regular Shylock.

I had found this out by listening (in my dreams) to long conversations
between my father and mother in the old drawing-room at Passy, while
Gogo was absorbed in his book; and every word that had passed through
Gogo's inattentive ears into his otherwise preoccupied little brain had
been recorded there as in a phonograph, and was now repeated over and
over again for Peter Ibbetson, as he sat unnoticed among them.

I asked her, jokingly, if she had discovered that I was the rightful
heir to Ibbetson Hall by any chance.

She replied that nothing would give her greater pleasure, but there was
no such good fortune in store for either her or me; that she had
discovered long ago that Colonel Ibbetson was the greatest blackguard
unhung, and nothing new she might discover could make him worse.

I then remembered how he would often speak of her, even to me, and hint
and insinuate things which were no doubt untrue, and which I
disbelieved. Not that the question of their truth or untruth made him
any the less despicable and vile for telling.

She asked me if he had ever spoken of her to me, and after much
persuasion and cunning cross-examination I told her as much of the truth
as I dared, and she became a tigress. She assured me that he had managed
so to injure and compromise her in Hopshire that she and her mother had
to leave, and she swore to me most solemnly (and I thoroughly believe
she spoke the truth) that there had never been any relation between
them that she could not have owned to before the whole world.