and put his hand on Dolly Longestaffe's
shoulder, and spoke to him. 'I suppose you were about right the other
night and I was about wrong; but you could understand what it was that
I meant. I'm afraid this is a bad look out for both of us.'

'Yes;--I understand. It's deuced bad for me,' said Dolly. 'I think
you're very well out of it. But I'm glad there's not to be a quarrel.
Suppose we have a rubber of whist.'

Later on in the night news was brought to the club that Melmotte had
tried to make a speech in the House, that he had been very drunk, and
that he had tumbled over, upsetting Beauchamp Beauclerk in his fall.
'By George, I should like to have seen that!' said Dolly.

'I am very glad I was not there,' said Nidderdale. It was three
o'clock before they left the card table, at which time Melmotte was
lying dead upon the floor in Mr Longestaffe's house.

On the following morning, at ten o'clock, Lord Nidderdale sat at
breakfast with his father in the old lord's house in Berkeley Square.
From thence the house which Melmotte had hired was not above a few
hundred yards distant. At this time the young lord was living with his
father, and the two had now met by appointment in order that something
might be settled between them as to the proposed marriage. The Marquis
was not a very pleasant companion when the affairs in which he was
interested did not go exactly as he would have them. He could be very
cross and say most disagreeable words,--so that the ladies of the
family, and others connected with him, for the most part, found it
impossible to live with him. But his eldest son had endured him;--
partly perhaps because, being the eldest, he had been treated with a
nearer approach to courtesy, but chiefly by means of his own extreme
good humour. What did a few hard words matter? If his father was
ungracious to him, of course he knew what all that meant. As long as
his father would make fair allowance for his own peccadilloes,--he
also would make allowances for his father's roughness. All this was
based on his grand theory of live and let live. He expected his father
to be a little cross on this occasion, and he acknowledged to himself
that there was cause for it.

He was a little late himself, and he found his father already
buttering his toast. 'I don't believe you'd get out of bed a moment
sooner than you liked if you could save the whole property by it.'

'You show me how I can make a guinea by it, sir, and see if