Like other girls she had been taught to presume that it was her
destiny to be married, and like other girls she had thought much
about her destiny. A young man generally regards it as his
destiny either to succeed or to fail in this world, and he thinks
about that. To him marriage, when it comes, is an accident to
which he has hardly as yet given a thought. But to the girl the
matrimony which is or is not to be her destiny contains within
itself the only success or failure which she anticipates. The
young man may become Lord Chancellor, or at any rate earn his
bread comfortably as a country court judge. But the girl can
look forward to little else than the chance of having a good man
for her husband;--a good man, or if her tastes lie in that
direction, a rich man. Emily Wharton had doubtless thought about
those things, and she sincerely believed that she had found the
good man in Ferdinand Lopez.

The man, certainly, was one strangely endowed with the power of
creating a belief. When going to Mr Wharton in his chambers, he
had not intended to cheat the lawyer into any erroneous idea
about his family, but he had resolved that he would so discuss
the question of his own condition, which would probably be
raised, as to leave upon the old man's mind an unfounded
conviction that, in regard to money and income, he had no reason
to fear question. Not a word had been said about his money or
his income. And Mr Wharton had felt himself bound to abstain
from allusions to such matters from an assured feeling that he
could not in that direction plant an enduring objection. In this
way Lopez had carried his point with Mr Wharton. He had
convinced Mrs Roby that among all the girl's attractions the
greatest attraction for him was the fact that she was Mrs Roby's