'Have you been at the Melmottes' to-day?' It was now five o'clock on a winter afternoon, the hour at which ladies are drinking tea, and idle men playing whist at the clubs,--at which young idle men are sometimes allowed to flirt, and at which, as Lady Carbury thought, her son might have been paying his court to Marie Melmotte the great heiress.
'I have just come away.'
'And what do you think of her?'
'To tell the truth, mother, I have thought very little about her. She is not pretty, she is not plain; she is not clever, she is not stupid; she is neither saint nor sinner.'
'The more likely to make a good wife.'
'Perhaps so. I am at any rate quite willing to believe that as wife she would be good enough for me.'
'What does the mother say?'
'The mother is a caution. I cannot help speculating whether, if I marry the daughter, I shall ever find out where the mother came from. Dolly Longestaffe says that somebody says that she was a Bohemian Jewess; but I think she's too fat for that.'
'What does it matter, Felix?'
'Not in the least'
'Is she civil to you?'
'Yes, civil enough.'
'And the father?'
'Well, he does not turn me out, or anything of that sort. Of course there are half-a-dozen after her, and I think the old fellow is bewildered among them all. He's thinking more of getting dukes to dine with him than of his daughter's lovers. Any fellow might pick her up who happened to hit her fancy.'
'And why not you?'
'Why not, mother? I am doing my best, and it's no good flogging a willing horse. Can you let me have the money?'
'Oh, Felix, I think you hardly know how poor we are. You have still got your hunters down at the place!'
'I have got two horses, if you mean that; and I haven't paid a shilling for their keep since the season began. Look here, mother; this is a risky sort of game, I grant, but I am playing it by your advice. If I can marry Miss Melmotte, I suppose all will be right. But I don't think the way to get her would be to throw up everything and let all the world know that I haven't got a copper. To do that kind of thing a man must live a little up to the mark. I've brought my hunting down to a minimum, but if I gave it up altogether there would be lots of fellows to tell them in Grosvenor Square why I had done so.'