'Are the Longestaffes mixed up in it? I won't have her here a day longer if there is anything against them.'
'Don't be an ass, Ju. There's nothing against him except that the poor old fellow hasn't got a shilling of his money.'
'Then he's ruined,--and there's an end of them.'
'Perhaps he will get it now. Some say that Melmotte has forged a receipt, others a letter. Some declare that he has manufactured a whole set of title-deeds. You remember Dolly?'
'Of course I know Dolly Longestaffe,' said Lady Monogram, who had thought at one time that an alliance with Dolly might be convenient.
'They say he has found it all out. There was always something about Dolly more than fellows gave him credit for. At any rate, everybody says that Melmotte will be in quod before long.'
'Not to-night, Damask!'
'Nobody seems to know. Lupton was saying that the policemen would wait about in the room like servants till the Emperor and the Princes had gone away.'
'Is Mr Lupton going?'
'He was to have been at the dinner, but hadn't made up his mind whether he'd go or not when I saw him. Nobody seems to be quite certain whether the Emperor will go. Somebody said that a Cabinet Council was to be called to know what to do.'
'A Cabinet Council!'
'Why, you see it's rather an awkward thing, letting the Prince go to dine with a man who perhaps may have been arrested and taken to gaol before dinnertime. That's the worst part of it. Nobody knows.'
Lady Monogram waved her attendant away. She piqued herself upon having a French maid who could not speak a word of English, and was therefore quite careless what she said in the woman's presence. But, of course, everything she did say was repeated downstairs in some language that had become intelligible to the servants generally. Lady Monogram sat motionless for some time, while her husband, retreating to his own domain, finished his operations. 'Damask,' she said, when he reappeared, 'one thing is certain;--we can't go.'
'After you've made such a fuss about it!'
'It is a pity,--having that girl here in the house. You know, don't you, she's going to marry one of these people?'
'I heard about her marriage yesterday. But Brehgert isn't one of Melmotte's set. They tell me that Brehgert isn't a bad fellow. A vulgar cad, and all that, but nothing wrong about him.'
'He's a Jew, and he's seventy years old, and makes up horribly.'