diciously refuse to meet
his father and the old family lawyer. Therefore Dolly had attended, at
great personal inconvenience to himself. 'By George, it's hardly worth
having if one is to take all this trouble about it,' Dolly had said to
Lord Grasslough, with whom he had fraternised since the quarrel with
Nidderdale. Dolly entered the room last, and at that time neither Mr
Longestaffe nor Mr Bideawhile had touched the drawer, or even the
table, in which the letter had been deposited.

'Now, Mr Longestaffe,' said Mr Bideawhile, 'perhaps you will show us
where you think you put the letter.'

'I don't think at all,' said he. 'Since the matter has been discussed
the whole thing has come back upon my memory.'

'I never signed it,' said Dolly, standing with his hands in his
pockets and interrupting his father.

'Nobody says you did, sir,' rejoined the father with an angry voice.
'If you will condescend to listen we may perhaps arrive at the truth.'

'But somebody has said that I did. I've been told that Mr Bideawhile
says so.'

'No, Mr Longestaffe; no. We have never said so. We have only said that
we had no reason for supposing the letter to be other than genuine. We
have never gone beyond that.'

'Nothing on earth would have made me sign it,' said Dolly. 'Why should
I have given my property up before I got my money? I never heard such
a thing in my life.'

The father looked up at the lawyer and shook his head, testifying as
to the hopelessness of his son's obstinacy. 'Now, Mr Longestaffe,'
continued the lawyer, 'let us see where you put the letter.'

Then the father very slowly, and with much dignity of deportment,
opened the drawer,--the second drawer from the top, and took from it a
bundle of papers very carefully folded and docketed, 'There,' said he,
'the letter was not placed in the envelope but on the top of it, and
the two were the two first documents in the bundle.' He went on to say
that as far as he knew no other paper had been taken away. He was
quite certain that he had left the drawer locked. He was very
particular in regard to that particular drawer, and he remembered that
about this time Mr Melmotte had been in the room with him when he had
opened it, and,--as he was certain,--had locked it again. At that
special time there had been, he said, considerable intimacy between him
and Melmotte. It was then that Mr Melmotte had offered him a seat at
the Board of the Mexican railway.

'Of course he picke