve heard that.’

My father touched the points of his fingers on his forehead, straining to think, too theatrically, but in hard earnest, I believe.  He seemed to be rising on tiptoe.

’Oh, madam!  Dear lady! my friend!  Dorothy, my sister!  Better a thousand times that I had married, though I shrank from a heartless union!  This money?—­it is not—­’

The old man broke in:  ’Are you going to be a damned low vulgar comedian and tale of a trumpet up to the end, you Richmond?  Don’t think you’ll gain anything by standing there as if you were jumping your trunk from a shark.  Come, sir, you’re in a gentleman’s rooms; don’t pitch your voice like a young jackanapes blowing into a horn.  Your gasps and your spasms, and howl of a yawning brute!  Keep your menagerie performances for your pantomime audiences.  What are you meaning?  Do you pretend you’re astonished?  She’s not the first fool of a woman whose money you’ve devoured, with your “Madam,” and “My dear” and mouthing and elbowing your comedy tricks; your gabble of “Government” protection, and scandalous advertisements of the by-blow of a star-coated rapscallion.  If you’ve a recollection of the man in you, show your back, and be off, say you’ve fought against odds—­I don’t doubt you have, counting the constables—­and own you’re a villain:  plead guilty, and be off and be silent, and do no more harm.  Is it “Government” still?’

My aunt Dorothy had come round to me.  She clutched my arm to restrain me from speaking, whispering: 

‘Harry, you can’t save him.  Think of your own head.’  She made me irresolute, and I was too late to check my father from falling into the trap.