"It is well, sir, that you have thus spoken to me in the presence of
others, for in their presence I call upon you to say, by that honor
which the son of this gentleman may for a while forget, but cannot
wholly forfeit,--I call upon you to say whether, by deed, word, or sign,
I, Frances Trevanion, ever gave you cause to believe that I returned the
feeling you say you entertained for me, or encouraged you to dare this
attempt to place me in your power."

"No!" cried Vivian, readily, but with a writhing lip, "no; but where I
loved so deeply, perilled all my fortune for one fair and free occasion
to tell you so alone, I would not think that such love could meet only
loathing and disdain. What! has Nature shaped me so unkindly that where
I love no love can reply? What! has the accident of birth shut me out
from the right to woo and mate with the high-born? For the last, at
least that gentleman in justice should tell you since it has been his
care to instil the haughty lesson into me, that my lineage is one that
befits lofty hopes and warrants fearless ambition. My hopes, my
ambition--they were you Oh, Miss Trevanion, it is true that to win you I
would have braved the world's laws, defied every foe save him who now
rises before me. Yet, believe me, believe me, had I won what I dared to
aspire to, you would not have been disgraced by your choice; and the
name, for which I thank not my father, should not have been despised by
the woman who pardoned my presumption, nor by the man who now tramples
on my anguish and curses me in my desolation."

Not by a word had Roland sought to interrupt his son,--nay, by a
feverish excitement which my heart understood in its secret sympathy, he
had seemed eagerly to court every syllable that could extenuate the
darkness of the offence, or even imply some less sordid motive for the
baseness of the means. But as the son now closed with the words of