'I'm afraid you didn't make much of Mr Melmotte,' she said smiling. He had seated himself on the end of a sofa, close to the arm-chair which she occupied. In reply, he only shook his head and laughed. 'I saw how it was, and I was sorry for it; for he certainly is a wonderful man.'
'I suppose he is, but he is one of those men whose powers do not lie, I should say, chiefly in conversation. Though, indeed, there is no reason why he should not say the same of me,--for if he said little, I said less.'
'It didn't just come off,' Lady Carbury suggested with her sweetest smile. 'But now I want to tell you something. I think I am justified in regarding you as a real friend.'
'Certainly,' he said, putting out his hand for hers.
She gave it to him for a moment, and then took it back again,--finding that he did not relinquish it of his own accord. 'Stupid old goose!' she said to herself. 'And now to my story. You know my boy, Felix?' The editor nodded his head. 'He is engaged to marry that man's daughter.'
'Engaged to marry Miss Melmotte?' Then Lady Carbury nodded her head. 'Why, she is said to be the greatest heiress that the world has ever produced. I thought she was to marry Lord Nidderdale.'
'She has engaged herself to Felix. She is desperately in love with him,-- as is he with her.' She tried to tell her story truly, knowing that no advice can be worth anything that is not based on a true story;--but lying had become her nature. 'Melmotte naturally wants her to marry the lord. He came here to tell me that if his daughter married Felix she would not have a penny.'
'Do you mean that he volunteered that as a threat?'
'Just so;--and he told me that he had come here simply with the object of saying so. It was more candid than civil, but we must take it as we get it.'
'He would be sure to make some such threat.'
'Exactly. That is just what I feel. And in these days young people are often kept from marrying simply by a father's fantasy. But I must tell you something else. He told me that if Felix would desist, he would enable him to make a fortune in the city.'
'That's bosh,' said Broune with decision.
'Do you think it must be so;--certainly?'