‘Oh!  Mr. Beltham,’ he said, ’you are hard, sir.  I put it to you:  had you been in receipt of a secret subsidy from Government for a long course of years—­’

‘How long?’ the squire interrupted.

Prompt though he would have been to dismiss the hateful person, he was not, one could see, displeased to use the whip upon so exciteable and responsive a frame.  He seemed to me to be basely guilty of leading his victim on to expose himself further.

‘There’s no necessity for “how long,"’ I said.

The old man kept the question on his face.

My father reflected.

’I have to hit my memory, I am shattered, sir.  I say, you would be justified, amply justified—­’

‘How long?’ was reiterated.

‘I can at least date it from the period of my marriage.’

’From the date when your scoundrelism first touches my family, that’s to say!  So “Government” agreed to give you a stipend to support your wife!’

’Mr. Beltham, I breathe with difficulty.  It was at that period, on the death of a nobleman interested in restraining me—­I was his debtor for kindnesses . . . my head is whirling!  I say, at that period, upon the recommendation of friends of high standing, I began to agitate for the restitution of my rights.  From infancy——­’

’To the deuce, your infancy!  I know too much about your age.  Just hark, you Richmond! none of your “I was a child” to provoke compassion from women.  I mean to knock you down and make you incapable of hurting these poor foreign people you trapped.  They defy you, and I’ll do my best to draw your teeth.  Now for the annuity.  You want one to believe ’you thought you frightened “Government,” eh?’

‘Annual proof was afforded me, sir.’

‘Oh! annual! through Mr. Charles Adolphus Bannerbridge, deceased!’

Janet stepped up to my aunt Dorothy to persuade her to leave the room, but she declined, and hung by me, to keep me out of danger, as she hoped, and she prompted me with a guarding nervous squeeze of her hand on my arm to answer temperately when I was questioned: 

‘Harry, do you suspect Government paid that annuity?’

‘Not now, certainly.’

’Tell the man who ‘tis you suspect.’

My aunt Dorothy said:  ‘Harry is not bound to mention his suspicions.’

‘Tell him yourself, then.’

‘Does it matter—?’

’Yes, it matters.  I’ll break every plank he walks on, and strip him stark till he flops down shivering into his slough—­a convicted common swindler, with his dinners and Balls and his private bands!  Richmond, you killed one of my daughters; t’ other fed you, through her agent, this Mr. Charles Adolphus Bannerbridge, 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.’