BENSON: It is a lie! A base lie! She would be my disgrace, my shame: an outcast from her father's roof, and from the world. Support! Support me with the gold coined in her infamy and guilt! Heaven help me! Do you know that from infancy I have almost worshiped her, fancying that I saw in her young mind the virtues of a mother, to whom the anguish of this one hour would have been worse than death! Do you know that I have a heart and soul within me; or do you believe that because I am of lower station, I am a being of a different order from yourself, and that Nature has denied me thought and feeling! Man, do you know that I am this girl's father? You need be thankful, sir, for the grasp she has upon my arm. Money! If she were dying for want, and the smallest coin from you could restore her to life and health, sooner than she should take it from your hand, I would cast her from a sick bed to perish on the roadside. I care not for your long pedigree of ancestors--my forefathers made them all. I am a farmer, sir--one of the men on whom you, and such as you, depend for the money they squander in profligacy and idleness. Here, neighbors! Friends! Hear this, hear this! Your landlord, a high-born gentleman, is entering the houses of humble farmers and tempting their daughters to destruction!