be more chary of speaking of it.
You and I had hoped other things, and old people do not like to be
disappointed. But I needn't paint the devil blacker than he is."

"I'm afraid that, as usual, he is rather black."

"Mother," said John Fletcher, "the thing has been done and you might
as well let it be. We are all sorry that Emily has not come nearer
to us; but she has had a right to choose for herself, and I for one
wish,--as does my brother also,--that she may be happy in the lot she
has chosen."

"His conduct to Arthur at Silverbridge was so nice!" said the
pertinacious old woman.

"Never mind his conduct, mother. What is it to us?"

"That's all very well, John; but according to that nobody is to talk
about anybody."

"I would much prefer, at any rate," said Mr. Wharton, "that you would
not talk about Mr. Lopez in my hearing."

"Oh; if that is to be so, let it be so. And now I understand where
I am." Then the old woman shook herself, and endeavoured to look as
though Mr. Wharton's soreness on the subject were an injury to her as
robbing her of a useful topic.

"I don't like Lopez, you know," Mr. Wharton said to John Fletcher
afterwards. "How would it be possible that I should like such a man?
But there can be no good got by complaints. It is not what your
mother suffers, or what even I may suffer,--or worse again, what
Arthur may suffer, that makes the sadness of all this. What will be
her life? That is the question. And it is too near me, too important
to me, for the endurance either of scorn or pity. I was glad that you
asked your mother to be silent."

"I can understand it," said John. "I do not think that she will
trouble you again."

In the mean time Lopez received Mr. Wharton's letter at Dovercourt,
and had to consider what answer he should give to it. No answer
could be satisfactory,--unless he could impose a false answer on his
father-in-law so as to make it credible. The more he thought of it,
the more he believed that this would be impossible. The cautious
old lawyer would not accept unverified statements. A certain sum of
money,--by no means illiberal as a present,--he had already extracted
from the old man. What he wanted was a further and a much larger
grant. Though Mr. Wharton was old he did not want to have to wait for
the death even of an old man. The next two or three years,--probably
the very next year,--might be the turning-point of his life. He had
married the girl, and ought to have