"It is not I who have ruined you, Arthur--as you put it--though of course
you're not ruined at all!--but your own wanton self-will. Are you really so
lost to all decency--all affection--that you can speak to your mother like
this?"
He turned and paused--to throw her an ugly look.
"Well--I don't know that I'm more of a brute than other men--but it's no
good talking about affection to me--after this. Yes, I suppose you've been
fond of me, mother, in your way--and I suppose I've been fond of you. But
the fact is, as I told you before, I've stood in _fear_ of you!--all
my life--and lots of things you thought I did because I was fond of you, I
did because I was a coward--a disgusting coward!--who ought to have been
kicked. And that's the truth! Why, ever since I was a small kid--"
And standing before her, with his hands on his sides, all his pleasant face
disfigured by anger and the desire to wound, he poured out upon her a flood
of recollections of his childhood and youth. Beneath the bitterness and the
shock of it, even Lady Coryston presently flinched. This kind of language,
though never in such brutal terms, she had heard from Corry once or twice.
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