as, however, at the present moment
better satisfied to be an invalid than to have to come out of his room
and to meet the world. 'As to Melmotte,' said Mr Broune, 'they say now
that he is in some terrible mess which will ruin him and all who have
trusted him.'

'And the girl?'

'It is impossible to understand it at all. Melmotte was to have been
summoned before the Lord Mayor to-day on some charge of fraud;--but it
was postponed. And I was told this morning that Nidderdale still means
to marry the girl. I don't think anybody knows the truth about it. We
shall hold our tongue about him till we really do know something.' The
'we' of whom Mr Broune spoke was, of course, the 'Morning Breakfast
Table.'

But in all this there was nothing about Hetta. Hetta, however, thought
very much of her own condition, and found herself driven to take some
special step by the receipt of two letters from her lover, written to
her from Liverpool. They had never met since she had confessed her
love to him. The first letter she did not at once answer, as she was
at that moment waiting to hear what Roger Carbury would say about Mrs
Hurtle. Roger Carbury had spoken, leaving a conviction on her mind
that Mrs Hurtle was by no means a fiction,--but indeed a fact very
injurious to her happiness. Then Paul's second love-letter had come,
full of joy, and love, and contentment,--with not a word in it which
seemed to have been in the slightest degree influenced by the
existence of a Mrs Hurtle. Had there been no Mrs Hurtle, the letter
would have been all that Hetta could have desired; and she could have
answered it, unless forbidden by her mother, with all a girl's usual
enthusiastic affection for her chosen lord. But it was impossible that
she should now answer it in that strain;--and it was equally impossible
that she should leave such letters unanswered. Roger had told her to
'ask himself;' and she now found herself constrained to bid him either
come to her and answer the question, or, if he thought it better, to
give her some written account of Mrs Hurtle so that she might know who
the lady was, and whether the lady's condition did in any way
interfere with her own happiness. So she wrote to Paul, as follows:

'Welbeck Street, 16 July, 18--

'MY DEAR PAUL.' She found that after that which had passed between them
she could not call him 'My dear Sir,' or 'My dear Mr Montague,' and
that it must either be 'Sir' or 'My dear Paul.' He was dear to he