"No;--you are bound to me. But that you have so much regard for him as not to see that he has grossly insulted you." "I have a regard for him." "And you dare to tell me so?" "Dare! What should I be if I had any feeling which I did not dare to tell you? There is no harm in regarding a man with friendly feelings whom I have known since I was a child, and whom all my family have loved." "Your family wanted you to marry him!" "They did. But I have married you, because I loved you. But I need not think badly of an old friend, because I did not love him. Why should you be angry with him? What can you have to be afraid of?" Then she came and sat on his knee and caressed him. "It is he that shall be afraid of me," said Lopez. "Let him give the borough up if he means what he says." "Who could ask him to do that?" "Not you,--certainly." "Oh, no." "I can ask him." "Could you, Ferdinand?" "Yes;--with a horsewhip in my hand." "Indeed, indeed you do not know him. Will you do this;--will you tell my father everything, and leave it to him to say whether Mr. Fletcher has behaved badly to you?" "Certainly not. I will not have any interference from your father between you and me. If I had listened to your father, you would not have been here now. Your father is not as yet a friend of mine. When he comes to know what I can do for myself, and that I can rise higher than these Herefordshire people, then perhaps he may become my friend. But I will consult him in nothing so peculiar to myself as my own wife. And you must understand that in coming to me all obligation from you to him became extinct. Of course he is your father; but in such a matter as this he has no more to say to you than any stranger." After that he hardly spoke to her; but sat for an hour with a book in his hand, and then rose and said that he would go down to the club. "There is so much villainy about," he said, "that a man if he means to do anything must keep himself on the watch."