'How well you dance,' said Sir Felix, as soon as he had breath for speaking.
'Do I?' She spoke with a slightly foreign accent, which gave a little prettiness to her speech. 'I was never told so. But nobody ever told me anything about myself.'
'I should like to tell you everything about yourself, from the beginning to the end.'
'Ah,--but you don't know.'
'I would find out. I think I could make some good guesses. I'll tell you what you would like best in all the world.'
'What is that?'
'Somebody that liked you best in all the world.'
'Ah,--yes; if one knew who?'
'How can you know, Miss Melmotte, but by believing?'
'That is not the way to know. If a girl told me that she liked me better than any other girl, I should not know it, just because she said so. I should have to find it out.'
'And if a gentleman told you so?'
'I shouldn't believe him a bit, and I should not care to find out. But I should like to have some girl for a friend whom I could love, oh, ten times better than myself.'
'So should I.'
'Have you no particular friend?'
'I mean a girl whom I could love,--oh, ten times better than myself.'
'Now you are laughing at me, Sir Felix,' said Miss Melmotte.
'I wonder whether that will come to anything?' said Paul Montague to Miss Carbury. They had come back into the drawing-room, and had been watching the approaches to love-making which the baronet was opening.
'You mean Felix and Miss Melmotte. I hate to think of such things, Mr Montague.'
'It would be a magnificent chance for him.'
'To marry a girl, the daughter of vulgar people, just because she will have a great deal of money? He can't care for her really,--because she is rich.'
'But he wants money so dreadfully! It seems to me that there is no other condition of things under which Felix can face the world, but by being the husband of an heiress.'
'What a dreadful thing to say!'
'But isn't it true? He has beggared himself.'
'Oh, Mr Montague.'
'And he will beggar you and your mother.'
'I don't care about myself.'
'Others do though.' As he said this he did not look at her, but spoke through his teeth, as if he were angry both with himself and her.
'I did not think you would have spoken so harshly of Felix.'