union between her son and Miss Melmotte was one of unmixed joy and
triumph. Could it have been possible that Marie Melmotte should be
rich and her father be a man doomed to a deserved sentence in a penal
settlement, there might perhaps be a doubt about it. The wealth even
in that case would certainly carry the day, against the disgrace, and
Lady Carbury would find reasons why poor Marie should not be punished
for her father's sins even while enjoying the money which those sins
had produced. But how different were the existing facts? Mr Melmotte
was not at the galleys, but was entertaining duchesses in Grosvenor
Square. People said that Mr Melmotte had a reputation throughout
Europe as a gigantic swindler,--as one who in the dishonest and
successful pursuit of wealth had stopped at nothing. People said of
him that he had framed and carried out long premeditated and
deeply-laid schemes for the ruin of those who had trusted him, that he
had swallowed up the property of all who had come in contact with him,
that he was fed with the blood of widows and children;--but what was all
this to Lady Carbury? If the duchesses condoned it all, did it become
her to be prudish? People also said that Melmotte would yet get a
fall,--that a man who had risen after such a fashion never could long
keep his head up. But he might keep his head up long enough to give
Marie her fortune. And then Felix wanted a fortune so badly;--was so
exactly the young man who ought to marry a fortune! To Lady Carbury
there was no second way of looking at the matter.

And to Roger Carbury also there was no second way of looking at it.
That condonation of antecedents which, in the hurry of the world, is
often vouchsafed to success, that growing feeling which induces
people to assert to themselves that they are not bound to go outside
the general verdict, and that they may shake hands with whomsoever the
world shakes hands with, had never reached him. The old-fashioned idea