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 have taken the staff out of my hand:  you have extinguished the light.  I have existed—­ay, a pensioner, unknowingly, on this dear lady’s charity; to her I say no more.  To you, sir, by all that is most sacred to a man-by the ashes of my mother! by the prospects of my boy!  I swear the annuity was in my belief a tangible token that my claims to consideration were in the highest sources acknowledged to be just.  I cannot speak!  One word to you, Mr. Beltham:  put me aside, I am nothing:—­Harry Richmond!—­his fortunes are not lost; he has a future!  I entreat you—­he is your grandson—­give him your support; go this instant to the prince—­no! you will not deny your countenance to Harry Richmond:  let him abjure my name; let me be nameless in his house.  And I promise you I shall be unheard of both in Christendom and Heathendom:  I have no heart except for my boy’s nuptials with the princess:  this one thing, to see him the husband