'Is there anything wrong, Melmotte?' she said afterwards, creeping up to him in the back parlour, and speaking in French.
'What do you call wrong?'
'I don't know;--but I seem to be afraid of something.'
'I should have thought you were used to that kind of feeling by this time.'
'Then there is something.'
'Don't be a fool. There is always something. There is always much. You don't suppose that this kind of thing can be carried on as smoothly as the life of an old maid with £400 a year paid quarterly in advance.'
'Shall we have to move again?' she asked.
'How am I to tell? You haven't much to do when we move, and may get plenty to eat and drink wherever you go. Does that girl mean to marry Lord Nidderdale?' Madame Melmotte shook her head. 'What a poor creature you must be when you can't talk her out of a fancy for such a reprobate as young Carbury. If she throws me over, I'll throw her over. I'll flog her within an inch of her life if she disobeys me. You tell her that I say so.'
'Then he may flog me,' said Marie, when so much of the conversation was repeated to her that evening. 'Papa does not know me if he thinks that I'm to be made to marry a man by flogging.' No such attempt was at any rate made that night, for the father and husband did not again see his wife or daughter.
Early the next day a report was current that Mr Alf had been returned. The numbers had not as yet been counted, or the books made up;--but that was the opinion expressed. All the morning newspapers, including the 'Breakfast-Table,' repeated this report,--but each gave it as the general opinion on the matter. The truth would not be known till seven or eight o'clock in the evening. The Conservative papers did not scruple to say that the presumed election of Mr Alf was owing to a sudden declension in the confidence originally felt in Mr Melmotte. The 'Breakfast-Table,' which had supported Mr Melmotte's candidature, gave no reason, and expressed more doubt on the result than the other papers. 'We know not how such an opinion forms itself,' the writer said,--'but it seems to have been formed. As nothing as yet is really known, or can be known, we express no opinion of our own upon the matter.'
Mr Melmotte again went into the City, and found that things seemed to have returned very much into their usual grooves. The Mexican Railway shares were low, and Mr Cohenlupe was depressed in spirits and unhappy;--but nothing dreadful had occurred or seemed to be threatened. If nothing dreadful did occur, the railway shares would probably recover, or nearly recover, their position. In the course of the day, Melmotte received a letter from Messrs Slow and Bideawhile, which, of itself, certainly contained no comfort;--but there was comfort to be drawn even from that letter, by reason of what it did not contain. The letter was unfriendly in its tone and peremptory. It had come evidently from a hostile party. It had none of the feeling which had hitherto prevailed in the intercourse between these two well-known Conservative gentlemen, Mr Adolphus Longestaffe and Mr Augustus Melmotte. But there was no allusion in it to forgery; no question of criminal proceedings; no hint at aught beyond the not unnatural desire of Mr Longestaffe and Mr Longestaffe's son to be paid for the property at Pickering which Mr Melmotte had purchased.