But Mr Melmotte himself had a word to say, and before he left the house he said it. 'It was very good of you to ask me, Lady Carbury;-- very good.' Lady Carbury intimated her opinion that the goodness was all on the other side. 'And I came,' continued Mr Melmotte, 'because I had something particular to say. Otherwise I don't go out much to evening parties. Your son has proposed to my daughter.' Lady Carbury looked up into his face with all her eyes;--clasped both her hands together; and then, having unclasped them, put one upon his sleeve.
'My daughter, ma'am, is engaged to another man.'
'You would not enslave her affections, Mr Melmotte?'
'I won't give her a shilling if she marries any one else; that's all. You reminded me down at Caversham that your son is a Director at our Board.'
'I did;--I did.'
'I have a great respect for your son, ma'am. I don't want to hurt him in any way. If he'll signify to my daughter that he withdraws from this offer of his, because I'm against it, I'll see that he does uncommon well in the city. I'll be the making of him. Good night, ma'am.' Then Mr Melmotte took his departure without another word.
Here at any rate was an undertaking on the part of the great man that he would be the 'making of Felix,' if Felix would only obey him,-- accompanied, or rather preceded, by a most positive assurance that if Felix were to succeed in marrying his daughter he would not give his son-in-law a shilling! There was very much to be considered in this. She did not doubt that Felix might be 'made' by Mr Melmotte's city influences, but then any perpetuity of such making must depend on qualifications in her son which she feared that he did not possess. The wife without the money would be terrible! That would be absolute ruin! There could be no escape then; no hope. There was an appreciation of real tragedy in her heart while she contemplated the position of Sir Felix married to such a girl as she supposed Marie Melmotte to be, without any means of support for either of them but what she could supply. It would kill her. And for those young people there would be nothing before them, but beggary and the workhouse. As she thought of this she trembled with true maternal instincts. Her beautiful boy,--so glorious with his outward gifts, so fit, as she thought him, for all the graces of the grand world! Though the ambition was vilely ignoble, the mother's love was noble and disinterested.