'We hardly expected to see you in the City to-day, Mr Melmotte.'
'And I didn't expect to see myself here. But it always happens that when one expects that there's most to be done, there's nothing to be done at all. They're all at work down at Westminster, balloting; but as I can't go on voting for myself, I'm of no use. I've been at Covent Garden this morning, making a stump speech, and if all that they say there is true, I haven't much to be afraid of.'
'And the dinner went off pretty well?' asked the manager.
'Very well, indeed. They say the Emperor liked it better than anything that has been done for him yet.' This was a brilliant flash of imagination. 'For a friend to dine with me every day, you know, I should prefer somebody who had a little more to say for himself. But then, perhaps, you know, if you or I were in China we shouldn't have much to say for ourselves;--eh?' The manager acceded to this proposition. 'We had one awful disappointment. His lordship from over the way didn't come.'
'The Lord Mayor, you mean.'
'The Lord Mayor didn't come! He was frightened at the last moment;-- took it into his head that his authority in the City was somehow compromised. But the wonder was that the dinner went on without him.' Then Melmotte referred to the purport of his call there that day. He would have to draw large cheques for his private wants. 'You don't give a dinner to an Emperor of China for nothing, you know.' He had been in the habit of overdrawing on his private account,--making arrangements with the manager. But now, in the manager's presence, he drew a regular cheque on his business account for a large sum, and then, as a sort of afterthought, paid in the £250 which he had received from Mr Broune on account of the money which Sir Felix had taken from Marie.
'There don't seem much the matter with him,' said the manager, when Melmotte had left the room.
'He brazens it out, don't he?' said the senior clerk. But the feeling of the room after full discussion inclined to the opinion that the rumours had been a political manoeuvre. Nevertheless, Mr Melmotte would not now have been allowed to overdraw at the present moment.