‘What brought you here at all?’

‘Can you ask me?’

‘I ask you what brought you to my house at all?’

‘True, I might have slept at Ewling.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

’For the reason, Mr. Beltham, which brought me here originally.  I could not wait-not a single minute.  So far advanced to the neighbourhood, I would not be retarded, and I came on.  I crave your excuses for the hour of my arrival.  The grounds for my coming at all you will very well understand, and you will applaud me when I declare to you that I come to her penitent; to exculpate myself, certainly, but despising self-justification.  I love my wife, Mr. Beltham.  Yes; hear me out, sir.  I can point to my unhappy star, and say, blame that more than me.  That star of my birth and most disastrous fortunes should plead on my behalf to you; to my wife at least it will.’

‘You’ve come to see my daughter Marian, have you?’

‘My wife, sir.’

‘You don’t cross my threshold while I live.’

‘You compel her to come out to me?’

’She stays where she is, poor wretch, till the grave takes her.  You’ve done your worst; be off.’

‘Mr. Beltham, I am not to be restrained from the sight of my wife.’

‘Scamp!’

’By no scurrilous epithets from a man I am bound to respect will I be deterred or exasperated.’

‘Damned scamp, I say!’ The squire having exploded his wrath gave it free way.  ’I’ve stopped my tongue all this while before a scoundrel ’d corkscrew the best-bottled temper right or left, go where you will one end o’ the world to the other, by God!  And here ’s a scoundrel stinks of villany, and I’ve proclaimed him ’ware my gates as a common trespasser, and deserves hanging if ever rook did nailed hard and fast to my barn doors! comes here for my daughter, when he got her by stealing her, scenting his carcase, and talking ’bout his birth, singing what not sort o’ foreign mewin’ stuff, and she found him out a liar and a beast, by God!  And she turned home.  My doors are open to my flesh and blood.  And here she halts, I say, ’gainst the law, if the law’s against me.  She’s crazed:  you’ve made her mad; she knows none of us, not even her boy.  Be off; you’ve done your worst; the light’s gone clean out in her; and hear me, you Richmond, or Roy, or whatever you call yourself, I tell you I thank the Lord she has lost her senses.  See her or not, you ’ve no hold on her, and see her you shan’t while I go by the name of a man.’

Mr. Richmond succeeded in preserving an air of serious deliberation under the torrent of this tremendous outburst, which was marked by scarce a pause in the delivery.

He said, ’My wife deranged!  I might presume it too truly an inherited disease.  Do you trifle with me, sir?  Her reason unseated! and can you pretend to the right of dividing us?  If this be as you say—­Oh! ten thousand times the stronger my claim, my absolute claim, to cherish her.  Make way for me, Mr. Beltham.  I solicit humbly the holiest privilege sorrow can crave of humanity.  My wife! my wife!  Make way for me, sir.’