When all her friends were gone Lady Carbury looked about for her son — not expecting to find him, for she knew how punctual was his nightly attendance at the Beargarden, but still with some faint hope that he might have remained on this special occasion to tell her of his fortune. She had watched the whispering, had noticed the cool effrontery with which Felix had spoken — for without hearing the words she had almost known the very moment in which he was asking — and had seen the girl’s timid face, and eyes turned to the ground, and the nervous twitching of her hands as she replied. As a woman, understanding such things, who had herself been wooed, who had at least dreamed of love, she had greatly disapproved her son’s manner. But yet, if it might be successful, if the girl would put up with love-making so slight as that, and if the great Melmotte would accept in return for his money a title so modest as that of her son, how glorious should her son be to her in spite of his indifference!

‘I heard him leave the house before the Melmottes went,’ said Henrietta, when the mother spoke of going up to her son’s bedroom.

‘He might have stayed to-night. Do you think he asked her?’

‘How can I say, mamma?’

‘I should have thought you would have been anxious about your brother. I feel sure he did — and that she accepted him.’

‘If so I hope he will be good to her. I hope he loves her.’

‘Why shouldn’t he love her as well as any one else? A girl need not be odious because she has money. There is nothing disagreeable about her.’

‘No — nothing disagreeable. I do not know that she is especially attractive.’

‘Who is? I don’t see anybody specially attractive. It seems to me you are quite indifferent about Felix.’

‘Do not say that, mamma.’

‘Yes you are. You don’t understand all that he might be with this girl’s fortune, and what he must be unless he gets money by marriage. He is eating us both up.’

‘I wouldn’t let him do that, mamma.’

‘It’s all very well to say that, but I have some heart. I love him. I could not see him starve. Think what he might be with ￡20,000 a-year!’

‘If he is to marry for that only, I cannot think that they will be happy.’

‘You had better go to bed, Henrietta. You never say a word to comfort me in all my troubles.’

Then Henrietta went to bed, and Lady Carbury absolutely sat up the whole night waiting for her son, in order that she might hear his tidings. She went up to her room, disembarrassed herself of her finery, and wrapped herself in a white dressing-gown. As she sat opposite to her glass, relieving her head from its garniture of false hair, she acknowledged to herself that age was coming on her. She could hide the unwelcome approach by art — hide it more completely than can most women of her age; but, there it was, stealing on her with short grey hairs over her ears and around her temples, with little wrinkles round her eyes easily concealed by objectionable cosmetics, and a look of weariness round the mouth which could only be removed by that self-assertion of herself which practice had made always possible to her in company, though it now so frequently deserted her when she was alone.

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