which is an accident--"

"When one man is a peer and another a ploughman, that is an accident.
One doesn't find fault with the ploughman, but one doesn't ask him to
dinner."

"But my accident," said Lopez smiling, "is one which you would hardly
discover unless you were told. Had I called myself Talbot you would
not know but that I was as good an Englishman as yourself."

"A man of course may be taken in by falsehoods," said the lawyer.

"If you have no other objection than that raised, I hope you will
allow me to visit in Manchester Square."

"There may be ten thousand other objections, Mr. Lopez, but I
really think that the one is enough. Of course I know nothing of
my daughter's feelings. I should imagine that the matter is as
strange to her as it is to me. But I cannot give you anything like
encouragement. If I am ever to have a son-in-law I should wish to
have an English son-in-law. I do not even know what your profession
is."

"I am engaged in foreign loans."

"Very precarious I should think. A sort of gambling; isn't it?"

"It is the business by which many of the greatest mercantile houses
in the city have been made."

"I dare say;--I dare say;--and by which they come to ruin. I have the
greatest respect in the world for mercantile enterprise, and have
had as much to do as most men with mercantile questions. But I ain't
sure that I wish to marry my daughter in the City. Of course it's all
prejudice. I won't deny that on general subjects I can give as much
latitude as any man; but when one's own hearth is attacked--"

"Surely such a proposition as mine, Mr. Wharton, is no attack!"

"In my sense it is. When a man proposes to assault and invade the
very kernel of another man's heart, to share with him, and indeed to
take from him, the very dearest of his possessions, to become part
and parcel with him either for infinite good or infinite evil, then a
man has a right to guard even his prejudices as precious bulwarks."
Mr. Wharton as he said this was walking about the room with his hands
in his trowsers pockets. "I have always been for absolute toleration
in matters of religion,--have always advocated admission of Roman
Catholics and Jews into Parliament, and even to the Bench. In
ordinary life I never question a man's religion. It is nothing to me
whether he believes in Mahomet, or has no belief at all. But when a
man comes to me for my daughter--"

"I have always belonged to the Church of England," sa