‘The madness men call revenge,’ cried Mr. Sivewright, uncovering his face and lifting his head proudly. ‘Listen, Lucius Davoren, and when you have heard my story, call me a madman if you will. You will at least perceive that there has been a fixed purpose in all I did. When my false ungrateful son—whom I had loved with all the weak indulgent affection of the solitary man who concentrates all his store of feeling upon one object, his only child—when my wicked son left me, he left me impoverished by his theft, and, as he doubtless believed, ruined for life. He shook the dust of my house from his feet, and went out into the world, never intending to recross my threshold. I had nothing more that could tempt him. My stock had been diminishing daily under his dishonest hands; the sacrifice I had made to secure the new premises shrunk it to a vanishing point. Thus he left me, to all intents and purposes a beggar. It was the old story of the squeezed orange. He had no compunction in flinging away the rind.’ ‘He used you hardly,’ said Lucius, ‘like a villain as he was.’ ‘On the night after he left me, I sat alone by my miserable hearth, in that room which had never witnessed one hour of domestic peace! I sat alone, and brooded over my wrongs. Then it seemed to me almost as if that very devil who came to Dr. Faustus in his study came and stood behind my chair, and whispered in my ear. “Come,” said the fiend, “love is worn out, but there is one thing left you still—revenge. Grow rich, and this base son, who leaves you to perish like a maimed lion in his den, will come back and fawn upon you for your money. Grow rich again; show him what might have been his reward had he behaved decently to you. Let him lie at your door and starve, and beg as Dives begged for a drop of water, and be refused. Then it will be your turn to laugh, as he no doubt is now laughing at you.”’ ‘A strange suggestion, and worthy to come from the spirit of evil,’ said Lucius.