not know much of such transactions, but he knew more than Marie Melmotte, and could understand that a man in Melmotte’s position should want to secure a portion of his fortune against accidents, by settling it on his daughter.  Whether, having so settled it, he could again resume it without the daughter’s assent, Sir Felix did not know.  Marie, who had no doubt been regarded as an absolutely passive instrument when the thing was done, was now quite alive to the benefit which she might possibly derive from it.  Her proposition, put into plain English, amounted to this:  ’Take me and marry me without my father’s consent,—­ and then you and I together can rob my father of the money which, for his own purposes, he has settled upon me.’  He had looked...