apart, stood the man I have called Francis Vivian.

"Fanny--Miss Trevanion--what outrage, what villany is this? You have
not met this man at your free choice,--oh, speak!" Vivian sprang
forward.

"Question no one but me. Unhand that lady,--she is my betrothed; shall
be my wife."

"No, no, no,--don't believe him," cried Fanny; "I have been betrayed by
my own servants,--brought here, I know not how! I heard my father was
ill; I was on my way to him that man met me here and dared to--"

"Miss Trevanion--yes, I dared to say I loved you!"

"Protect me from him! You will protect me from him?"

"No, madam!" said a voice behind me, in a deep tone; "it is I who claim
the right to protect you from that man; it is I who now draw around you
the arm of one sacred, even to him; it is I who, from this spot, launch
upon his head--a father's curse. Violator of the hearth, baffled
ravisher, go thy way to the doom which thou hast chosen for thyself!
God will be merciful to me yet, and give me a grave before thy course
find its close in the hulks or at the gallows!"

A sickness came over me, a terror froze my veins; I reeled back, and
leaned for support against the wall. Roland had passed his arm round
Fanny, and she, frail and trembling, clung to his broad breast, looking
fearfully up to his face. And never in that face, ploughed by deep
emotions and dark with unutterable sorrows, had I seen an expression so