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that were to follow. What’s the use?’ The young man did not say ‘carpe diem’, 2 but that was the philosophy which he intended to preach.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜I have just come away.’
    â€˜And what do you think of her?’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜The more likely to make a good wife.’
    â€˜Perhaps so. I am at any rate quite willing to believe that as wife she would be “good enough for me”.’ 3
    â€˜What does the mother say?’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜What does it matter, Felix?’
    â€˜Not in the least.’
    â€˜Is she civil to you?’
    â€˜Yes, civil enough.’
    â€˜And the father?’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜And why not you?’
    â€˜Why not, mother? I am doing my best, and it’s no good flogging a willing horse. Can you let me have the money?’
    â€˜Oh, Felix, I think you hardly know how poor we are. You have still got your hunters down at the place!’
    â€˜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 riskysort 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.’
    There was an apparent truth in this argument which the poor woman was unable to answer. Before the interview was over the money demanded was forthcoming, though at the time it could be but ill afforded, and the youth went away apparently with a light heart, hardly listening to his mother’s entreaties that the affair with Marie Melmotte might, if possible, be brought to a speedy conclusion.
    Felix, when he left his mother, went down to the only club to which he now belonged. Clubs are pleasant resorts in all respects but one. They require ready money, or even worse than that in respect to annual payments – money in advance; and the young baronet had been absolutely forced to restrict himself. He, as a matter of course, out of those to which he had possessed the right of entrance, chose the worst. It was called the Beargarden, and had been lately open with the express view of combining parsimony with profligacy. Clubs were ruined, so said certain young parsimonious profligates, by providing comforts for old fogies who paid little or nothing but their subscriptions, and took out by their mere presence three times as much as they gave. This club was not to be opened till three o’clock in the afternoon, before which hour the promoters of the Beargarden thought it improbable that they and