interest in my welfare."

When Lopez left London not a word had been said between him and his
father-in-law as to money. Mr. Wharton was content with such silence,
not wishing to make any promise as to immediate income from himself,
pretending to look at the matter as though he should say that, as his
daughter had made for herself her own bed, she must lie on it, such
as it might be. And this silence certainly suited Ferdinand Lopez at
the time. To tell the truth of him,--though he was not absolutely
penniless, he was altogether propertyless. He had been speculating
in money without capital, and though he had now and again been
successful, he had also now and again failed. He had contrived
that his name should be mentioned here and there with the names
of well-known wealthy commercial men, and had for the last twelve
months made up a somewhat intimate alliance with that very sound
commercial man, Mr. Mills Happerton. But his dealings with Mr. Sextus
Parker were in truth much more confidential than those with Mr.
Mills Happerton, and at the present moment poor Sexty Parker was
alternately between triumph and despair as things went this way or
that.

It was not, therefore, surprising that Ferdinand Lopez should
volunteer no statements to the old lawyer about money, and that he
should make no inquiries. He was quite confident that Mr. Wharton had
the wealth which was supposed to belong to him, and was willing to
trust to his power of obtaining a fair portion of it as soon as he
should in truth be Mr. Wharton's son-in-law. Situated as he was, of
course he must run some risk. And then, too, he had spoken of himself
with a grain of truth when he had told the Duchess that he was not
marrying for money. Ferdinand Lopez was not an honest man or a good
man. He was a self-seeking, intriguing adventurer, who did not know
honesty from dishonesty when he saw them together. But he had at any
rate this good about him, that he did love the girl whom he was about
to marry. He was willing to cheat all the world,--so that he might
succeed, and make a fortune, and become a big and a rich man; but
he did not wish to cheat her. It was his ambition now to carry her
up with him, and he thought how he might best teach her to assist
him in doing so,--how he might win her to help him in his cheating,
especially in regard to her own father. For to himself, to his own
thinking, that which we call cheating was not dishonesty. To his
thinking ther