o to Dresden;--for the winter!"
he exclaimed.

"Not only for the winter. We should go at once."

"Not before you come to Wharton!" said the amazed baronet.

Mr. Wharton replied in a low, sad voice, "In that case we should not
go down to Herefordshire at all." The baronet looked hurt as well as
unhappy. "Yes, I know what you will say, and how kind you are."

"It isn't kindness at all. You always come. It would be breaking up
everything."

"Everything has to be broken up sooner or later. One feels that as
one grows older."

"You and I, Abel, are just of an age. Why should you talk to me like
this? You are strong enough, whatever I am. Why shouldn't you come?
Dresden! I never heard of such a thing. I suppose it's some nonsense
of Emily's."

Then Mr. Wharton told his whole story. "Nonsense of Emily's!" he
began. "Yes, it is nonsense,--worse than you think. But she doesn't
want to go abroad." The father's plaint needn't be repeated to the
reader as it was told to the baronet. Though it was necessary that
he should explain himself, yet he tried to be reticent. Sir Alured
listened in silence. He loved his cousin Emily, and, knowing that she
would be rich, knowing her advantages of birth, and recognizing her
beauty, had expected that she would make a match creditable to the
Wharton family. But a Portuguese Jew! A man who had never been even
known to allude to his own father! For by degrees Mr. Wharton had
been driven to confess all the sins of the lover, though he had
endeavoured to conceal the extent of his daughter's love.

"Do you mean that Emily--favours him?"

"I am afraid so."

"And would she--would she--do anything without your sanction?" He was
always thinking of the disgrace attaching to himself by reason of his
nephew's vileness, and now, if a daughter of the family should also
go astray, so as to be exiled from the bosom of the Whartons, how
manifest would it be that all the glory was departing from their
house!

"No! She will do nothing without my sanction. She has given her
word,--which is gospel." As he spoke the old lawyer struck his hand
upon the table.

"Then why should you run away to Dresden?"

"Because she is unhappy. She will not marry him,--or even see him, if
I forbid it. But she is near him."

"Herefordshire is a long way off," said the baronet, pleading.

"Change of scene is what she should have," said the father.

"There can't be more of a change than she'd get at Wharton. She
al