tors, in
which he resigned his seat, and gave his reasons for resigning it;
adding that he should reserve to himself the liberty of publishing his
letter, should at any time the circumstances of the railway company
seem to him to make such a course desirable. He also wrote a letter to
Mr Fisker, begging that gentleman to come to England, and expressing
his own wish to retire altogether from the firm of Fisker, Montague,
and Montague upon receiving the balance of money due to him,--a payment
which must, he said, be a matter of small moment to his two partners,
if, as he had been informed, they had enriched themselves by the
success of the railway company in San Francisco. When he wrote these
letters at Liverpool the great rumour about Melmotte had not yet
sprung up. He returned to London on the day of the festival, and first
heard of the report at the Beargarden. There he found that the old set
had for the moment broken itself up. Sir Felix Carbury had not been
heard of for the last four or five days,--and then the whole story of
Miss Melmotte's journey, of which he had read something in the
newspapers, was told to him. 'We think that Carbury has drowned
himself' said Lord Grasslough, 'and I haven't heard of anybody being
heartbroken about it.' Lord Nidderdale had hardly been seen at the
club. 'He's taken up the running with the girl,' said Lord Grasslough.
'What he'll do now, nobody knows. If I was at it, I'd have the money
down in hard cash before I went into the church. He was there at the
party yesterday, talking to the girl all the night;--a sort of thing
he never did before. Nidderdale is the best fellow going, but he was
always an ass.' Nor had Miles Grendall been seen in the club for three
days. 'We've got into a way of play the poor fellow doesn't like,'
said Lord Grasslough; 'and then Melmotte won't let him out of his
sight. He has taken to dine there every day.' This was said during the
election,--on the very day on which Miles deserted his patron; and on
that evening he did dine at the club. Paul Montague also dined there,
and would fain have heard something from Grendall as to Melmotte's
condition; but the secretary, if not faithful in all things, was
faithful at any rate in his silence. Though Grasslough talked openly
enough about Melmotte in the smoking-room Miles Grendall said never a
word.

On the next day, early in the afternoon, almost without a fixed
purpose, Montague strolled up to Welbeck Street, a