Ferdinand Lopez maintained his anger against his wife for more than a week after the scene at Richmond, feeding it with reflections on what he called her disobedience. Nor was it a make-believe anger. She had declared her intention to act in opposition to his expressed orders. He felt that his present condition was prejudicial to his interests, and that he must take his wife back into favour, in order that he might make progress with her father, but could hardly bring himself to swallow his wrath. He thought that it was her duty to obey him in everything,--and that disobedience on a matter touching her old lover was an abominable offence, to be visited with severest marital displeasure, and with a succession of scowls that should make her miserable for a month at least. Nor on her behalf would he have hesitated, though the misery might have continued for three months. But then the old man was the main hope of his life, and must be made its mainstay. Brilliant prospects were before him. He had used to think that Mr. Wharton was a hale man, with some terribly vexatious term of life before him. But now, now that he was seen more closely, he appeared to be very old. He would sit half bent in the arm-chair in Stone Buildings, and look as though he were near a hundred. And from day to day he seemed to lean more upon his son-in-law, whose visits to him were continued, and always well taken. The constant subject of discourse between them was Everett Wharton, who had not yet seen his father since the misfortune of their quarrel. Everett had declared to Lopez a dozen times that he would go to his father if his father wished it, and Lopez as often reported to the father that Everett would not go to him unless the father expressed such a wish. And so they had been kept apart. Lopez did not suppose that the old man would disinherit his son altogether,--did not, perhaps, wish it. But he thought that the condition of the old man's mind would affect the partition of his property, and that the old man would surely make some new will in the present state of his affairs. The old man always asked after his daughter, begging that she would come to him, and at last it was necessary that an evening should be fixed. "We shall be delighted to come to-day or to-morrow," Lopez said. "We had better say to-morrow. There would be nothing to eat to-day. The house isn't now what it used to be." It was therefore expedient that Lopez should drop his anger when he got home, and prepare his wife to dine in Manchester Square in a proper frame of mind.