“Not much,” said the lawyer, with angry impatience.
Lopez smiled, but he put down the word in his memory and determined that he would treasure it there. “Not much, at any rate as yet,” he said. “But her happiness must be much to you.”
“It is everything. But in thinking of her happiness I must look beyond what might be the satisfaction of the present day. You must excuse me, Mr. Lopez, if I say that I would rather not discuss the matter with you any further.” Then he rang the bell and passed quickly into an inner room. When the clerk came Lopez of course marched out of the chambers and went his way.
Mr. Wharton had been very firm, and yet he was shaken. It was by degrees becoming a fixed idea in his mind that the man’s material prosperity was assured. He was afraid even to allude to the subject when talking to the man himself, lest he should be overwhelmed by evidence on that subject. Then the man’s manner, though it was distasteful to Wharton himself, would, he well knew, recommend him to others. He was good-looking, he lived with people who were highly regarded, he could speak up for himself, and he was a favoured guest at Carlton House Terrace. So great had been the fame of the Duchess and her hospitality during the last two months, that the fact of the man’s success in this respect had come home even to Mr. Wharton. He feared that the world would be against him, and he already began to dread the joint opposition of the world and his own child. The world of this day did not, he thought, care whether its daughters’ husbands had or had not any fathers or mothers. The world as it was now didn’t care whether its sons-in-law were Christian or Jewish;—whether they had the fair skin and bold eyes and uncertain words of an English gentleman, or the swarthy colour and false grimace and glib tongue of some inferior Latin race. But he cared for these things;—and it was dreadful to him to think that his daughter should not care for them. “I suppose I had better die and leave them to look after themselves,” he said, as he returned to his armchair.
Lopez himself was not altogether ill-satisfied with the interview, not having expected that Mr. Wharton would have given way at once, and bestowed upon him then and there the kind father-in-law’s “bless you—bless you!” Something yet had to be done before the blessing would come, or the girl—or the money. He had today asserted his own material success, speaking of himself as of a moneyed man—and the statement had been received with no contradiction—even without the suggestion of a doubt. He did not therefore suppose that the difficulty was over; but he was clever enough to perceive that the aversion to him on another score might help to tide him over that difficulty. And if once he could call the girl his wife, he did not doubt but that he could build himself up with the old barrister’s money. After leaving Lincoln’s Inn he went at once to Berkeley Street, and was soon closeted with Mrs. Roby. “You can get her here before they go?” he said.
“She wouldn’t come;—and if we arranged it without letting her know that you were to be here, she would tell her father. She hasn’t a particle of female intrigue in her.”
“So much the better,” said the lover.
“That’s all very well for you to say, but when a man makes such a tyrant of himself as Mr. Wharton is doing, a girl is bound to look after herself. If it was me I’d go off with my young man before I’d stand such treatment.”
“You could give her a letter.”
“She’d only show it her father. She is so perverse that I sometimes feel inclined to say that I’ll have nothing further to do with her.”
“You’ll give her a message at any rate?”
“Yes—I can do that;—because I can do it in a way that won’t seem to make it important.”
“But I want my message to be very important. Tell her that I’ve seen her father, and have offered to explain all my affairs to him—so that he may know that there is nothing to fear on her behalf.”
“It isn’t any thought of money that is troubling him.”
“But tell her what I say. He, however, would listen to nothing. Then I assured him that no consideration on earth would induce me to surrender her, and that I was as sure of her as I am of myself. Tell her that;—and tell her that I think she owes it to me to say one word to me before she goes into the country.”
XV
Arthur Fletcher
It may, I think, be a question whether the two old men acted wisely in having Arthur Fletcher at Wharton Hall when Emily arrived there. The story of his love for Miss Wharton, as far as it had as yet gone, must be shortly told. He had been the second son, as he was now the second brother, of a Herefordshire squire endowed with much larger property than that belonging to Sir Alured. John Fletcher, Esq., of Longbarns, some twelve miles from Wharton, was a considerable man in Herefordshire. This present squire had married Sir Alured’s eldest daughter, and the younger brother had, almost since they were children together, been known to be in love with Emily Wharton. All the Fletchers and everything belonging to them were almost worshipped at Wharton Hall. There had been marriages between the two families certainly as far back as the time of Henry VII, and they were accustomed to speak, if not of alliances, at any rate of friendships, much anterior to that. As regards family, therefore, the
