It was Lady Carbury’s duty on the occasion to say pretty things to everybody.  And she did her duty.  But in the midst of it all she was ever thinking of her son and Marie Melmotte, and she did at last venture to separate the girl from her mother.  Marie herself was not unwilling to be talked to by Sir Felix.  He had never bullied her, had never seemed to scorn her; and then he was so beautiful!  She, poor girl, bewildered among various suitors, utterly confused by the life to which she was introduced, troubled by fitful attacks of admonition from her father, who would again, fitfully, leave her unnoticed for a week at a time; with no trust in her pseudo-mother—­for poor Marie, had in truth been born before her father had been a married man...