Mr Melmotte shrugged his shoulders
and made no further reply, Mr Bideawhile could only take his
departure.

The attorney, although he was bound to be staunch to his own client,
and to his own house in opposition to Mr Squercum, nevertheless was
becoming doubtful in his own mind as to the genuineness of the letter
which Dolly was so persistent in declaring that he had not signed. Mr
Longestaffe himself, who was at any rate an honest man, had given it
as his opinion that Dolly had not signed the letter. His son had
certainly refused to sign it once, and as far as he knew could have
had no opportunity of signing it since. He was all but sure that he
had left the letter under lock and key in his own drawer in the room
which had latterly become Melmotte's study as well as his own. Then,
on entering the room in Melmotte's presence,--their friendship at the
time having already ceased,--he found that his drawer was open. This
same Mr Bideawhile was with him at the time. 'Do you mean to say that
I have opened your drawer?' said Mr Melmotte. Mr Longestaffe had
become very red in the face and had replied by saying that he
certainly made no such accusation, but as certainly he had not left
the drawer unlocked. He knew his own habits and was sure that he had
never left that drawer open in his life. 'Then you must have changed
the habits of your life on this occasion,' said Mr Melmotte with
spirit. Mr Longestaffe would trust himself to no other word within the
house, but, when they were out in the street together, he assured the
lawyer that certainly that drawer had been left locked, and that to
the best of his belief the letter unsigned had been left within the
drawer. Mr Bideawhile could only remark that it was the most
unfortunate circumstance with which he had ever been concerned.

The marriage with Nidderdale would upon the whole be the best thing,
if it could only be accomplished. The reader must understand that
though Mr Melmotte had allowed himself considerable poetical licence
in that statement as to property thirty times as great as the price
which he ought to have paid for Pickering, still there was property.
The man's speculations had been so great and so wide that he did not
really know what he owned, or what he owed. But he did know that at
the present moment he was driven very hard for large sums. His chief
trust for immediate money was in Cohenlupe, in whose hands had really
been the manipulation of the shares of th