’I’ve got nothing to speak.  People say that he is about the richest man alive.’

‘He lives as though he were.’

’I don’t see why it shouldn’t be all true.  Nobody, I take it, knows very much about him.’

When his companion had left him, Nidderdale sat down, thinking of it all.  It occurred to him that he would ‘be coming a cropper rather,’ were he to marry Melmotte’s daughter for her money, and then find that she had got none.

A little later in the evening he invited Montague to go up to the card-room.  ’Carbury, and Grasslough, and Dolly Longestaffe are there waiting,’ he said.  But Paul declined.  He was too full of his troubles for play.  ‘Poor Miles isn...