He turned round quickly, staring at me with a face of mingled fury and dismay.

“Then you come to me a beggar!” he burst out; “a beggar who has taken me in about his fine family, and his fine prospects; a beggar who can’t support my child—­Yes!  I say it again, a beggar who looks me in the face, and talks as you do.  I don’t care a damn about you or your father!  I know my rights; I’m an Englishman, thank God!  I know my rights, and my Margaret’s rights; and I’ll have them in spite of you both.  Yes! you may stare as angry as you like; staring don’t hurt.  I’m an honest man, and my girl’s an honest girl!”

I was looking at him, at that moment, with the contempt that I really felt; his rage produced no other sensation in me.  All higher and quicker emotions seemed to have been dried at their sources by the events of the morning.

“I say my girl’s an honest girl,” he repeated, sitting down again; “and I dare you, or anybody—­I don’t care who—­to prove the contrary.  You told me you knew all, just now.  What all? Come! we’ll have this out before we do anything else.  She says she’s innocent, and I say she’s innocent:  and if I could find out that damnation scoundrel Mannion, and get him here, I’d make him say it too.  Now, after all that, what have you got against her?—­against your lawful wife; and I’ll make you own her as such, and keep her as such, I can promise you!”

“I am not here to ask questions, or to answer them,” I replied—­“my errand in this house is simply to tell you, that the miserable falsehoods contained in your letter, will avail you as little as the foul insolence of language by which you are now endeavouring to support them.  I told you before, and I now tell you again, I know all.  I had been inside that house, before I saw your daughter at the door; and had heard, from her voice and his voice, what such shame and misery as you cannot comprehend forbid me to repeat.  To your past duplicity, and to your present violence, I have but one answer to give:—­I will never see your daughter again.”

“But you shall see her again—­yes! and keep her too!  Do you think I can’t see through you and your precious story?  Your father’s cut you off with a shilling; and now you want to curry favour with him again by trumping up a case against my girl, and trying to get her off your hands that way.  But it won’t do!  You’ve married her, my fine gentleman, and you shall stick to her!  Do you think I wouldn’t sooner believe her, than believe you?  Do you think I’ll stand this?  Here she is up-stairs, half heart-broken, on my hands; here’s my wife”—­(his voice sank suddenly as he said this)—­“with her mind in such a state that I’m kept away from business, day after day, to look after her; here’s all this crying and misery and mad goings-on in my house, because you choose to behave like a scamp—­and do you think I’ll put up with it quietly?  I’ll make you do your duty to my girl, if she goes to the parish to appeal against you! Your story indeed!  Who’ll believe that a young female, like Margaret, could have taken to a fellow like Mannion? and kept it all a secret from you?  Who believes that, I should like to know?”