This was the new metropolitan disease Trollope set out to brilliantly expose in The Way We Live Now . His milieux are the Citys financial institutions, Londons exclusive West End squares and drones clubs populated by, languorous aristocrats, all offering rich pickings for the unscrupulous speculator, whether in the marriage or the money market. Among the unscrupulous are the hack-writer Lady Carbury, or her son Felix and, above all, Melmotte, a financier of uncertain origins and Napoleonic ruthlessness, energy and charm, whose dramatic rise and fall dominates the novel.