"'This is most extraordinary,' said Sir Boyvill, controlling, as well as he could, the rage swelling within him. 'And are you such an idiot as not to know that your wretched mother has forfeited all claim to your affection? and am I of so little worth in your eyes, I, your father, who have a right to your obedience from the justice of my cause, not to speak of parental authority, am I nothing? to receive no duty, expect no service? I was, indeed, mistaken; I thought you were older than your years, and had that touch of gentlemanly pride about you that would have made you eager to avenge my injuries, to stand by me as a friend and ally, compensating, as well as you could, for the wrongs done me by your mother. I thought I had a son in whose veins my own blood flowed, who would be ready to prove his true birth by siding with me. Are you stone, or a baseborn thing, that you cannot even conceive what thing honour is?' "Gerard listened, he wept; the tears poured in torrents from his eyes; but, as his father continued, and heaped many an opprobrious epithet on him, a proud and sullen spirit was indeed awakened; he longed to say--'Abuse me, strike me, but I will not yield!' Yet he did not speak; he dried his eyes, and stood in silence before his parent, his face darkening, and something ferocious gleaming in eyes hitherto so soft and sorrowing. Sir Boyvill saw that he was far from making the impression he desired; but he wished to avoid reiterated refusals to obey, and he summed up at last with vague but violent threats of what would ensue--exile from his home, penury, nay, starvation, the abhorrence of the world, his own malediction; and, after having worked himself up into a towering rage, and real detestation of the shivering, feeble, yet determined child before him, he left him to consider and to be vanquished. "Far other thoughts occupied Gerard. 'I had thought,' he has told me, 'once or twice to throw myself into his arms, and pray for mercy; to kneel at his feet and implore him to spare me; one kind word had made the struggle intolerable, but no kind word did he say; and while he stormed, it seemed to me as if my dear mother were singing as she was used, while I gathered flowers and played beside her in the park, and I thought of her, not of him; the words, "kick me out of doors," suggested but the idea, "I shall be free, and I will find my mother." I feel intensely now; but surely a boy's feelings are far wilder, far more vehement than a man's; for I cannot now, violent as you think me, call up one sensation so whirlwind-like as those that possessed me while my father spoke!'