The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope — Read

The letter given in the previous chapter was received at Wharton Hall late in the evening of the day on which it was written, and was discussed among all the Whartons that night. Of course there was no doubt as to the father's going up to town on the morrow. The letter was just such a letter as would surely make a man run to his son's bedside. Had the son written himself it would have been different; but the fact that the letter had come from another man seemed to be evidence that the poor sufferer could not write. Perhaps the urgency with which Lopez had sent off his dispatch, getting his account of the fray ready for the very early day mail, though the fray had not taken place till midnight, did not impress them sufficiently when they accepted this as evidence of Everett's dangerous condition. At this conference at Wharton very little was said about Lopez, but there was a general feeling that he had behaved well.

"It was very odd that they should have parted in the park," said Sir Alured. "But very lucky that they should not have parted sooner," said John Fletcher. If a grain of suspicion against Lopez might have been set afloat in their minds by Sir Alured's suggestion, it was altogether dissipated by John Fletcher's reply; -- for everybody there knew that John Fletcher carried common sense for the two families. Of course they all hated Ferdinand Lopez, but nothing could be extracted from the incident, as far as its details were yet known to them, which could be turned to his injury.