As he spoke, the hour struck; and the old French clock rang out gaily the same little silvery chime which my mother had so often taken me into her room to listen to, in the bygone time.  The shrill, lively peal mingled awfully with the sharp, tearing sound, as my father rent out from the book before him the whole of the leaf which contained my name; tore it into fragments, and cast them on the floor.

He rose abruptly, after he had closed the book again.  His cheeks flushed once more; and when he next spoke, his voice grew louder and louder with every word he uttered.  It seemed as if he still distrusted his resolution to abandon me; and sought, in his anger, the strength of purpose which, in his calmer mood, he might even yet have been unable to command.

“Now, Sir,” he said, “we treat together as strangers.  You are Mr. Sherwin’s son—­not mine.  You are the husband of his daughter—­not a relation of my family.  Rise, as I do:  we sit together no longer in the same room.  Write!” (he pushed pen, ink, and paper 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!”