"I suppose you have a right to waste her fortune also at the gaming-table."
"I have a right to act as my child's guardian," he retorted.
"A fine guardian you would make!" she said, contemptuously.
"Why should I not?" he asked, sulkily.
"Why should you not, John Hartley? Do I need to answer the question? You ill-treated and abused her mother. You wasted half her fortune. Fortunately, she escaped from you before it was all gone. But you shortened her life, and she did not long survive the separation. It was her last request that I should care for her child—that I should, above all, keep her out of your clutches. I made that promise, and I mean to keep it."
"You poisoned my wife's mind against me," he said. "But for your cursed interference we should never have separated."
"You are right, perhaps, in your last statement. I certainly did urge my sister to leave you. I obtained her consent to the application for a divorce, but as to poisoning her mind against you, there was no need of that. By your conduct and your treatment you destroyed her love and forfeited her respect, and she saw the propriety of the course which I recommended."
"I didn't come here to be lectured. You can spare your invectives, Harriet Vernon. What is past is past. I was not a model husband, perhaps, but I was as good as the average."
"If that is the case, Heaven help the woman who marries!"
"Or the man that marries a woman like you!"