‘Harry!’ either my aunt or Janet breathed a warning.

I replied that I was past mincing phrases.  The folly of giving the tongue an airing was upon me:  I was in fact invited to continue, and animated to do it thoroughly, by the old man’s expression of face, which was that of one who says, ‘I give you rope,’ and I dealt him a liberal amount of stock irony not worth repeating; things that any cultivated man in anger can drill and sting the Boeotian with, under the delusion that he has not lost a particle of his self-command because of his coolness.  I spoke very deliberately, and therefore supposed that the words of composure were those of prudent sense.  The error was manifest.  The women saw it.  One who has indulged his soul in invective will not, if he has power in his hand, be robbed of his climax with impunity by a cool response that seems to trifle, and scourges.

I wound up by thanking my father for his devotion to me:  I deemed it, I said, excessive and mistaken in the recent instance, but it was for me.

Upon this he awoke from his dreamy-looking stupefaction.

’Richie does me justice.  He is my dear boy.  He loves me:  I love him.  None can cheat us of that.  He loves his wreck of a father.  You have struck me to your feet, Mr. Beltham.’

’I don’t want to see you there, sir; I want to see you go, and not stand rapping your breast-bone, sounding like a burst drum, as you are,’ retorted the unappeasable old man.

I begged him in exasperation to keep his similes to himself.

Janet and my aunt Dorothy raised their voices.

My father said:  ‘I am broken.’

He put out a swimming hand that trembled when it rested, like that of an aged man grasping a staff.  I feared for a moment he was acting, he spoke so like himself, miserable though he appeared:  but it was his well-known native old style in a state of decrepitude.

‘I am broken,’ he repeated.  ’I am like the ancient figure of mortality entering the mouth of the tomb on a sepulchral monument, somewhere, by a celebrated sculptor:  I have seen it:  I forget the city.  I shall presently forget names of men.  It is not your abuse, Mr. Beltham.  I should have bowed my head to it till the storm passed.  Your facts . . . Oh!  Miss Beltham, this last privilege to call you dearest of human beings! my benefactress! my blessing!  Do not scorn me, madam.’

‘I never did; I never will; I pitied you,’ she cried, sobbing.

The squire stamped his foot.

‘Madam,’ my father bowed gently.  ’I was under heaven’s special protection—­I thought so.  I feel I have been robbed—­I have not deserved it!  Oh! madam, no:  it was your generosity that I did not deserve.  One of the angels of heaven persuaded me to trust in it.  I did not know. . . .  Adieu, madam.  May I be worthy to meet you!—­Ay, Mr. Beltham, your facts have committed the death-wound.  You