ver 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."

CHAPTER 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 bel