“You shall hear. ‘Being, on your part, thoroughly determined,’ I said, ‘to permit no compromise, and to make my brother (his family of course included) acknowledge a woman, of whose guilt they entertain not the slightest doubt, you think you can gain your object by threatening an exposure. Don’t threaten any more! Make your exposure! Go to the magistrate at once, if you like! Gibbet our names in the newspaper report, as a family connected by marriage with Mr. Sherwin the linen-draper’s daughter, whom they believe to have disgraced herself as a woman and a wife forever. Do your very worst; make public every shameful particular that you can—what advantage will you get by it? Revenge, I grant you. But will revenge put a halfpenny into your pocket? Will revenge pay a farthing towards your daughter’s keep? Will revenge make us receive her? Not a bit of it! We shall be driven into a corner; we shall have no exposure to dread after you have exposed us; we shall have no remedy left, but a desperate remedy, and we’ll go to law—boldly, openly go to law, and get a divorce. We have written evidence, which you know nothing about, and can call testimony which you cannot gag. I am no lawyer, but I’ll bet you five hundred to one (quite in a friendly way, my dear Sir!) that we get our case. What follows? We send you back your daughter, without a shred of character left to cover her; and we comfortably wash our hands of you altogether.’ ”
“Ralph! Ralph! how could you—”
“Stop! hear the end of it. Of course I knew that we couldn’t carry out this divorce-threat, without its being the death of my father; but I thought a little quiet bullying on my part might do Mr. Shopkeeper Sherwin some good. And I was right. You never saw a man sit sorer on the sharp edges of a dilemma than he did. I stuck to my point in spite of everything; silence and money, or exposure and divorce—just which he pleased. ‘I deny every one of your infamous imputations,’ said he. ‘That’s not the question,’ said I. ‘I’ll go to your father,’ said he. ‘You won’t be let in,’ said I. ‘I’ll write to him,’ said he. ‘He won’t receive your letter,’ said I.