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 is
possible. 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 to 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 nothing. Then he remembered that sooner or later his