'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 which, as Lady Carbury thought, her son might
have been paying his court to Marie Melmotte the great heiress.

'I have just come away.'