ay everything
again him.'

'You know I'm telling you the truth. You know it as well as I do
myself;--and you're throwing yourself away, and throwing the man who
loves you over,--for such a fellow as that! Go back to him, Ruby, and
beg his pardon.'

'I never will;--never.'

'I've spoken to Mrs Pipkin, and while you're here she will see that
you don't keep such hours any longer. You tell me that you're not
disgraced, and yet you are out at midnight with a young blackguard
like that! I've said what I've got to say, and I'm going away. But
I'll let your grandfather know.'

'Grandfather don't want me no more.'

'And I'll come again. If you want money to go home, I will let you
have it. Take my advice at least in this;--do not see Sir Felix Carbury
any more.' Then he took his leave. If he had failed to impress her
with admiration for John Crumb, he had certainly been efficacious in
lessening that which she had entertained for Sir Felix.

CHAPTER XLIV - THE COMING ELECTION

The very greatness of Mr Melmotte's popularity, the extent of the
admiration which was accorded by the public at large to his commercial
enterprise and financial sagacity, created a peculiar bitterness in
the opposition that was organized against him at Westminster. As the
high mountains are intersected by deep valleys, as puritanism in one
age begets infidelity in the next, as in many countries the thickness
of the winter's ice will be in proportion to the number of the summer
musquitoes, so was the keenness of the hostility displayed on this
occasion in proportion to the warmth of the support which was
manifested. As the great man was praised, so also was he abused. As he
was a demi-god to some, so was he a fiend to others. And indeed there
was hardly any other way in which it was possible to carry on the
contest against him. From the moment in which Mr Melmotte had declared
his purpose of standing for Westminster in the Conservative interest,
an attempt was made to drive him down the throats of the electors by
clamorous assertions of his unprecedented commercial greatness. It
seemed that there was but one virtue in the world, commercial
enterprise,--and that Melmotte was its prophet. It seemed, too, that the
orators and writers of the day intended all Westminster to believe
that Melmotte treated his great affairs in a spirit very different
from that which animates the bosoms of merchants in general. He had
risen above feeling of persona