What could three or four thousand a year, or even five or six, matter to a man like Melmotte? It was thus that Sir Felix looked at it. When a man can hardly count his millions he ought not to ask questions about trifling sums of money. But the question had been asked, and the asking of such a question was no doubt within the prerogative of a proposed father-in-law. At any rate, it must be answered. For a moment it occurred to Sir Felix that he might conveniently tell the truth. It would be nasty for the moment, but there would be nothing to come after. Were he to do so he could not be dragged down lower and lower into the mire by cross-examinings. There might be an end of all his hopes, but there would at the same time be an end of all his misery. But he lacked the necessary courage. 'It isn't a large property, you know,' he said.
'Not like the Marquis of Westminster's, I suppose,' said the horrid, big, rich scoundrel.
'No;--not quite like that,' said Sir Felix, with a sickly laugh.
'But you have got enough to support a baronet's title?'
'That depends on how you want to support it,' said Sir Felix, putting off the evil day.
'Where's your family seat?'
'Carbury Manor, down in Suffolk, near the Longestaffes, is the old family place.'
'That doesn't belong to you,' said Melmotte, very sharply.
'No; not yet. But I'm the heir.'
Perhaps if there is one thing in England more difficult than another to be understood by men born and bred out of England, it is the system under which titles and property descend together, or in various lines. The jurisdiction of our Courts of Law is complex, and so is the business of Parliament. But the rules regulating them, though anomalous, are easy to the memory compared with the mixed anomalies of the peerage and primogeniture. They who are brought up among it, learn it as children do a language, but strangers who begin the study in advanced life, seldom make themselves perfect in it. It was everything to Melmotte that he should understand the ways of the country which he had adopted; and when he did not understand, he was clever at hiding his ignorance. Now he was puzzled. He knew that Sir Felix was a baronet, and therefore presumed him to be the head of the family. He knew that Carbury Manor belonged to Roger Carbury, and he judged by the name it must be an old family property. And now the baronet declared that he was heir to the man who was simply an Esquire. 'Oh, the heir are you? But how did he get it before you? You're the head of the family?'