Percival Glyde, and I must help you to wreak it. I must tell you this, that, and the other about Sir Percival and myself, must I? Yes, indeed? You have been prying into my private affairs. You think you have found a lost woman to deal with, who lives here on sufferance, and who will do anything you ask for fear you may injure her in the opinions of the town’s-people. I see through you and your precious speculation—I do! and it amuses me. Ha! ha!”
She stopped for a moment, her arms tightened over her bosom, and she laughed to herself—a hard, harsh, angry laugh.
“You don’t know how I have lived in this place, and what I have done in this place, Mr. What’s-your-name,” she went on. “I’ll tell you, before I ring the bell and have you shown out. I came here a wronged woman—I came here robbed of my character and determined to claim it back. I’ve been years and years about it—and I have claimed it back. I have matched the respectable people fairly and openly on their own ground. If they say anything against me now they must say it in secret—they can’t say it, they daren’t say it, openly. I stand high enough in this town to be out of your reach. The clergyman bows to me. Aha! you didn’t bargain for that when you came here. Go to the church and inquire about me—you will find Mrs. Catherick has her sitting like the rest of them, and pays the rent on the day it’s due. Go to the town-hall. There’s a petition lying there—a petition of the respectable inhabitants against allowing a circus to come and perform here and corrupt our morals—yes! Our morals. I signed that petition this morning. Go to the bookseller’s shop. The clergyman’s Wednesday evening lectures on Justification by Faith are publishing there by subscription—I’m down on the list. The doctor’s wife only put a shilling in the plate at our last charity sermon—I put half-a-crown. Mr. Churchwarden Soward held the plate, and bowed to me. Ten years ago he told Pigrum the chemist I ought to be whipped out of the town at the cart’s tail. Is your mother alive? Has she got a better Bible on her table than I have got on mine? Does she stand better with her tradespeople