The method of my mother's attack had taken me by
surprise. Her sagacity was so much greater than mine, her power of
fence was so much greater, her stroke was so much deadlier, that in
all our encounters I had been conquered.
'It is for the girl's own sake that I speak to you,' continued my
mother. 'She was deeply embarrassed at your method of address, and
well she might be, seeing that it will be, for a long time to come,
the subject of discussion in all the beer-houses which her father
frequents.'
'You speak as though she were answerable for her father's faults,' I
said, with heat.
'No,' said my mother; 'but _your_ father is the owner of Raxton Hall,
which to her and her class is a kind of Palace of the Caesars. You
belong to a family famous all along the coast; you are well known to
be the probable heir of one of the largest landowners in England; you
may be something more important still; while she, poor girl, what is
she that you should rush up to her before all the churchgoers of the
parish and address her as Winifred? The daughter of a penniless,
drunken reprobate.
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