ual, because
he has not to put himself out of his way in the comradeship. Lord
Falconer rattled on, as they drove along the brilliant streets, through
a thousand topics, of which Godolphin heard as much as he pleased; and
Falconer was of that age and those spirits when a listener may be easily
dispensed with.

They arrived at a little villa at Brompton: there was a little garden
round it, and a little bower in one corner, all kept excessively neat;
and the outside of the house had just been painted white from top to
bottom; and there was a veranda to the house; and the windows were
plate-glass, with mahogany sashes--only, here and there, a Gothic
casement was stuck in by way of looking "tasty;" and through one window
on the ground-floor, the lights shining within, showed crimson silk and
gilded chairs, and all sorts of finery--Louis Quatorze in a nutshell!
The reader knows the sort of house as well as if he had lived in it.
Ladies of Fanny Millinger's turn of mind always choose the same kind of
habitation. It is astonishing what a unanimity of taste they have; and
young men about town call it "taste" too, and imitate the fashion in
their own little tusculums in Chapel street.

After having threaded a Gothic hall four feet by eight and an oval
conservatory with a river-god in the middle, the two visitors found
themselves in the presence of Fanny Millinger.

Godolphin had certainly felt no small curiosity to see again the frank,
fair, laughing face which had shone on his boyhood, and his mind ran
busily back to that summer evening when, with a pulse how different from
its present languid tenor, and a heart burning with ardour and the pride
of novel independence, the young adventurer first sallied on the world.
He drew back involuntarily as he now gazed on the actress: she had kept
the promise of her youth, and grown round and full in her proportions.
She was extravagantly dressed, but not with an ungraceful, although a
theatrical choice: her fair hands and arms were covered with jewels,
and that indescribable air which betrays the stage was far more visibly
marked in her deportment than when Godolphin first knew her; yet
still there was the same freedom as of old, the same joyousness, and
good-humoured carelessness in her manner, and in the silver ring of
her voice as she greeted Falconer, and turned to question him as to his
friend. Godolphin dropped his cloak, and the next moment, with a pretty
scream, quite stage-ef