father would give me the fortune which ought to be yours
there need be no going abroad. He cannot bear to part with his money,
and therefore we must go. Now you know all about it." She was then
turning to leave him, when he asked her a direct question. "Am I to
understand that you intend to resist my right to take you with me?"

"If you bid me go,--I shall go."

"It will be better, as you will save both trouble and exposure."

Of course she told her father what had taken place, but he could only
shake his head, and sit groaning over his misery in his chambers.
He had explained to her what he was willing to do on her behalf, but
she declined his aid. He could not tell her that she was wrong. She
was the man's wife, and out of that terrible destiny she could not
now escape. The only question with him was whether it would not
be best to buy the man,--give him a sum of money to go, and to go
alone. Could he have been quit of the man even for L20,000, he would
willingly have paid the money. But the man would either not go, or
would come back as soon as he had got the money. His own life, as he
passed it now, with this man in the house with him, was horrible to
him. For Lopez, though he had more than once threatened that he would
carry his wife to another home, had taken no steps towards getting
that other home ready for her.

During all this time Mr. Wharton had not seen his son. Everett had
gone abroad just as his father returned to London from Brighton, and
was still on the continent. He received his allowance punctually,
and that was the only intercourse which took place between them. But
Emily had written to him, not telling him much of her troubles,--only
saying that she believed that her husband would take her to Central
America early in the spring, and begging him to come home before she
went.

Just before Christmas her baby was born, but the poor child did not
live a couple of days. She herself at the time was so worn with care,
so thin and wan and wretched, that looking in the glass she hardly
knew her own face. "Ferdinand," she said to him, "I know he will not
live. The Doctor says so."

"Nothing thrives that I have to do with," he answered gloomily.

"Will you not look at him?"

"Well; yes. I have looked at him, have I not? I wish to God that
where he is going I could go with him."

"I wish I was;--I wish I was going," said the poor mother. Then the
father went out, and before he had returned to the ho