"If you are in want of everything, I also will be in want and will never complain. Whatever our joint lot may bring to us I will endure, and will endeavour to endure with cheerfulness. But I will not ask my father for money, either for you or for myself. He knows what he ought to do. I trust him implicitly." "And me not at all." "He is, I know, in communication with you about what should be done. I can only say,--tell him everything." "My dear, that is a matter in which it may be possible that I understand my own interest best." "Very likely. I certainly understand nothing, for I do not even know the nature of your business. How can I tell him that he ought to give you money?" "You might ask him for your own." "I have got nothing. Did I ever tell you that I had?" "You ought to have known." "Do you mean that when you asked me to marry you I should have refused you because I did not know what money papa would give me? Why did you not ask papa?" "Had I known him then as well as I do now you may be quite sure that I should have done so." "Ferdinand, it will be better that we should not speak about my father. I will in all things strive to do as you would have me, but I cannot hear him abused. If you have anything to say, go to Everett." "Yes;--when he is such a gambler that your father won't even speak to him. Your father will be found dead in his bed some day, and all his money will have been left to some cursed hospital." They were at their own door when this was said, and she, without further answer, went up to her bedroom. All these bitter things had been said, not because Lopez had thought that he could further his own views by saying them;--he knew indeed that he was injuring himself by every display of ill-temper;--but she was in his power, and Sexty Parker was rebelling. He thought a good deal that day on the delight he would have in "kicking that ill-conditioned cur," if only he could afford to kick him. But his wife was his own, and she must be taught to endure his will, and must be made to know that though she was not to be kicked, yet she was to be tormented and ill-used. And it might be possible that he should so cow her spirit as to bring her to act as he should direct. Still, as he walked alone along the sea-shore, he knew that it would be better for him to control his temper. On that evening he did write to Mr. Wharton,--as follows,--and he dated his letter from Little Tankard Yard, so that Mr. Wharton might suppose that that was really his own place of business, and that he was there, at his work:-- MY DEAR SIR,