ly.

'Richmond, your last little bit of villany 's broken in the egg. I
separate the boy from you: he's not your accomplice there, I'm glad
to know. You witched the lady over to pounce on her like a fowler, you
threatened her father with a scandal, if he thought proper to force the
trap; swore you 'd toss her to be plucked by the gossips, eh? She's free
of you! You got your English and your Germans here to point their
bills, and stretch their necks, and hiss, if this gentleman--and your
newspapers!--if he didn't give up to you like a funky traveller to a
highwayman. I remember a tale of a clumsy Turpin, who shot himself when
he was drawing the pistol out of his holsters to frighten the money-bag
out of a market farmer. You've done about the same, you Richmond; and,
of all the damned poor speeches I ever heard from a convicted felon,
yours is the worst--a sheared sheep'd ha' done it more respectably,
grant the beast a tongue! The lady is free of you, I tell you. Harry has
to thank you for that kindness. She--what is it, Janet? Never mind, I've
got the story--she didn't want to marry; but this prince, who called on
me just now, happened to be her father's nominee, and he heard of your
scoundrelism, and he behaved like a man and a gentleman, and offered
himself, none too early nor too late, as it turns out; and the princess,
like a good girl, has made amends to her father by accepting him. I've
the word of this Prince Hermann for it. Now you can look upon a game of
stale-mate. If I had gone to the prince, it wouldn't have been to back
your play; but, if you hadn't been guilty of the tricks of a blackguard
past praying for, this princess would never have been obliged to marry
a man to protect her father and herself. They sent him here to stop any
misunderstanding. He speaks good English, so that's certain. Your
lies will be contradicted, every one of 'em, seriatim, in to-morrow's
newspapers, setting the real man in place of the wrong one; and you 'll
draw no profit from them in your fashionable world, where you 've been
grinning lately, like a blackamoor's head on a conjuror's plate--the
devil alone able to account for the body and joinings. Now you can be
off.'

I went up to my father. His plight was more desperate than mine, for
I had resembled the condemned before the firing-party, to whom the
expected bullet brings a merely physical shock. He, poor man, heard
his sentence, which is the heart's pang of death; and how fo