"Don't think that I have been ignorant of your doings all this time. Don't think that it has not been patent to us all how you preferred the society of these low adventurers to that of your own family." There was a look on Roland's face which would have warned most men to stop, but his father was not one of them. "And as for this--this young person you have chosen as an instrument for disgracing us, why, you must surely recollect that both your mother and myself witnessed her disreputable, immodest behaviour, and that on the public high road--" "Just stop, sir--stop. What the devil do you mean by talking like this? Remember who you are talking about, please." Roland had sprung to his feet, and stood confronting his father. His face was ghastly white, but his eyes glowed like two living coals, and his hands were clenched with the firmness of a vice. "Stop, do you hear? By God, if any other man had said that--" And he paused, restraining himself with an effort. "So, so, sir," cried the General furiously. "So you dare to stand there and threaten your father! So you dare to talk to me in this tone! You dare to stand there in your damned strength and talk to a man twice your age in that strain--I wonder Heaven does not strike you dead as you do it. But go--get away out of my sight, let me never see you again. One who can so far forget all sense of duty is no son of mine. Go! Do you hear--go?" and he pointed towards the door, his hands shaking in a perfect palsy of rage. Roland walked to the door. "Yes, I will go," he said, "and that before I forget myself. Good-bye. I recall anything that may have sounded like a threat. Good-bye." "Go--go!" articulated the General, almost voiceless with rage, shaking his hand at the door. "I'd call down a curse upon you, but it's needless, for you're sure to come to the gallows some day, and after that to hell. Go. Be off with you!" The other turned deliberately and went out. On the stairs he encountered his mother. "What is it, Roland? What has happened? You and your father have had a dreadful quarrel, I'm afraid," she said, her cold nature roused to a state of unwonted anxiety. "Oh! dear! What is it all about?" "Nothing, madam--except that the sweetly affectionate care and the pious home-training of my younger days is bearing its natural fruit," was his caustic reply, for he felt a very hell of fierce wrath blazing within. "And now, let me congratulate you upon having things at last exactly as you have long wished them to be." He passed her. The hall door shut behind him with an angry slam, and thus Roland Dorrien went out from the presence of his father--never to look upon him again in this world. Mrs Dorrien found her husband sitting in the study in a state of terrible exhaustion. He was a strong man for his age, but the frightful passion to which he had given way had seriously shaken him. "Has--that--villain--gone?" he asked at length.