almost understood that the young people were to have Pickering Park for themselves, except for a week or so at the end of July.  It was absolutely given out in the papers that Pickering was to be theirs.  It was said on all sides that Nidderdale was doing very well for himself.  The absolute money was not perhaps so great as had been at first asked; but then, at that time, Melmotte was not the strong rock, the impregnable tower of commerce, the very navel of the commercial enterprise of the world,—­as all men now regarded him.  Nidderdale’s father, and Nidderdale himself, were, in the present condition of things, content with a very much less stringent bargain than that which they had endeavoured at first to exact.

But, in the midst of all this, Marie, who had at one...