n't see, that
it is well worth nine. Sad times,--sad times: jobs from the crown are
growing scarcer every day, Mr. Saville."

"Humph! that's all a chance, a speculation. Times are bad indeed, as
you say: no money in the market; go, Glosson; offer him five; your
percentage shall be one per cent. higher than if I pay six thousand, and
shall be counted up to the latter sum."

"He! he! he! sir!" grinned Glosson; "you are fond of your joke, Mr.
Saville."

"Well, now; what else in the market? never mind my friend: Mr.
Godolphin--Mr. Glosson; now all gene is over; proceed,--proceed."

Glosson hummed, and bowed, and hummed again, and then glided on to speak
of houses, and crown lands, and properties in Wales, and places at court
(for some of the subordinate posts at the palace were then--perhaps are
now--regular matter of barter); and Saville, bending over the table,
with his thin delicate hands clasped intently, and his brow denoting his
interest, and his sharp shrewd eye fixed on the agent, furnished to
the contemplative Godolphin a picture which he did not fail to note, to
moralise on, to despise!

What a spectacle is that of the prodigal rake, hardening and sharpening
into the grasping speculator!

CHAPTER XX.

FANNY MILLINGER ONCE MORE.--LOVE.--WOMAN.--BOOKS.--A HUNDRED TOPICS
TOUCHED ON THE SURFACE.--GODOLPHIN'S STATE OF MIND MORE MINUTELY
EXAMINED.--THE DINNER AT SAVILLE'S.

Godolphin went to see and converse with Fanny Millinger.

She was still unmarried, and still the fashion. There was a sort of
allegory of real life, in the manner in which, at certain epochs,
our Idealist was brought into contact with the fair actress of ideal
creations. There was, in short, something of a moral in the way these
two streams of existence--the one belonging to the Actual, the other to
the Imaginary--flowed on, crossing each other at stated times. Which
was the more really imaginative--the life of the stage, or that of the
world's stage? The gay Fanny was rejoiced to welcome back again her
early lover. She ran on, talking of a thousand topics, without remarking
the absent mind and musing eye of Godolphin, till he himself stopped her
somewhat abruptly:--

"Well, Fanny, well, and what do you know of Saville? You have grown
intimate with him, eh? We shall meet at his house this evening."

"Oh, yes, he is a charming person in his little way; and the only man
who allows me to be a friend without dreaming of becoming a lov