ent, more than a certain portion of his fortune--the
rest of his undoing Saville left to his satellites; nay, even those who
had in reality most reason to complain of him, never perceived his due
share in their impoverishment. It was common enough to hear men say,
"Ah! Saville, I wish I had taken your advice, and left off while I had
yet half my fortune!" They did not accurately heed that the first half
was Saville's; because the first half had excited, not ruined them.

Besides this method of making money, so strictly social, Saville had
also applied his keen intellect and shrewd sense to other speculations.
Cheap houses, cheap horses, fluctuations in the funds, all descriptions
of property (except perhaps stolen goods), had passed under his earnest
attention; and in most cases, such speculations had eminently succeeded.
He was therefore now, in his middle age, and still unmarried, a man
decidedly wealthy; having, without ever playing miser, without ever
stinting a luxury, or denying a wish, turned nothing into something,
poverty into opulence.

It was noon; and Saville was slowly finishing his morning repast, and
conversing with a young man stretched on a sofa opposite in a listless
attitude. The room was in perfect keeping with the owner: there was
neither velvet, nor gilding, nor buhl, nor marquetrie--all of which
would have been inconsistent with the moderate size of the apartment.
But the furniture was new, massive, costly, and luxurious without the
ostentation of luxury. A few good pictures, and several exquisite busts
and figures in bronze, upon marble pedestals, gave something classic and
graceful to the aspect of the room. Annexed to the back drawing-room,
looking over Lord Chesterfield's gardens, a small conservatory, filled
with rich exotics, made the only feature in the apartment that might
have seemed, to a fastidious person, effeminate or unduly voluptuous.

Saville himself was about forty-seven years of age: of a person slight
and thin, without being emaciated: a not ungraceful, though habitual
stoop, diminished his height, which might be a little above the ordinary
standard. In his youth he had been handsome; but in his person there was
now little trace of any attraction beyond that of a manner remarkably
soft and insinuating: yet in his narrow though high forehead--his sharp
aquiline nose, grey eye, and slightly sarcastic curve of lip, something
of his character betrayed itself. You saw, or fancied yo