woman who had been her mother. She could remember being at sea, and her sickness — but could not quite remember whether that woman had been with her. Then she had run about the streets of Hamburg, and had sometimes been very hungry, sometimes in rags — and she had a dim memory of some trouble into which her father had fallen, and that he was away from her for a time. She had up to the present splendid moment her own convictions about that absence, but she had never mentioned them to a human being. Then her father had married her present mother in Frankfort. That she could remember distinctly, as also the rooms in which she was then taken to live, and the fact that she was told that from henceforth she was to be a Jewess. But there had soon come another change. They went from Frankfort to Paris, and there they were all Christians. From that time they had lived in various apartments in the French capital, but had always lived well. Sometimes there had been a carriage, sometimes there had been none. And then there came a time in which she was grown woman enough to understand that her father was being much talked about. Her father to her had always been alternately capricious and indifferent rather than cross or cruel, but, just at this period he was cruel both to her and to his wife. And Madame Melmotte would weep at times and declare that they were all ruined. Then, at a moment, they burst out into sudden splendour at Paris. There was an hotel, with carriages and horses almost unnumbered; — and then there came to their rooms a crowd of dark, swarthy, greasy men, who were entertained sumptuously; but there were few women. At this time Marie was hardly nineteen, and young enough in manner and appearance to be taken for seventeen. Suddenly again she was told that she was to be taken to London, and the migration had been effected with magnificence. She was first taken to Brighton, where the half of an hotel had been hired, and had then been brought to Grosvenor Square, and at once thrown into the matrimonial market. No part of her life had been more disagreeable to her, more frightful, than the first months in which she had been trafficked for by the Nidderdales and Grassloughs. She had been too frightened, too much of a coward to object to anything proposed to her, but still had been conscious of a desire to have some hand in her own future destiny. Luckily for her, the first attempts at trafficking with the Nidderdales and Grassloughs had come to nothing; and at length she was picking up a little courage, and was beginning to feel that it might be possible to prevent a disposition of herself which did not suit her own tastes. She was also beginning to think that there might be a disposition of herself which would suit her own tastes.
Felix Carbury was standing leaning against a wall, and she was seated on a chair close to him. ‘I love you better than anyone in the world,’ he said, speaking plainly enough for her to hear, perhaps indifferent as to the hearing of others.
‘Oh, Sir Felix, pray do not talk like that.’
‘You knew that before. Now I want you to say whether you will be my wife.’
‘How can I answer that myself? Papa settles everything.’
‘May I go to papa?’
‘You may if you like,’ she replied in a very low whisper. It was thus that the greatest heiress of the day, the greatest heiress of any day if people spoke truly, gave herself away to a man without a penny.
Chapter XII
Sir Felix in His Mother’s House
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When all her friends were gone Lady Carbury looked about for her son — not expecting to find him, for she knew how punctual was his nightly attendance at the Beargarden, but still with some faint hope that he might have remained on this special occasion to tell her of his fortune. She had watched the whispering, had noticed the cool effrontery with which Felix had spoken — for without hearing the words she had almost known the very moment in which he was asking — and had seen the girl’s timid face, and eyes turned to the ground, and the nervous twitching of her hands as she replied. As a woman, understanding such things, who had herself been wooed, who had at least dreamed of love, she had greatly disapproved her son’s manner. But yet, if it might be successful, if the girl would put up with love-making so slight as that, and if the great Melmotte would accept in return for his money a title so modest as that of her son, how glorious should her son be to her in spite of his indifference!
‘I heard him leave the house before the Melmottes went,’ said Henrietta, when the mother spoke of going up to her son’s bedroom.
‘He might have stayed to-night. Do you think he asked her?’
‘How can I say, mamma?’
‘I should have thought you would have been anxious about your brother. I feel sure he did — and that she accepted him.’
‘If so I hope he will be good to her. I hope he loves her.’
‘Why shouldn’t he love her as well as any one else? A girl need not be odious because she has money. There is nothing disagreeable about her.’
‘No — nothing disagreeable. I do not know that she is especially attractive.’
‘Who is? I don’t see anybody specially attractive. It seems to me you are quite indifferent about Felix.’
‘Do not say that, mamma.’
‘Yes you are. You don’t understand all that he might be with this girl’s fortune, and what he must be unless he gets money by marriage. He is eating us both up.’
‘I wouldn’t let him do that, mamma.’
‘It’s all very well to say that, but I have some heart. I love him. I could not see him starve. Think what he might be with £20,000 a-year!’
‘If he is to marry for that only, I cannot think that they will be happy.’
‘You had better go to bed, Henrietta. You never say a word to comfort me in all my troubles.’
Then Henrietta went to bed, and Lady Carbury absolutely sat up the whole night waiting for her son, in order that she might hear his tidings. She went up to her room, disembarrassed herself of her finery, and wrapped herself in a white dressing-gown. As she sat opposite to her glass, relieving her head from its garniture of false hair, she acknowledged to herself that age was coming on her. She could hide the unwelcome approach by art — hide it more completely than can most women of her age; but, there it was, stealing on her with short grey hairs over her ears and around her temples, with little wrinkles round her eyes easily concealed by objectionable cosmetics, and a look of weariness round the mouth which could only be removed by that self-assertion of herself which practice had made always possible to her in company, though it now so frequently deserted her when she was alone.
But she was not a woman to be unhappy because she was growing old. Her happiness, like that of most of us, was ever in the future — never reached but always coming. She, however, had not looked for happiness to love and loveliness, and need not therefore be disappointed on that score. She had never really determined what it was that might make her happy — having some hazy aspiration after social distinction and literary fame, in which was ever commingled solicitude respecting money. But at the present moment her great fears and her great hopes were centred on her son. She would not care how grey might be her hair, or how savage might be Mr Alf, if her Felix were to marry this heiress. On the other hand, nothing that pearl-powder or the ‘Morning Breakfast Table’ could do would avail anything, unless he could be extricated from the ruin that now surrounded him. So she went down into the dining-room, that she might be sure to hear the key in the door, even should she sleep,
