. Had he
fallen some one,--or rather some two or three,--must have picked him
up and carried him out. But he did not fall either there or in the
lobbies, or on his way down to Palace Yard. Many were looking at him,
but none touched him. When he had got through the gates, leaning
against the wall he hallooed for his brougham, and the servant who was
waiting for him soon took him home to Bruton Street. That was the last
which the British Parliament saw of its new member for Westminster.

Melmotte as soon as he reached home got into his own sitting-room
without difficulty, and called for more brandy and water. Between
eleven and twelve he was left there by his servant with a bottle of
brandy, three or four bottles of soda-water, and his cigar-case.
Neither of the ladies of the family came to him, nor did he speak of
them. Nor was he so drunk then as to give rise to any suspicion in the
mind of the servant. He was habitually left there at night, and the
servant as usual went to his bed. But at nine o'clock on the following
morning the maid-servant found him dead upon the floor. Drunk as he
had been,--more drunk as he probably became during the night,--still
he was able to deliver himself from the indignities and penalties to
which the law might have subjected him by a dose of prussic acid.

CHAPTER LXXXIV - PAUL MONTAGUE'S VINDICATION

It is hoped that the reader need hardly be informed that Hetta Carbury
was a very miserable young woman as soon as she decided that duty
compelled her to divide herself altogether from Paul Montague. I think
that she was irrational; but to her it seemed that the offence against
herself,--the offence against her own dignity as a woman,--was too
great to be forgiven. There can be no doubt that it would all have been
forgiven with the greatest ease had Paul told the story before it had
reached her ears from any other source. Had he said to her,--when her
heart was softest towards him,--I once loved another woman, and that
woman is here now in London, a trouble to me, persecuting me, and her
history is so and so, and the history of my love for her was after
this fashion, and the history of my declining love is after that
fashion, and of this at any rate you may be sure, that this woman has
never been near my heart from the first moment in which I saw you;--had
he told it to her thus, there would not have been an opening for
anger. And he doubtless would have so told it, had not Hetta's