“I love your daughter—I will not deny it.”
“She returns your affections?”
“I cannot reply to anything involving Miss Gourlay's opinions, who is not here to explain them; nor is it generous in you to force me into the presumptuous task of interpreting her sentiments on such a subject.”
“The fact, however, is this. I have for some years entertained other and different views with respect to her settlement in life. You may be a gentleman, or you may be an impostor; but one thing is certain, you have taught her to contravene my wishes—to despise the honors to which a dutiful obedience to them would exalt her—to spurn my affection, and to trample on my authority. Now, sir, listen to me. Renounce her—give up all claims to her—withdraw every pretension, now and forever; or, by the living God! you shall never carry your life out of this room. Sooner than have the noble design which I proposed for her frustrated; sooner than have the projects of my whole life for her honorable exaltation ruined, I could bear to die the death of a common felon. Here, sir, is a proposition that admits of only the one fatal and deadly alternative. You see these pistols; they are heavily loaded; and you know my purpose; —it is the purpose, let me tell you, of a resolved and desperate man.”
“I know not how to account for this violence, Sir Thomas Gourlay,” replied the stranger with singular coolness; “all I can say is, that on me it is thrown away.”
“Refuse the compliance with the proposition I have made, and by heavens you have looked upon your last sun. The pistols, sir, are cocked; if one fails, the other won't.”
“This outrage, Sir Thomas, upon a stranger, in your own house, under the protection of your own roof, is as monstrous as it is cowardly.”
“My roof, sir, shall never afford protection to a villain,” said the baronet, in a loud and furious voice. “Renounce my daughter, and that quickly. No, sir, this roof will afford you no protection.”
