id Ferdinand
Lopez.

"Lopez is at any rate a bad name to go to a Protestant church with,
and I don't want my daughter to bear it. I am very frank with you,
as in such a matter men ought to understand each other. Personally
I have liked you well enough and have been glad to see you at my
house. Everett and you have seemed to be friends, and I have had no
objection to make. But marrying into a family is a very serious thing
indeed."

"No man feels that more strongly than I do, Mr. Wharton."

"There had better be an end of it."

"Even though I should be happy enough to obtain her favour?"

"I can't think that she cares about you. I don't think it for a
moment. You say you haven't spoken to her, and I am sure she's not
a girl to throw herself at a man's head. I don't approve it, and I
think it had better fall to the ground. It must fall to the ground."

"I wish you would give me a reason."

"Because you are not English."

"But I am English. My father was a foreigner."

"It doesn't suit my ideas. I suppose I may have my own ideas about my
own family, Mr. Lopez? I feel perfectly certain that my child will do
nothing to displease me, and this would displease me. If we were to
talk for an hour I could say nothing further."

"I hope that I may be able to present things to you in an aspect so
altered," said Lopez as he prepared to take his leave, "as to make
you change your mind."

"Possibly;--possibly," said Wharton, "but I do not think it probable.
Good morning to you, sir. If I have said anything that has seemed
to be unkind, put it down to my anxiety as a father and not to my
conduct as a man." Then the door was closed behind his visitor, and
Mr. Wharton was left walking up and down his room alone. He was by
no means satisfied with himself. He felt that he had been rude and
at the same time not decisive. He had not explained to the man as
he would wish to have done, that it was monstrous and out of the
question that a daughter of the Whartons, one of the oldest families
in England, should be given to a friendless Portuguese,--a probable
Jew,--about whom nobody knew anything. Then he remembered that sooner
or later his girl would have at least L60,000, a fact of which no
human being but himself was aware. Would it not be well that somebody
should be made aware of it, so that his girl might have the chance
of suitors preferable to this swarthy son of Judah? He began to be
afraid, as he thought of it, that he was