The first sight that saluted him as the door opened, was a pile of Mrs. Chump’s boxes:  he listened, and her voice resounded from the library.  Gainsford’s eye expressed a discretion significant that there had been an explosion in the house.

“I sha’nt have to invent much,” said Wilfrid to himself, bitterly.

There was a momentary appearance of Adela at the library-door; and over her shoulder came an outcry from Mrs. Chump.  Arabella then spoke:  Mr. Pole and Cornelia following with a word, to which Mrs. Chump responded shrilly:  “Ye shan’t talk to ’m, none of ye, till I’ve had the bloom of his ear, now!” A confused hubbub of English and Irish ensued.  The ladies drew their brother into the library.

Doubtless you have seen a favourite sketch of the imaginative youthful artist, who delights to portray scenes on a raft amid the tossing waters, where sweet and satiny ladies, in a pardonable abandonment to the exigencies of the occasion, are exhibiting the full energy and activity of creatures that existed before sentiment was born.  The ladies of Brookfield had almost as utterly cast off their garb of lofty reserve and inscrutable superiority.  They were begging Mrs. Chump to be, for pity’s sake, silent.  They were arguing with the woman.  They were remonstrating—­to such an extent as this, in reply to an infamous outburst:  “No, no:  indeed, Mrs. Chump, indeed!” They rose, as she rose, and stood about her, motioning a beseeching emphasis with their hands.  Not visible for one second was the intense indignation at their fate which Wilfrid, spying keenly into them, perceived.  This taught him that the occasion was as grave as could be.  In spite of the oily words his father threw from time to time abruptly on the tumult, he guessed what had happened.

Briefly, Mrs. Chump, aided by Braintop, her squire, had at last hunted Mr. Pericles down, and the wrathful Greek had called her a beggar.  With devilish malice he had reproached her for speculating in such and such Bonds, and sending ventures to this and that hemisphere, laughing infernally as he watched her growing amazement.  “Ye’re jokin’, Mr. Paricles,” she tried to say and think; but the very naming of poverty had given her shivers.  She told him how she had come to him because of Mr. Pole’s reproach, which accused her of causing the rupture.  Mr. Pericles twisted the waxy points of his moustache.  “I shall advise you, go home,” he said; “go to a lawyer:  say, ‘I will see my affairs, how zey stand.’  Ze man will find Pole is ruined.  It may be—­I do not know—­Pole has left a little of your money; yes, ma’am, it may be.”