e story.
It was not for nothing you were always afraid of being called a bastard.
It's an ugly word, but it belongs to you--ay, ay, ye always trembled at
that word, since ye were able to go and play among the children in the
street. They called ye that seven years ago--ten years ago, when we came
here first, and you used to come crying to me, for you could not bear
it, you said. I denied it then--I told you I was married to your father;
I told you a lie: I told you that, because I thought you would grow up
and work for me, and get me money. You won't do it; you will only
write--write all day and all night, too, though I've begged you to quit
it. You have me here starving. What signifies the beggarly annuity your
father left to me, and you, his child? It's all spent long before it
comes, and here we are with nothing, not a crust, in the house, and it's
two months till next paying time.

"Listen--I'll tell you the whole story of your birth; maybe that will
put you from writing for a while, if you have the spirit you used to
have when they told you what you were."

She shook his arm again, without receiving any answer; his head had
fallen on his hands, and he remained fixed in one position. His mother's
eyes glared on him with a look in which madness was visible, together
with a tigress-like expression of ferocity which rarely appears on the
face of a mother, or of any human being, where insanity does not exist.
When she spoke, however, her words were collected, and her manner was
impressive and even dignified; the look of maniac anger gradually wore
away from her face, and in every sentence she uttered there were proofs
that something of power had naturally existed in her fallen and clouded
mind.

"Want of money was the earliest thing I remember to feel," she said, as
she seated herself, with something more of composure in her manner.
"There was never any money in my father's house. I wondered at first
where it could all go; I watched and reflected, and used all means of
finding out the mystery. At last I knew it--my father drank; in the
privacy of his room, when no eye was on him, he drank, drank. He paid
strict enough attention to my education. I read with him much; he had
stores of books. I read the Bible with him, too; often he spent long
evenings expounding it to me. But I saw the hollowness of it all--he
hardly believed himself; he doubted--doubted all, while he would fain
have made me a believer. I saw it well: