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Updated: May 8, 2025
But Fisker had not been two days in London before he went out to Hampstead, and was admitted to Madame Melmotte's presence, and he had not been there four days before he was aware that in spite of all misfortunes, Marie Melmotte was still the undoubted possessor of a large fortune.
Fisker was not only unscrupulous himself, but he had a thorough contempt for scruples in others. According to his theory of life, nine hundred and ninety-nine men were obscure because of their scruples, whilst the thousandth man predominated and cropped up into the splendour of commercial wealth because he was free from such bondage. He had his own theories, too, as to commercial honesty.
'I don't think much of you as a book-keeper, you know, Fisker said to Miles Grendall in the now almost deserted Board-room of the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway. Miles, remembering his father's advice, answered not a word, but merely looked with assumed amazement at the impertinent stranger who dared thus to censure his performances.
Then they returned to their lodgings, and Mr Fisker, before he went back to London, mixed a little warm brandy-and-water for Madame Melmotte. I think that upon the whole Madame Melmotte was more comfortable at Hampstead than she had been either in Grosvenor Square or Bruton Street, although she was certainly not a thing beautiful to look at in her widow's weeds.
The writer of the present chronicle may so far look forward, carrying his reader with him, as to declare that Marie Melmotte did become Mrs Fisker very soon after her arrival at San Francisco.
What could she do with her money, and in what way would she shape her life, should she determine to remain her own mistress? Were she to refuse Fisker how should she begin? He would then be banished, and her only remaining friends, the only persons whose names she would even know in her own country, would be her father's widow and Herr Croll.
Fisker was, of course, going on to San Francisco. Marie also had talked of crossing the American continent. But Madame Melmotte was disposed to think that for her, with her jewels, and such share of the money as Marie might be induced to give her, New York would be the most fitting residence. Why should she drag herself across the continent to California?
To Madame Melmotte's thinking, Fisker was the finest gentleman she had ever met, so infinitely pleasanter in his manner than Lord Alfred even when Lord Alfred had been most gracious, with so much more to say for himself than Miles Grendall, understanding her so much better than any man had ever done, especially when he supplied her with those small warm beakers of sweet brandy-and-water.
But she could not comprehend why Marie should claim all the money as her own. She declared herself to be quite willing to divide the spoil, and suggested such an arrangement both to Marie and to Croll. Of Fisker she was afraid, thinking that the iniquity of giving all the money to Marie originated with him, in order that he might obtain it by marrying the girl.
She was a woman of very few words, and had spoken almost none on this occasion even to her own daughter; but when Fisker came to her, and told her more than she had ever known before of her husband's affairs, and spoke to her of her future life, and mixed for her a small glass of brandy-and-water warm, and told her that Frisco would be the fittest place for her future residence, she certainly did not find him to be intrusive.
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