ause of its difficulties
and the small amount of hope which it offered him. The girl was
already willing and anxious to jump into his arms. Then he had
detected a man cheating at cards,--an extent of iniquity that was awful
to him before he had seen it,--and was already beginning to think that
there was not very much in that. If there was not much in it, if such
a man as Miles Grendall could cheat at cards and be brought to no
punishment, why should not he try it? It was a rapid way of winning,
no doubt. He remembered that on one or two occasions he had asked his
adversary to cut the cards a second time at whist, because he had
observed that there was no honour at the bottom. No feeling of honesty
had interfered with him. The little trick had hardly been
premeditated, but when successful without detection had not troubled
his conscience. Now it seemed to him that much more than that might be
done without detection. But nothing had opened his eyes to the ways of
the world so widely as the sweet lover-like proposition made by Miss
Melmotte for robbing her father. It certainly recommended the girl to
him. She had been able at an early age, amidst the circumstances of a
very secluded life, to throw off from her altogether those scruples of
honesty, those bugbears of the world, which are apt to prevent great
enterprises in the minds of men.

What should he do next? This sum of money of which Marie wrote so
easily was probably large. It would not have been worth the while of
such a man as Mr Melmotte to make a trifling provision of this nature.
It could hardly be less than L50,000,--might probably be very much more.
But this was certain to him,--that if he and Marie were to claim this
money as man and wife, there could then be no hope of further
liberality. It was not probable that such a man as Mr Melmotte would
forgive even an only child such an offence as that. Even if it were
obtained, L50,000 would not be very much. And Melmotte might probably
have means, even if the robbery were duly perpetrated, of making the
possession of the money very uncomfortable. These were deep waters
into which Sir Felix was preparing to plunge; and he did not feel
himself to be altogether comfortable, although he liked the deep
waters.

CHAPTER XXX - MR MELMOTTE'S PROMISE

On the following Saturday there appeared in Mr Alf's paper, the
'Evening Pulpit,' a very remarkable article on the South Central
Pacific and Mexican Railway. It