CHAPTER XXII.
St.James's Park Towards the end of September Everett Wharton and Ferdinand Lopez were in town together, and as no one else was in town,--so at least they both professed to say,--they saw a good deal of each other.

Lopez, as we know, had spent a portion of the preceding month at Gatherum Castle, and had made good use of his time, but Everett Wharton had been less fortunate.

He had been a little cross with his father, and perhaps a little cross with all the Whartons generally, who did not, he thought, make quite enough of him.

In the event of "anything happening" to that ne'er-do-well nephew, he himself would be the heir; and he reflected not unfrequently that something very probably might happen to the nephew.

He did not often see this particular cousin, but he always heard of him as being drunk, overwhelmed with debt and difficulty, and altogether in that position of life in which it is probable that something will "happen." There was always of course the danger that the young man might marry and have a child;--but in the meantime surely he, Everett Wharton, should have been as much thought of on the banks of the Wye as Arthur Fletcher.
He had been asked down to Wharton Hall,--but he had been asked in a way which he had not thought to be flattering and had declined to go.
Then there had been a plan for joining Arthur Fletcher in a certain shooting, but that had failed in consequence of a few words between himself and Arthur respecting Lopez.