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.

‘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——­’