Waving me aside, he cried, "Away! I acknowledge no authority over my actions and my fate; I allow no mediator between this lady and myself. Sir," he continued, gazing gloomily on his father--"sir, you forget our compact. Our ties were severed, your power over me annulled; I resigned the name you bear; to you I was, and am still, as the dead. I deny your right to step between me and the object dearer to me than life.
"Oh!" (and here he stretched forth his hands towards Fanny)--"oh! Miss Trevanion, do not refuse me one prayer, however you condemn me. Let me see you alone but for one moment; let me but prove to you that, guilty as I may have been, it was not from the base motives you will hear imputed to me--that it was not the heiress I sought to decoy, it was the woman I sought to win; oh! hear me"--
"No, no," murmured Fanny, clinging closer to Roland, "do not leave me. If, as it seems, he is your son, I forgive him; but let him go--I shudder at his very voice!"
"Would you have me, indeed, annihilate the very memory of the bond between us?" said Roland, in a hollow voice; "would you have me see in you only the vile thief, the lawless felon,--deliver you up to justice, or strike you to my feet. Let the memory still save you, and begone!"
Again I caught hold of the guilty son, and again he broke from my grasp.
"It is," he said, folding his arms deliberately on his breast, "it is for me to command in this house: all who are within it must submit to my orders. You, sir, who hold reputation, name, and honour at so high a price, how can you fail to see that you would rob them from the lady whom you would protect from the insult of my affection? How would the world receive the tale of your rescue of Miss Trevanion? how believe that--Oh pardon me, madam,--Miss Trevanion--Fanny--pardon me--I am mad; only hear me--alone--alone--and then if you too say 'Begone,' I submit without a murmur; I allow no arbiter but you."
But Fanny still clung closer, and closer still, to Roland. At that moment I heard voices and the trampling of feet below, and supposing that the accomplices in this villany were mustering courage, perhaps, to mount to the assistance of their employer, I lost all the compassion that had hitherto softened my horror of the young man's crime, and all the awe with which that confession had been attended. I therefore, this time, seized the false Vivian with a gripe that he could no longer shake off, and said sternly--