“Do you know, you brute! you devil! what is before you?”
Gentleman Geff opened his heavy red eyes and stared in a deep stupor, through which fury began to kindle slowly, like flame from under a thick smoke.
“Answer me, you beast!” demanded Legg, with another and rougher shake of the wretch under his grasp. “Do you know what is before you?”
“No! nor care!” roared the madman, with a perfect stream of profanity and obscenity.
“Then listen to me!” said Legg, when at length the torrent from Tartarus was stayed. “What is before you is first a trial for bigamy, with fourteen years of penal serviture, with hard labor, bread and water, ball and chain, dark cell and frequent flogging thrown in!”
Gentleman Geff answered this by a glare of hatred and defiance and another inundation from the River of Styx.
Legg waited until that flood was exhausted and then added:
“Nor is that all! For when your first term of penal servitude shall be served out, another indictment will await you for conspiracy, perjury, forgery and fraud, by which you sought to gain possession of the Haymore estate, and another fourteen years, at least, of imprisonment, hard labor, stripes, chains and the rest!”
Again Gentleman Geff opened his lips in a way that made his mouth seem the opening of the pit of fire and brimstone for the blasting curses that issued from it.
And again Legg waited in sarcastic silence until the smoke and flame had sunk down, and then he added: