"I think you have betrayed me." This accusation was brought by Mr. Wharton against Mrs. Roby in that lady\'s drawing-room, and was occasioned by a report that had been made to the old lawyer by his daughter. He was very angry and almost violent;—so much so that by his manner he gave a considerable advantage to the lady whom he was accusing.

Mrs. Roby undoubtedly had betrayed her brother-in-law. She had been false to the trust reposed in her. He had explained his wishes to her in regard to his daughter, to whom she had in some sort assumed to stand in place of a mother, and she, while pretending to act in accordance with his wishes, had directly opposed them. But it was not likely that he would be able to prove her treachery though he might be sure of it. He had desired that his girl should see as little as possible of Ferdinand Lopez, but had hesitated to give a positive order that she should not meet him. He had indeed himself taken her to a dinner party at which he knew that she would meet him. But Mrs. Roby had betrayed him. Since the dinner party she had arranged a meeting at her own house on behalf of the lover,—as to which arrangement Emily Wharton had herself been altogether innocent. Emily had met the man in her aunt\'s house, not expecting to meet him, and the lover had had an opportunity of speaking his mind freely. She also had spoken hers freely. She would not engage herself to him without her father\'s consent. With that consent she would do so,—oh, so willingly! She did not coy her love. He might be certain that she would give herself to no one else. Her heart was entirely his. But she had pledged herself to her father, and on no consideration would she break that pledge. She went on to say that after what had passed she thought that they had better not meet. In such meetings there could be no satisfaction, and must be much pain. But he had her full permission to use any arguments that he could use with her father. On the evening of that day she told her father all that had passed,—omitting no detail either of what she had said or of what had been said to her,—adding a positive assurance of obedience, but doing so with a severe solemnity and apparent consciousness of ill-usage which almost broke her father\'s heart. "Your aunt must have had him there on purpose," Mr. Wharton had said. But Emily would neither accuse nor defend her aunt. "I at least knew nothing of it," she said. "I know that," Mr. Wharton had ejaculated. "I know that. I don\'t accuse you of anything, my dear,—except of thinking that you understand the world better than I do." Then Emily had retired and Mr. Wharton had been left to pass half the night in a perplexed reverie, feeling that he would be forced ultimately to give way, and yet certain that by doing so he would endanger his child\'s happiness.

He was very angry with his sister-in-law, and on the next day, early in the morning, he attacked her. "I think you have betrayed me," he said.

"What do you mean by that, Mr. Wharton?"

"You have had this man here on purpose that he might make love to Emily."

"I have done no such thing. You told me yourself that they were not to be kept apart. He comes here, and it would be very odd indeed if I were to tell the servants that he is not to be admitted. If you want to quarrel with me, of course you can. I have always endeavoured to be a good friend to Emily."

"It is not being a good friend to her, bringing her and this adventurer together."

"I don\'t know why you call him an adventurer. But you are so very odd in your ideas! He is received everywhere, and is always at the Duchess of Omnium\'s."

"I don\'t care a fig about the Duchess."

"I dare say not. Only the Duke happens to be Prime Minister, and his house is considered to have the very best society that England, or indeed Europe, can give. And I think it is something in a young man\'s favour when it is known that he associates with such persons as the Duke of Omnium. I believe that most fathers would have a regard to the company which a man keeps when they think of their daughter\'s marrying."

"I ain\'t thinking of her marrying. I don\'t want her to marry;—not this man at least. And I fancy the Duchess of Omnium is just as likely to have scamps in her drawing-room as any other lady in London."

"And do such men as Mr. Happerton associate with scamps?"

"I don\'t know anything about Mr. Happerton,—and I don\'t care anything about him."

"He has ￡20,000 a year out of his business. And does Everett associate with scamps?"

"Very likely."

"I never knew any one so much prejudiced as you are, Mr. Wharton. When you have a point to carry there\'s nothing you won\'t say. I suppose it comes from being in the courts."

"The long and the short of it is this," said the lawyer; "if I find that Emily is brought here to meet Mr. Lopez, I must forbid her to come at all."

"You must do as you please about that. But to tell you the truth, Mr. Wharton, I think the mischief is done. Such a girl as Emily, when she has taken it into her head to love a man, is not likely to give him up."

"She has promised to have nothing to say to him without my sanction."

"We all know what that means. You\'ll have to give way. You\'ll find that it will be so. The stern parent who dooms his daughter to perpetual seclusion because she won\'t marry the man he likes, doesn\'t belong to this age."

"Who talks about seclusion?"

"Do you suppose that she\'ll give up the man she loves because you don\'t like him? Is that the way girls live now-a-days? She won\'t run away with him, because she\'s not one of that sort; but unless you\'re harder-hearted than I take you to be, she\'ll make your life a burden to you. And as for betraying you, that\'s nonsense. You\'ve no right to say it. I\'m not going to quarrel with you whatever you may say, but you\'ve no right to say it."

Mr. Wharton, as he went away to Lincoln\'s Inn, bewailed himself because he knew that he was not hard-hearted. What his sister-in-law had said to him in that respect was true enough. If he could only rid himself of a certain internal ague which made him feel that his life was, indeed, a burden to him while his daughter was unhappy, he need only remain passive and simply not give the permission without which his daughter would not ever engage herself to this man. But the ague troubled every hour of his present life. That sister-in-law of his was a silly, vulgar, worldly, and most untrustworthy woman;—but she had understood what she was saying.

And there had been something in that argument about the Duchess of Omnium\'s parties, and Mr. Happerton, which had its effect. If the man did live with the great and wealthy, it must be because they thought well of him and of his position. The fact of his being a "nasty foreigner," and probably of Jewish descent, remained. To him, Wharton, the man must always be distasteful. But he could hardly maintain his opposition to one of whom the choice spirits of the world thought well. And he tried to be fair on the subject. It might be that it was a prejudice. Others probably did not find a man to be odious because he was of foreign extraction and known by a foreign name. Others would not suspect a man of being of Jewish blood because he was swarthy, or even object to him if he were a Jew by descent. But it was wonderful to him that his girl should like such a man,—should like such a man well enough to choose him as the one companion of her life. She had been brought up to prefer English men, and English thinking, and English ways,—and English ways, too, somewhat of a past time. He thought as did Brabantio, that it could not be that without magic his daughter who had shunned—
 

        "The wealthy curled darlings of our nation,
         Would ever have, to incur a general mock,
         Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom
         Of such a thing as"—
        

this distasteful Portuguese.

That evening he said nothing further to his daughter, but sat with her, silent and disconsolate. Later in the evening, after she had gone to her room, Everett came in while the old man was still walking up and down the drawing-room. "Where have you been?" asked the father,—not caring a straw as to any reply when he asked the question, but roused almost to anger by the answer when it came.

"I have been dining with Lopez at the club."

"I believe you live with that man."

"Is there any reason, sir, why I should not?"

"You know that there is a good reason why there should be no peculiar intimacy. But I don\'t suppose that my wishes, or your sister\'s welfare, will interest you."

"That is severe, sir."

"I am not such a fool as to suppose that you are to quarrel with a man because I don\'t approve his addressing your sister; but I do think that while this is going on, and while he perseveres in opposition to my distinct refusal, you need not associate with him in any special manner."

"I don\'t understand your objection to him, sir."

"I dare say not. There are a great many things you don\'t understand. But I do object."

"He\'s a very rising man. Mr. Roby was saying to me just now—"

"Who cares a straw what a fool like Roby says?"

"I don\'t mean Uncle Dick, but his brother,—who, I suppose, is somebody in the world. He was saying to me just now that he wondered why Lopez does not go into the House;—that he would be sure to get a seat if he chose, and safe to make a mark when he got there."

"I dare say he could get into the House. I don\'t know any well-to-do blackguard of whom you might not predict as much. A seat in the House of Commons doesn\'t make a man a gentleman as far as I can see."

"I think every one allows that Ferdinand Lopez is a gentleman."

"Who was his father?"

"I didn\'t happen to know him, sir."

"And who was his mother? I don\'t suppose you will credit anything because I say it, but as far as my experience goes, a man doesn\'t often become a gentleman in the first generation. A man may be very worthy, very clever, very rich,—very well worth knowing, if you will;—but when one talks of admitting a man into close family communion by marriage, one would, I fancy, wish to know something of his father and mother." Then Everett escaped, and Mr. Wharton was again left to his own meditations. Oh, what a peril, what a trouble, what a labyrinth of difficulties was a daughter! He must either be known as a stern, hard-hearted parent, utterly indifferent to his child\'s feelings, using with tyranny the power over her which came to him only from her sense of filial duty,—or else he must give up his own judgment, and yield to her in a matter as to which he believed that such yielding would be most pernicious to her own interests.

Hitherto he really knew nothing of the man\'s means;—nor, if he could have his own way, did he want such information. But, as things were going now, he began to feel that if he could hear anything averse to the man he might thus strengthen his hands against him. On the following day he went into the city, and called on an old friend, a banker,—one whom he had known for nearly half a century, and of whom, therefore, he was not afraid to ask a question. For Mr. Wharton was a man not prone, in the ordinary intercourse of life, either to ask or to answer questions. "You don\'t know anything, do you, of a man named Ferdinand Lopez?"

"I have heard of him. But why do you ask?"

"Well; I have a reason for asking. I don\'t............