n to be a
residence; but, having some money in her hands when she first took it,
she had made it pretty and pleasant, and was still proud to feel that
in spite of the hardness of her position she had comfortable
belongings around her when her literary friends came to see her on her
Tuesday evenings. Here she was now living with her son and daughter.
The back drawing-room was divided from the front by doors that were
permanently closed, and in this she carried on her great work. Here
she wrote her books and contrived her system for the inveigling of
editors and critics. Here she was rarely disturbed by her daughter,
and admitted no visitors except editors and critics. But her son was
controlled by no household laws, and would break in upon her privacy
without remorse. She had hardly finished two galloping notes after
completing her letter to Mr Ferdinand Alf, when Felix entered the room
with a cigar in his mouth and threw himself upon the sofa.

'My dear boy,' she said, 'pray leave your tobacco below when you come
in here.'

'What affectation it is, mother,' he said, throwing, however, the
half-smoked cigar into the fire-place. 'Some women swear they like
smoke, others say they hate it like the devil. It depends altogether
on whether they wish to flatter or snub a fellow.'

'You don't suppose that I wish to snub you?'

'Upon my word I don't know. I wonder whether you can let me have
twenty pounds?'

'My dear Felix!'

'Just so, mother;--but how about the twenty pounds?'

'What is it for, Felix?'

'Well;--to tell the truth, to carry on the game for the nonce till
something is settled. A fellow can't live without some money in his
pocket. I do with as little as most fellows. I pay for nothing that I
can help. I even get my hair cut on credit, and as long as it was
possible I had a brougham, to save cabs.'

'What is to be the end of it, Felix?'

'I never could see the end of anything, mother. I never could nurse a
horse when the hounds were going well in order to be in at the finish.
I never could pass a dish that I liked in favour of those that were to
follow. What's the use?' The young man did not say 'carpe diem,' but
that was the philosophy which he intended to preach.

'Have you been at the Melmottes' to-day?' It was now five o'clock on a
winter afternoon, the hour at which ladies are drinking tea, and idle
men playing whist at the clubs,--at which young idle men are sometimes
allowed to flirt, and at whi