Why should I? What is your presence
or absence to me except as it concerns her? Do you think that I care
for your threats of remaining here? The police will set that right."

"Wherever I go, my wife goes."

"We'll see to that too. If you want the money, you must leave her.
Good morning."

Mr. Wharton as he went to his chambers thought the matter over. He
was certainly willing to risk the L5000 demanded if he could rid
himself and his daughter of this terrible incubus, even if it were
only for a time. If Lopez would but once go to Guatemala, leaving his
wife behind him, it would be comparatively easy to keep them apart
should he ever return. The difficulty now was not in him but in her.
The man's conduct had been so outrageous, so bare-faced, so cruel,
that the lawyer did not doubt but that he could turn the husband
out of his house, and keep the wife, even now, were it not that she
was determined to obey the man whom she, in opposition to all her
friends, had taken as her master. "I have done it myself, and I will
bear it," was all the answer she would make when her father strove
to persuade her to separate herself from her husband. "You have got
Everett," she would say. "When a girl is married she is divided from
her family;--and I am divided." But she would willingly stay if Lopez
would bid her stay. It now seemed that he could not go without the
L5000; and, when the pressure came upon him, surely he would go and
leave his wife.

In the course of that day Mr. Wharton went to the offices of the
San Juan mine and asked to see the Director. He was shown up into
a half-furnished room, two stories high, in Coleman Street, where
he found two clerks sitting upon stools;--and when he asked for the
Director was shown into the back room in which sat the Secretary. The
Secretary was a dark, plump little man with a greasy face, who had
the gift of assuming an air of great importance as he twisted his
chair round to face visitors who came to inquire about the San Juan
Mining Company. His name was Hartlepod; and if the San Juan mine
"turned out trumps," as he intended that it should, Mr. Hartlepod
meant to be a great man in the City. To Mr. Hartlepod Mr. Wharton,
with considerable embarrassment, explained as much of the joint
history of himself and Lopez as he found to be absolutely necessary.
"He has only left the office about half-an-hour," said Mr. Hartlepod.

"Of course you understand that he is my son-in-law."

"He has