ay now, that your daughter has
accepted my love."

"You ought not to have spoken to my daughter on the subject after
what passed between us. I told you my mind frankly."

"Ah, Mr. Wharton, how was obedience in such a matter possible? What
would you yourself think of a man who in such a position would be
obedient? I did not seek her secretly. I did nothing underhand.
Before I had once directly asked her for her love, I came to you."

"What's the use of that, if you go to her immediately afterwards in
manifest opposition to my wishes? You found yourself bound, as would
any gentleman, to ask a father's leave, and when it was refused, you
went on just as though it had been granted! Don't you call that a
mockery?"

"I can say now, sir, what I could not say then. We love each other.
And I am as sure of her as I am of myself when I assert that we shall
be true to each other. You must know her well enough to be sure of
that also."

"I am sure of nothing but of this;--that I will not give her my
consent to become your wife."

"What is your objection, Mr. Wharton?"

"I explained it before as far as I found myself called upon to
explain it."

"Are we both to be sacrificed for some reason that we neither of us
understand?"

"How dare you take upon yourself to say that she doesn't understand!
Because I refuse to be more explicit to you, a stranger, do you
suppose that I am equally silent to my own child?"

"In regard to money and social rank I am able to place your daughter
as my wife in a position as good as she now holds as Miss Wharton."

"I care nothing about money, Mr. Lopez, and our ideas of social rank
are perhaps different. I have nothing further to say to you, and I do
not think that you can have anything further to say to me that can be
of any avail." Then, having finished his speech, he got up from his
chair and stood upright, thereby demanding of his visitor that he
should depart.

"I think it no more than honest, Mr. Wharton, to declare this one
thing. I regard myself as irrevocably engaged to your daughter; and
she, although she has refused to bind herself to me by that special
word, is, I am certain, as firmly fixed in her choice as I am in
mine. My happiness, as a matter of course, can be nothing to you."

"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.