before me,)
"write your terms there--I shall find means to keep you to a written
engagement--the terms of your absence, for life, from this country;
and of hers: the terms of your silence, and of the silence of your
accomplices; of all of them. Write what you please; I am ready to pay
dearly for your absence, your secrecy, and your abandonment of the name
you have degraded. My God! that I should live to bargain for hushing up
the dishonour of my family, and to bargain for it with _you._"

I had listened to him hitherto without pleading a word in my own behalf;
but his last speech roused me. Some of _his_ pride stirred in my heart
against the bitterness of his contempt. I raised my head, and met his
eye steadily for the first time--then, thrust the writing materials away
from me, and left my place at the table.

"Stop!" he cried. "Do you pretend that you have not understood me?"

"It is _because_ I have understood you, Sir, that I go. I have deserved
your anger, and have submitted without a murmur to all that it could
inflict. If you see in my conduct towards you no mitigation of my
offence; if you cannot view the shame and wrong inflicted on me, with
such grief as may have some pity mixed with it--I have, I think, the
right to ask that your contempt may be silent, and your last words to
me, not words of insult."

"Insult! After what has happened, is it for _you_ to utter that word in
the tone in which you have just spoken it? I tell you again, I insist
on your written engagement as I would insist on the engagement of a
stranger--I will have it, before you leave this room!"

"All, and more than all, which that degrading engagement could imply, I
will do. But I have not fallen so low yet, as to be bribed to perform
a duty. You may be able to forget that you are my father; I can never
forget that I am your son."

"The remembrance will avail you nothing as long as I live. I tell you
again, I insist on your written engagement, though it were only to show
that I have ceased to believe in your word. Write at once--do you hear
me?--Write!"

I neither moved nor answered. His face changed again, and grew livid;
his fingers trembled convulsively, and crumpled the sheet of paper, as
he tried to take it up from the table on which it lay.

"You refuse?" he said quickly.

"I have already told you, Sir--"

"Go!" he interrupted, pointing passionately to the door, "go out from
this house, never to return to it again--go, not