"What shall I say to her?" asked his mother.
"She oughtn't to have come. I should tell her just that. You might send the maid to her to tell her that you couldn't see her again."
But Lady Carbury could not treat the girl after that fashion. She returned to the drawing-room, descending the stairs very slowly, and thinking what answer she would make. "Miss Melmotte," she said, "my son feels that everything has been so changed since he and you last met, that nothing can be gained by a renewal of your acquaintance."
"That is his message;—is it?" Lady Carbury remained silent. "Then he is indeed all that they have told me; and I am ashamed that I should have loved him. I am ashamed;—not of coming here, although you will think that I have run after him. I don't see why a girl should not run after a man if they have been engaged together. But I'm ashamed of thinking so much of so mean a person. Good-bye, Lady Carbury."
"Good-bye, Miss Melmotte. I don't think you should be angry with me."
"No;—no. I am not angry with you. You can forget me now as soon as you please, and I will try to forget him."
Then with a rapid step she walked back to Bruton Street, going round by Grosvenor Square and in front of her old house on the way. What should she now do with herself? What sort of life should she endeavour to prepare for herself? The life that she had led for the last year had been thoroughly wretched. The poverty and hardship which she remembered in her early days had been more endurable. The servitude to which she had been subjected before she had learned by intercourse with the world to assert herself, had been preferable. In these days of her grandeur, in which she had danced with princes, and seen an emperor in her father's house, and been affianced to lords, she had encountered degradation which had been abominable to her. She had really loved;—but had found out that her golden idol was made of the basest clay. She had then declared to herself that bad as the clay was she would still love it;—but even the clay had turned away from her and had refused her love!
She was well aware that some catastrophe was about to happen to her father. Catastrophes had happened before, and she had been conscious of their coming. But now the blow would be a very heavy blow. They would again be driven to pack up and move and seek some other city,—probably in some very distant part. But go where she might, she would now be her own mistress. That was the one resolution she succeeded in forming before she re-entered the house in Bruton Street.