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----'

'To the deuce, your infancy! I know too much about your age. Just hark,
you Richmond! none o