e. 'Miss Melmotte,' she said, 'my
son feels that everything has been so changed since he and you last
met, that nothing can be gained by a renewal of your acquaintance.'

'That is his message;--is it?' Lady Carbury remained silent. 'Then he
is indeed all that they have told me; and I am ashamed that I should
have loved him. I am ashamed;--not of coming here, although you will
think that I have run after him. I don't see why a girl should not run
after a man if they have been engaged together. But I'm ashamed of
thinking so much of so mean a person. Goodbye, Lady Carbury.'

'Good-bye, Miss Melmotte. I don't think you should be angry with me.'

'No;--no. I am not angry with you. You can forget me now as soon as you
please, and I will try to forget him.'

Then with a rapid step she walked back to Bruton Street, going round
by Grosvenor Square and in front of her old house on the way. What
should she now do with herself? What sort of life should she endeavour
to prepare for herself? The life that she had led for the last year
had been thoroughly wretched. The poverty and hardship which she
remembered in her early days had been more endurable. The servitude to
which she had been subjected before she had learned by intercourse
with the world to assert herself, had been preferable. In these days
of her grandeur, in which she had danced with princes, and seen an
emperor in her father's house, and been affianced to lords, she had
encountered degradation which had been abominable to her. She had
really loved;--but had found out that her golden idol was made of the
basest clay. She had then declared to herself that bad as the clay was
she would still love it;--but even the clay had turned away from her
and had refused her love!

She was well aware that some catastrophe was about to happen to her
father. Catastrophes had happened before, and she had been conscious
of their coming. But now the blow would be a very heavy blow. They
would again be driven to pack up and move and seek some other city,--
probably in some very distant part. But go where she might, she would
now be her own mistress. That was the one resolution she succeeded in
forming before she re-entered the house in Bruton Street.

CHAPTER LXXXIII - MELMOTTE AGAIN AT THE HOUSE

On that Thursday afternoon it was known everywhere that there was to
be a general ruin of all the Melmotte affairs. As soon as Cohenlupe
had gone, no man doubted. The City men who