Fulham with a family, not indeed grown up, as
Lady Monogram had ill-naturedly said, but which would be grown up
before long, varying from an eldest son of eighteen, who had just been
placed at a desk in the office, to the youngest girl of twelve, who
was at school at Brighton. He was a man who always asked for what he
wanted; and having made up his mind that he wanted a second wife, had
asked Miss Georgiana Longestaffe to fill that situation. He had met
her at the Melmottes', had entertained her, with Madame Melmotte and
Marie, at Beaudesert, as he called his villa, had then proposed in the
square, and two days after had received an assenting answer in Bruton
Street.

Poor Miss Longestaffe! Although she had acknowledged the fact to Lady
Monogram in her desire to pave the way for the reception of herself
into society as a married woman, she had not as yet found courage to
tell her family. The man was absolutely a Jew;--not a Jew that had been,
as to whom there might possibly be a doubt whether he or his father or
his grandfather had been the last Jew of the family; but a Jew that
was. So was Goldsheiner a Jew, whom Lady Julia Start had married,--or
at any rate had been one a very short time before he ran away with that
lady. She counted up ever so many instances on her fingers of 'decent
people' who had married Jews or Jewesses. Lord Frederic Framlinghame
had married a girl of the Berrenhoffers; and Mr Hart had married a
Miss Chute. She did not know much of Miss Chute, but was certain that
she was a Christian. Lord Frederic's wife and Lady Julia Goldsheiner
were seen everywhere. Though she hardly knew how to explain the matter
even to herself, she was sure that there was at present a general
heaving-up of society on this matter, and a change in progress which
would soon make it a matter of indifference whether anybody was Jew or
Christian. For herself she regarded the matter not at all, except as
far as it might be regarded by the world in which she wished to live.
She was herself above all personal prejudices of that kind. Jew, Turk,
or infidel was nothing to her. She had seen enough of the world to be
aware that her happiness did not lie in that direction, and could not
depend in the least on the religion of her husband. Of course she
would go to church herself. She always went to church. It was the
proper thing to do. As to her husband, though she did not suppose that
she could ever get him to church,--nor perhaps wo