"Could you not ask himself anything you want to know? If I might see him I would ask him." "That would not do at all." "It comes to this, papa, that I am to sever myself from a man to whom I am attached, and whom you must admit that I have been allowed to meet from day to day with no caution that his intimacy was unpleasant to you, because he is called--Lopez." "It isn't that at all. There are English people of that name; but he isn't an Englishman." "Of course, if you say so, papa, it must be so. I have told Aunt Harriet that I consider myself to be prohibited from meeting Mr. Lopez by what you have said; but I think, papa, you are a little--cruel to me." "Cruel to you!" said Mr. Wharton, almost bursting into tears. "I am as ready to obey as a child;--but, not being a child, I think I ought to have a reason." To this Mr. Wharton made no further immediate answer, but pulled his hair, and shuffled his feet about, and then escaped out of the room. A few days afterwards his sister-in-law attacked him. "Are we to understand, Mr. Wharton, that Emily is not to meet Mr. Lopez again? It makes it very unpleasant, because he has been intimate at our house." "I never said a word about her not meeting him. Of course I do not wish that any meeting should be contrived between them." "As it stands now it is prejudicial to her. Of course it cannot but be observed, and it is so odd that a young lady should be forbidden to meet a certain man. It looks so unpleasant for her,--as though she had misbehaved herself." "I have never thought so for a moment." "Of course you have not. How could you have thought so, Mr. Wharton?" "I say that I never did."