Do you mean that you are resolved voluntarily
to deprive yourself of those means of support you have received from us
so long--that you are determined to resign the annuity we settled on you
twenty years ago--to leave house, and home, and goods, and begin life
anew--and this, for some secret reason or monstrous fancy which is
incapable of explanation, which only now exists, and has been dormant
all this time? In the name of God, under what delusion are you
labouring?'
'As I am deeply thankful,' she made answer, 'for the kindness of those,
alive and dead, who have owned this house; and as I would not have its
roof fall down and crush me, or its very walls drip blood, my name being
spoken in their hearing; I never will again subsist upon their bounty,
or let it help me to subsistence. You do not know,' she added, suddenly,
'to what uses it may be applied; into what hands it may pass. I do, and
I renounce it.'
'Surely,' said Mr Haredale, 'its uses rest with you.'
'They did. They rest with me no longer. It may be--it IS--devoted to
purposes that mock the dead in their graves. It never can prosper with
me. It will bring some other heavy judgement on the head of my dear son,
whose innocence will suffer for his mother's guilt.
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