"What's the use of that, if you go to her immediately afterwards in manifest opposition to my wishes? You found yourself bound, as would any gentleman, to ask a father's leave, and when it was refused, you went on just as though it had been granted! Don't you call that a mockery?" "I can say now, sir, what I could not say then. We love each other. And I am as sure of her as I am of myself when I assert that we shall be true to each other. You must know her well enough to be sure of that also." "I am sure of nothing but of this;--that I will not give her my consent to become your wife." "What is your objection, Mr. Wharton?" "I explained it before as far as I found myself called upon to explain it." "Are we both to be sacrificed for some reason that we neither of us understand?" "How dare you take upon yourself to say that she doesn't understand! Because I refuse to be more explicit to you, a stranger, do you suppose that I am equally silent to my own child?" "In regard to money and social rank I am able to place your daughter as my wife in a position as good as she now holds as Miss Wharton." "I care nothing about money, Mr. Lopez, and our ideas of social rank are perhaps different. I have nothing further to say to you, and I do not think that you can have anything further to say to me that can be of any avail." Then, having finished his speech, he got up from his chair and stood upright, thereby demanding of his visitor that he should depart. "I think it no more than honest, Mr. Wharton, to declare this one thing. I regard myself as irrevocably engaged to your daughter; and she, although she has refused to bind herself to me by that special word, is, I am certain, as firmly fixed in her choice as I am in mine. My happiness, as a matter of course, can be nothing to you." "Not much," said the lawyer, with angry impatience. Lopez smiled, but he put down the word in his memory and determined that he would treasure it there. "Not much, at any rate as yet," he said. "But her happiness must be much to you." "It is everything. But in thinking of her happiness I must look beyond what might be the satisfaction of the present day. You must excuse me, Mr. Lopez, if I say that I would rather not discuss the matter with you any further." Then he rang the bell and passed quickly into an inner room. When the clerk came Lopez of course marched out of the chambers and went his way.