The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (best fiction novels of all time .TXT) 📕

a single glass of champagne drank in the presence of the hostess. Considerable skill was shown in keeping the presence of his royal guest a secret from the host himself till the Prince was gone. Melmotte would have desired to pour out that glass of wine with his own hands, to solace his tongue by Royal Highnesses, and would probably have been troublesome and disagreeable. Miles Grendall had understood all this and had managed the affair very well. “Bless my soul;⁠—his Royal Highness come and gone!” exclaimed Melmotte. “You and my father were so fast at your whist that it was impossible to get you away,” said Miles. Melmotte was not a fool, and understood it all;⁠—understood not only that it had been thought better that he should not speak to the Prince, but also that it might be better that it should be so. He could not have everything at once. Miles Grendall was very useful to him, and he would not quarrel with Miles, at any rate as yet.

“Have another rubber, Alfred?” he said to Miles’s father as the carriages were taking away the guests.

Lord Alfred had taken sundry glasses of champagne, and for a moment forgot the bills in the safe, and the good things which his boys were receiving. “Damn that kind of nonsense,” he said. “Call people by their proper names.” Then he left the house without a further word to the master of it. That night before they went to sleep Melmotte required from his weary wife an account of the ball, and especially of Marie’s conduct. “Marie,” Madame Melmotte said, “had behaved well, but had certainly preferred ‘Sir Carbury’ to any other of the young men.” Hitherto Mr. Melmotte had heard very little of “Sir Carbury,” except that he was a baronet. Though his eyes and ears were always open, though he attended to everything, and was a man of sharp intelligence, he did not yet quite understand the bearing and sequence of English titles. He knew that he must get for his daughter either an eldest son, or one absolutely in possession himself. Sir Felix, he had learned, was only a baronet; but then he was in possession. He had discovered also that Sir Felix’s son would in course of time also become Sir Felix. He was not therefore at the present moment disposed to give any positive orders as to his daughter’s conduct to the young baronet. He did not, however, conceive that the young baronet had as yet addressed his girl in such words as Felix had in truth used when they parted. “You know who it is,” he whispered, “likes you better than anyone else in the world.”

“Nobody does;⁠—don’t, Sir Felix.”

“I do,” he said as he held her hand for a minute. He looked into her face and she thought it very sweet. He had studied the words as a lesson, and, repeating them as a lesson, he did it fairly well. He did it well enough at any rate to send the poor girl to bed with a sweet conviction that at last a man had spoken to her whom she could love.

V After the Ball

“It’s weary work,” said Sir Felix as he got into the brougham with his mother and sister.

“What must it have been to me then, who had nothing to do?” said his mother.

“It’s the having something to do that makes me call it weary work. By the by, now I think of it, I’ll run down to the club before I go home.” So saying he put his head out of the brougham, and stopped the driver.

“It is two o’clock, Felix,” said his mother.

“I’m afraid it is, but you see I’m hungry. You had supper, perhaps; I had none.”

“Are you going down to the club for supper at this time in the morning?”

“I must go to bed hungry if I don’t. Good night.” Then he jumped out of the brougham, called a cab, and had himself driven to the Beargarden. He declared to himself that the men there would think it mean of him if he did not give them their revenge. He had renewed his play on the preceding night, and had again won. Dolly Longestaffe owed him now a considerable sum of money, and Lord Grasslough was also in his debt. He was sure that Grasslough would go to the club after the ball, and he was determined that they should not think that he had submitted to be carried home by his mother and sister. So he argued with himself; but in truth the devil of gambling was hot within his bosom; and though he feared that in losing he might lose real money, and that if he won it would be long before he was paid, yet he could not keep himself from the card-table.

Neither mother or daughter said a word till they reached home and had got upstairs. Then the elder spoke of the trouble that was nearest to her heart at the moment. “Do you think he gambles?”

“He has got no money, mamma.”

“I fear that might not hinder him. And he has money with him, though, for him and such friends as he has, it is not much. If he gambles everything is lost.”

“I suppose they all do play⁠—more or less.”

“I have not known that he played. I am wearied too, out of all heart, by his want of consideration to me. It is not that he will not obey me. A mother perhaps should not expect obedience from a grownup son. But my word is nothing to him. He has no respect for me. He would as soon do what is wrong before me as before the merest stranger.”

“He has been so long his own master, mamma.”

“Yes⁠—his own master! And yet I must provide for him as though he were but a child. Hetta, you spent the whole evening talking to Paul Montague.”

“No, mamma;⁠—that is unjust.”

“He was always with you.”

“I knew nobody