"I'll be d––––d if he does. Look here, sir. Between you and me there can be a bargain, and nothing but a bargain. I will pay the £5000,—on certain conditions."
"I didn't doubt at all that you would pay it."
"I will go with you to the office of this Company, and will pay for the shares if I can receive assurance there that the matter is as you say, and that the shares will not be placed in your power before you have reached Guatemala."
"You can come to-day, sir, and receive all that assurance."
"And I must have a written undertaking from you,—a document which my daughter can show if it be necessary,—that you will never claim her society again or trouble her with any application."
"You mistake me, Mr. Wharton. My wife goes with me to Guatemala."
"Then I will not pay one penny. Why should I? What is your presence or absence to me except as it concerns her? Do you think that I care for your threats of remaining here? The police will set that right."
"Wherever I go, my wife goes."
"We'll see to that too. If you want the money, you must leave her. Good morning."
Mr. Wharton as he went to his chambers thought the matter over. He was certainly willing to risk the £5000 demanded if he could rid himself and his daughter of this terrible incubus, even if it were only for a time. If Lopez would but once go to Guatemala, leaving his wife behind him, it would be comparatively easy to keep them apart should he ever return. The difficulty now was not in him but in her. The man's conduct had been so outrageous, so bare-faced, so cruel, that the lawyer did not doubt but that he could turn the husband out of his house, and keep the wife, even now, were it not that she was determined to obey the man whom she, in opposition to all her friends, had taken as her master. "I have done it myself, and I will bear it," was all the answer she would make when her father strove to persuade her to separate herself from her husband. "You have got Everett," she would say. "When a girl is married she is divided from her family;—and I am divided." But she would willingly stay if Lopez would bid her stay. It now seemed that he could not go without the £5000; and, when the pressure came upon him, surely he would go and leave his wife.