im to be
intrusive.

And even Marie liked Fisker, though she had been wooed and almost won
both by a lord and a baronet, and had understood, if not much, at
least more than her mother, of the life to which she had been
introduced. There was something of real sorrow in her heart for her
father. She was prone to love,--though, perhaps, not prone to deep
affection. Melmotte had certainly been often cruel to her, but he had
also been very indulgent. And as she had never been specially grateful
for the one, so neither had she ever specially resented the other.
Tenderness, care, real solicitude for her well-being, she had never
known, and had come to regard the unevenness of her life, vacillating
between knocks and knick-knacks, with a blow one day and a jewel the
next, as the condition of things which was natural to her. When her
father was dead she remembered for a while the jewels and the
knickknacks, and forgot the knocks and blows. But she was not beyond
consolation, and she also found consolation in Mr Fisker's visits.

'I used to sign a paper every quarter,' she said to Fisker, as they
were walking together one evening in the lanes round Hampstead.

'You'll have to do the same now, only instead of giving the paper to
any one you'll have to leave it in a banker's hands to draw the money
for yourself.'

'And can that be done over in California?'

'Just the same as here. Your bankers will manage it all for you
without the slightest trouble. For the matter of that I'll do it, if
you'll trust me. There's only one thing against it all, Miss
Melmotte.'

'And what's that?'

'After the sort of society you've been used to here, I don't know how
you'll get on among us Americans. We're a pretty rough lot, I guess.
Though, perhaps, what you lose in the look of the fruit, you'll make
up in the flavour.' This Fisker said in a somewhat plaintive tone, as
though fearing that the manifest substantial advantages of Frisco
would not suffice to atone for the loss of that fashion to which Miss
Melmotte had been used.

'I hate swells,' said Marie, flashing round upon him.

'Do you now?'

'Like poison. What's the use of 'em? They never mean a word that they
say,--and they don't say so many words either. They're never more than
half awake, and don't care the least about anybody. I hate London.'

'Do you now?'

'Oh, don't I?'

'I wonder whether you'd hate Frisco?'

'I rather think it would be a jolly sort of place.'

'Very