“For your prayers, your hypocritical snivelling, for wearing the martyr’s crown because you had the ill luck to be my father! Every time I got drunk you re-sanctified yourself; you were glad when I went bad because it brought your own virtue into higher relief. You never met me like a man, because you’re only the outer shell of a man; there’s no heart in you; no soul in you! And don’t be too sure you deceive the people of this town; they know you and just now they’re sneering because they know you’ve been in trouble and they’re glad to find that anything as perfect as you are has clay feet. Walsh never said a word of ill to me of you; he served you with the humility you demanded and the best things you ever did he managed and you got the glory. And he left you because you wanted to sail out into showy schemes like that Mexican fake and he knew where they would land you. The finest testimony of your high character is poor old Gregory who trusted you--trusted you like a child because you were the great Roger Craighill who could do no wrong; and when you had got that Sand Creek deal through you didn’t know him any more, but turned him over to your lawyer. And he’s sitting out there now in the reception room waiting for you to see him; he’s been trying to see you all winter, but you won’t let him in. And Addie, poor Addie up there at the house, you deceived her, too, for she thought she was marrying a man; and the night you went to Boston without her because you were afraid to spring her on the Brodericks, she found you out.” “I should strike you down for this--for speaking to me of my wife in such infamous terms. The fact that you assume the rôle of her champion is an insult to her--a flagrant, unpardonable insult!” “It’s you that insulted her; you were ashamed of her; men treat their mistresses better than that! She deserved better of the great Roger Craighill.” Suspicion and distrust were warmed in the fierce flames of Roger Craighill’s anger. “Why are you so eager to champion her? How dare you speak of her?” “I’m sorry for her, that’s the reason; more than that, I knew her before you did--a poor girl with a hideous mother tied about her neck, and she married you in the mistaken belief that you would honour and respect her, and when your passion cooled a little you began to treat her just as you have treated me--as an encumbrance to be borne and suffered. And don’t you believe, because I never told you I had known her, that she’s not a good woman--she’s so superior to you that you are not worthy to fasten her shoes--that’s what I think of her--and this is what I think of you.”