grand in its wrath, so sublime in its despair. Following the direction
of his eye, stern and fixed as the look of one who prophesies a destiny
and denounces a doom, I shivered as I gazed upon the son. His whole
frame seemed collapsed and shrinking, as if already withered by the
curse; a ghastly whiteness overspread the cheek, usually glowing with
the dark bloom of Oriental youth; the knees knocked together; and at
last, with a faint exclamation of pain, like the cry of one who receives
a death-blow, he bowed his face over his clasped hands, and so remained
--still, but cowering.

Instinctively I advanced, and placed myself between the father and the
son, murmuring, "Spare him; see, his own heart crushes him down." Then
stealing towards the son, I whispered, "Go, go; the crime was not
committed, the curse can be recalled." But my words touched a wrong
chord in that dark and rebellious nature. The young man withdrew his
hands hastily from his face and reared his front in passionate defiance.

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--"