be difficult to get through all
these details; but it might be accomplished gradually,--unless in the
process of doing so he should incur the fate of the gentleman in
Oregon. At any rate he would declare to her as well as he could the
ground on which he claimed a right to consider himself free, and would
bear the consequences. Such was the resolve which he made on his
journey up from Liverpool, and that trouble was also on his mind when
he rose up to attack Mr Melmotte single-handed at the Board.

When the Board was over, he also went down to the Beargarden. Perhaps,
with reference to the Board, the feeling which hurt him most was the
conviction that he was spending money which he would never have had to
spend had there been no Board. He had been twitted with this at the
Board-meeting, and had justified himself by referring to the money
which had been invested in the company of Fisker, Montague, and
Montague, which money was now supposed to have been made over to the
railway. But the money which he was spending had come to him after a
loose fashion, and he knew that if called upon for an account, he
could hardly make out one which would be square and intelligible to
all parties. Nevertheless he spent much of his time at the
Beargarden, dining there when no engagement carried him elsewhere. On
this evening he joined his table with Nidderdale's, at the young
lord's instigation. 'What made you so savage at old Melmotte to-day?'
said the young lord.

'I didn't mean to be savage, but I think that as we call ourselves
Directors we ought to know something about it.'

'I suppose we ought. I don't know, you know. I'll tell you what I've
been thinking. I can't make out why the mischief they made me a
Director.'

'Because you're a lord,' said Paul bluntly.

'I suppose there's something in that. But what good can I do them?
Nobody thinks that I know anything about business. Of course I'm in
Parliament, but I don't often go there unless they want me to vote.
Everybody knows that I'm hard up. I can't understand it. The Governor
said that I was to do it, and so I've done it.'

'They say, you know,--there's something between you and Melmotte's
daughter.'

'But if there is, what has that to do with a railway in the city? And
why should Carbury be there? And, heaven and earth, why should old
Grendall be a Director? I'm impecunious; but if you were to pink out
the two most hopeless men in London in regard to money, they would be