’There will be no feeding.  Felix, you are so heartless and so cruel that I sometimes think I will make up my mind to let you go your own way and never to speak to you again.  My friends will be here about ten;—­I should say from ten till twelve.  I think you should be here to receive her, not later than ten.’

‘If I can get my dinner out of my throat by that time, I will come.’

When the Tuesday came, the over-driven young man did contrive to get his dinner eaten, and his glass of brandy sipped, and his cigar smoked, and perhaps his game of billiards played, so as to present himself in his mother’s drawing-room not long after half-past ten.  Madame Melmotte and her daughter were already there,—­...