rtune.

In regard to Melmotte's effects generally the Crown had been induced
to abstain from interfering,--giving up the right to all the man's
plate and chairs and tables which it had acquired by the finding of the
coroner's verdict,--not from tenderness to Madame Melmotte, for whom no
great commiseration was felt, but on behalf of such creditors as poor
Mr Longestaffe and his son. But Marie's money was quite distinct from
this. She had been right in her own belief as to this property, and
had been right, too, in refusing to sign those papers,--unless it may
be that that refusal led to her father's act. She herself was sure that
it was not so, because she had withdrawn her refusal, and had offered
to sign the papers before her father's death. What might have been the
ultimate result had she done so when he first made the request, no one
could now say. That the money would have gone there could be no doubt.
The money was now hers,--a fact which Fisker soon learned with that
peculiar cleverness which belonged to him.

Poor Madame Melmotte felt the visits of the American to be a relief to
her in her misery. The world makes great mistakes as to that which is
and is not beneficial to those whom Death has bereaved of a companion.
It may be, no doubt sometimes it is the case, that grief shall be so
heavy, so absolutely crushing, as to make any interference with it an
additional trouble, and this is felt also in acute bodily pain, and in
periods of terrible mental suffering. It may also be, and, no doubt,
often is the case, that the bereaved one chooses to affect such
overbearing sorrow, and that friends abstain, because even such
affectation has its own rights and privileges. But Madame Melmotte was
neither crushed by grief nor did she affect to be so crushed. She had
been numbed by the suddenness and by the awe of the catastrophe. The
man who had been her merciless tyrant for years, who had seemed to
her to be a very incarnation of cruel power, had succumbed, and shown
himself to be powerless against his own misfortunes. She was a woman
of very few words, and had spoken almost none on this occasion even
to her own daughter; but when Fisker came to her, and told her more
than she had ever known before of her husband's affairs, and spoke
to her of her future life, and mixed for her a small glass of
brandy-and-water warm, and told her that Frisco would be the fittest
place for her future residence, she certainly did not find h