'Mr who?' The name was not at first familiar to Mr Longestaffe.
'Mr Brehgert.' Lady Monogram looked at her friend. 'I hope I'm not revealing any secret.'
'I don't understand anything about it,' said Mr Longestaffe. 'Georgiana, who is Mr Brehgert?' He had understood very much. He had been quite certain from Lady Monogram's manner and words, and also from his daughter's face, that Mr Brehgert was mentioned as an accepted lover. Lady Monogram had meant that it should be so, and any father would have understood her tone. As she said afterwards to Sir Damask, she was not going to have that Jew there at her house as Georgiana Longestaffe's accepted lover without Mr Longestaffe's knowledge.
'My dear Georgiana,' she said, 'I supposed your father knew all about it.'
'I know nothing. Georgiana, I hate a mystery. I insist upon knowing. Who is Mr Brehgert, Lady Monogram?'
'Mr Brehgert is a--very wealthy gentleman. That is all I know of him. Perhaps, Georgiana, you will be glad to be alone with your father.' And Lady Monogram left the room.
Was there ever cruelty equal to this! But now the poor girl was forced to speak,--though she could not speak as boldly as she had written. 'Papa, I wrote to mamma this morning, and Mr Brehgert was to come to you to-morrow.'
'Do you mean that you are engaged to marry him?'
'Yes, papa.'
'What Mr Brehgert is he?'
'He is a merchant.'
'You can't mean the fat Jew whom I've met with Mr Melmotte;--a man old enough to be your father!' The poor girl's condition now was certainly lamentable. The fat Jew, old enough to be her father, was the very man she did mean. She thought that she would try to brazen it out with her father. But at the present moment she had been so cowed by the manner in which the subject had been introduced that she did not know how to begin to be bold. She only looked at him as though imploring him to spare her. 'Is the man a Jew?' demanded Mr Longestaffe, with as much thunder as he knew how to throw into his voice.
'Yes, papa,' she said.
'He is that fat man?'
'Yes, papa.'
'And nearly as old as I am?'
'No, papa,--not nearly as old as you are. He is fifty.'
'And a Jew?' He again asked the horrid question, and again threw in the thunder. On this occasion she condescended to make no further reply. 'If you do, you shall do it as an alien from my house. I certainly will never see him. Tell him not to come to me, for I certainly will not speak to him. You are degraded and disgraced; but you shall not degrade and disgrace me and your mother and sister.'