re before the system; my death is
the herald of its fall."

With these expressions--not continuously uttered, but at short
intervals--Saville turned away his face: his breathing became thick:
he fell into the slumber he had deprecated; and, after about an hour's
silence, died away as insensibly as an infant. Sic transit glories
mundi!

The first living countenance beside the death-bed on which Godolphin's
eye fell was that of Fanny Millinger; she (who had been much with
Saville during his latter days, for her talk amused him, and her
good-nature made her willing to amuse any one) had been, at his request,
summoned also with Godolphin at the sudden turn of his disease. She was
at the theatre at the time, and had only just arrived when the deceased
had fallen into his last sleep. There, silent and shocked, she stood
by the bed, opposite Godolphin. She had not stayed to change her
stage-dress; and the tinsel and mock jewels glittered on the revolted
eye of her quondam lover. What a type of the life just extinguished!
What a satire on its mountebank artificialities!

Some little time after, she joined Godolphin in the desolate
apartment below. She put her hand in his, and her tears--for she wept
easily--flowed fast down her cheeks, washing away the lavish rouge which
imperfectly masked the wrinkles that Time had lately begun to sow on a
surface Godolphin had remembered so fair and smooth.

"Poor Saville!" said she, falteringly; "he died without a pang. Ah! he
had the best temper possible."

Godolphin sat by the writing-table of the deceased, shading his brow
with the hand which the actress left disengaged.

"Fanny," said he, bitterly, after a pause, "the world is indeed a stage.
It has lost a consummate actor, though in a small part."

The saying was wrung from Godolphin--and was not said unkindly, though
it seemed so--for he too had tears in his eyes.

"Ah," said she, "the play-house has indeed taught us, in our youth, many
things which the real world could not teach us better."

"Life differs from the play only in this," said Godolphin, some time
afterwards; "it has no plot--all is vague, desultory, unconnected--till
the curtain drops with the mystery unsolved."

Those were the last words that Godolphin ever addressed to the actress.

CHAPTER LXVI.

THE JOURNEY AND THE SURPRISE.--A WALK IN THE SUMMER NIGHT.--THE STARS
AND THE ASSOCIATION THAT MEMORY MAKES WITH NATURE.

This event detained Godolphin s