now find
I can bear your satire better, at least, than your wine."

Fanny was all bustle: it is in these things that the actress
differs from the lady--there is no quiet in her. "Another bottle of
champagne:--what can have happened to this?" Poor Fanny was absolutely
pained. Saville enjoyed it, for he always revenged a jest by an
impertinence.

"Nay," said Godolphin, "our friend does but joke. Your champagne is
excellent, Fanny. Well, Saville, and where is young Greenhough? He is
vanished. Report says he was marked down in your company, and has not
risen since."

"Report is the civilest jade in the world. According to her all the
pigeons disappear in my fields. But, seriously speaking, Greenhough is
off--gone to America--over head and ears in debt--debts of honor. Now,"
said Saville, very slowly, "there's the difference between the gentleman
and the parvenu; the gentleman, when all is lost, cuts his throat: the
parvenu only cuts his creditors. I am really very angry with Greenhough
that he did not destroy himself. A young man under my protection and
all: so d----d ungrateful in him."

"He was not much in your debt--eh?" said Lord Falconer, speaking for the
first time as the wine began to get into his head.

Saville looked hard at the speaker.

"Lord Falconer, a pinch of snuff: there is something singularly happy
in your question; so much to the point: you have great knowledge of the
world--great. He was very much in my debt. I introduced the vulgar dog
into the world, and he owes me all the thousands he had the Honor to
lose in good society!"

"Do you know, Percy," continued Saville, "do you know, by the way, that
my poor dear friend Jasmin is dead? died after a hearty game of whist.
He had just time to cry 'four by honours' when death trumped him. It was
a great shock to me: he was the second best player at Graham's. Those
sudden deaths are very awful--especially with the game in one's hands."

"Very mortifying, indeed," seriously said Lord Falconer, who had just
been initiated into whist.

"'Tis droll," said Saville, "to see how often the last words of a man
tally with his life; 'tis like the moral to the fable. The best instance
I know is in Lord Chesterfield, whose fine soul went out in that sublime
and inimitable sentence--`Give Mr. Darrell a chair.'"

"Capital," cried Lord Falconer. "Saville, a game at ecarte."

As the lion in the Tower looked at the lapdog, so in all the compassion
of contempt looke