nst the law--he was a felon by his trade. And
the felon saved from vice the child, and from want the grandchild (Your
flesh and blood) whom you disown: which will Heaven consider the worse
man? No, poor Fanny, I see I am wrong. If he would own you, I would not
give you up to the ice of such a soul:--better the blind man than the
dead heart!"

"Well, Lord Lilburne," said De Vaudemont aloud, shaking off his reverie,
"I must own that your philosophy seems to me the wisest for yourself.
For a poor man it might be different--the poor need affection."

"Ay, the poor, certainly," said Lord Lilburne, with an air of
patronising candour.

"And I will own farther," continued De Vaudemont, "that I have willingly
lost my money in return for the instruction I have received in hearing
you converse."

"You are kind: come and take your revenge next Thursday. Adieu."

As Lord Lilburne undressed, and his valet attended him, he said to that
worthy functionary,--

"So you have not been able to make out the name of the stranger--the new
lodger you tell me of?"

"No, my lord. They only say he is a very fine-looking man."

"You have not seen him?"

"No, my lord. What do you wish me now to do?"

"Humph! Nothing at this moment! You manage things so badly, you might
get me into a scrape. I never do anything which the law or the police,
or even the news papers, can get hold of. I must think of some other
way--humph! I never give up what I once commence, and I never fail
in what I undertake! If life had been worth what fools trouble it
with--business and ambition--I suppose I should have been a great man
with a very bad liver--ha ha! I alone, of all the world, ever found out
what the world was good for! Draw the curtains, Dykeman."

CHAPTER VII.

"Org. Welcome, thou ice that sitt'st about his heart
No heat can ever thaw thee!"--FORD: Broken Heart.

"Nearch. Honourable infamy!"--Ibid.

"Amye. Her tenderness hath yet deserved no rigour,
So to be crossed by fate!"

"Arm. You misapply, sir,
With favour let me speak it, what Apollo
Hath clouded in dim sense!"--Ibid.

If Vaudemont had fancied that, considering the age and poverty of Simon,
it was his duty to see whether Fanny's not more legal, but more natural
protector were, indeed, the unredeemed and unmalleable egotist which
Gawtrey had painted him, the conversation of one night was sufficient to
make him abandon for ever the notion o