Also he gambled away most of her
patrimony, and after old Andreas Ferreira's death they grew poor. One
night there was a dreadful scene between them, and in his madness he
struck her.
"Well, she was a very proud woman, determined, too, and she turned on
him and said--for I heard her--'I will never forgive you; we have done
with each other.' Next morning, when my father was sober, he begged her
pardon, but she made no answer, although he was starting somewhere on
a fortnight's trek. When he had gone my mother ordered the Cape cart,
packed up her clothes, took some money that she had put away, drove to
Durban, and after making arrangements at the bank about a small private
income of her own, sailed with me for England, leaving a letter for my
father in which she said that she would never see him again, and if he
tried to interfere with me she would put me under the protection of the
English court, which would not allow me to be taken to the home of a
drunkard.
"In England we went to live in London with my aunt, who had married a
Major King, but was a widow with five children. My father often wrote to
persuade my mother to go back to him, but she never would, which I think
was wrong of her. So things went on for twelve years or more, till
one day my mother suddenly died, and I came into her little fortune of
between L200 and L300 a year, which she had tied up so that nobody can
touch it.
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