the two
sisters, just before Georgiana's departure to the railway station,
which was almost touching. She had endeavoured to hold up her head as
usual, but had failed. The thing that she was going to do cowed her
even in the presence of her sister. 'Sophy, I do so envy you staying
here.'

'But it was you who were so determined to be in London.'

'Yes; I was determined, and am determined. I've got to get myself
settled somehow, and that can't be done down here. But you are not
going to disgrace yourself.'

'There's no disgrace in it, Georgey.'

'Yes, there is. I believe the man to be a swindler and a thief; and I
believe her to be anything low that you can think of. As to their
pretensions to be gentlefolk, it is monstrous. The footmen and
housemaids would be much better.'

'Then don't go, Georgey.'

'I must go. It's the only chance that is left. If I were to remain
down here everybody would say that I was on the shelf. You are going
to marry Whitstable, and you'll do very well. It isn't a big place,
but there's no debt on it, and Whitstable himself isn't a bad sort of
fellow.'

'Is he, now?'

'Of course he hasn't much to say for himself; for he's always at home.
But he is a gentleman.'

'That he certainly is.'

'As for me I shall give over caring about gentlemen now. The first man
that comes to me with four or five thousand a year, I'll take him,
though he'd come out of Newgate or Bedlam. And I shall always say it
has been papa's doing.'

And so Georgiana Longestaffe went up to London and stayed with the
Melmottes.

CHAPTER XXII - LORD NIDDERDALE'S MORALITY

It was very generally said in the city about this time that the Great
South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway was the very best thing out.
It was known that Mr Melmotte had gone into it with heart and hand.
There were many who declared,--with gross injustice to the Great
Fisker,--that the railway was Melmotte's own child, that he had
invented it, advertised it, agitated it, and floated it; but it was not
the less popular on that account. A railway from Salt Lake City to
Mexico no doubt had much of the flavour of a castle in Spain. Our
far-western American brethren are supposed to be imaginative. Mexico has
not a reputation among us for commercial security, or that stability
which produces its four, five, or six per cent. with the regularity of
clockwork. But there was the Panama railway, a small affair which had
paid twenty-five per ce