He appealed lightly to the squire, for thus he danced on the crater’s brink, and had for answer,

‘You’re a cool scoundrel, Richmond.’

‘I choose to respect you, rather in spite of yourself, I fear, sir,’ said my father, bracing up.

‘Did you hear my conversation with my daughter?’

‘I heard, if I may say so, the lion taking his share of it.’

‘All roaring to you, was it?’

’Mr. Beltham, we have our little peculiarities; I am accustomed to think of a steam-vent when I hear you indulging in a sentence of unusual length, and I hope it is for our good, as I thoroughly believe it is for yours, that you should deliver yourself freely.’

‘So you tell me; like a stage lacquey!’ muttered the old man, with surprising art in caricaturing a weakness in my father’s bearing, of which I was cruelly conscious, though his enunciation was flowing.  He lost his naturalness through forcing for ease in the teeth of insult.

‘Grandada, aunty and I will leave you,’ said Janet, waxing importunate.

‘When I’ve done,’ said he, facing his victim savagely.  ’The fellow pretends he didn’t understand.  She’s here to corroborate.  Richmond, there, my daughter, Dorothy Beltham, there’s the last of your fools and dupes.  She’s a truthful woman, I’ll own, and she’ll contradict me if what I say is not the fact.  That twenty-five thousand from “Government” came out of her estate.’

‘Out of—­’

‘Out of be damned, sir!  She’s the person who paid it.’

‘If the “damns” have set up, you may as well let the ladies go,’ said I.

He snapped at me like a rabid dog in career.

’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.’