ight consent, Mr Melmotte.'

'I've said nothing about that. It is possible. You're a man of fashion
and have a title of your own,--and no doubt a property. If you'll show
me that you've an income fit to maintain her, I'll think about it at
any rate. What is your property, Sir Felix?'

What could three or four thousand a year, or even five or six, matter
to a man like Melmotte? It was thus that Sir Felix looked at it. When
a man can hardly count his millions he ought not to ask questions
about trifling sums of money. But the question had been asked, and the
asking of such a question was no doubt within the prerogative of a
proposed father-in-law. At any rate, it must be answered. For a moment
it occurred to Sir Felix that he might conveniently tell the truth. It
would be nasty for the moment, but there would be nothing to come
after. Were he to do so he could not be dragged down lower and lower
into the mire by cross-examinings. There might be an end of all his
hopes, but there would at the same time be an end of all his misery.
But he lacked the necessary courage. 'It isn't a large property, you
know,' he said.

'Not like the Marquis of Westminster's, I suppose,' said the horrid,
big, rich scoundrel.

'No;--not quite like that,' said Sir Felix, with a sickly laugh.

'But you have got enough to support a baronet's title?'

'That depends on how you want to support it,' said Sir Felix, putting
off the evil day.

'Where's your family seat?'

'Carbury Manor, down in Suffolk, near the Longestaffes, is the old
family place.'

'That doesn't belong to you,' said Melmotte, very sharply.

'No; not yet. But I'm the heir.'

Perhaps if there is one thing in England more difficult than another
to be understood by men born and bred out of England, it is the system
under which titles and property descend together, or in various lines.
The jurisdiction of our Courts of Law is complex, and so is the
business of Parliament. But the rules regulating them, though
anomalous, are easy to the memory compared with the mixed anomalies of
the peerage and primogeniture. They who are brought up among it, learn
it as children do a language, but strangers who begin the study in
advanced life, seldom make themselves perfect in it. It was everything
to Melmotte that he should understand the ways of the country which he
had adopted; and when he did not understand, he was clever at hiding
his ignorance. Now he was puzzled. He knew that Sir F