rits of the age too long, to swallow chaff for grain. You are a gentleman of birth and breeding—your bearing makes it good; of civil habits and fair reputation—your manners declare it, and my uncle avouches it; and yet you associate yourself with a sort of scant-of-grace, as men call me; and, knowing me to be such, you make yourself my companion in a visit to a man whom you are a stranger to,—and all out of mere curiosity, forsooth!—The excuse, if curiously balanced, would be found to want some scruples of just weight, or so.”
“If your suspicions were just,” said Tressilian, “you have shown no confidence in me to invite or deserve mine.”
“O, if that be all,” said Lambourne, “my motives lie above water. While this gold of mine lasts,”—taking out his purse, chucking it into the air, and catching it as it fell,—“I will make it buy pleasure, and when it is out, I must have more. Now, if this mysterious Lady of the Manor—this fair Lindabrides of Tony Fire-the-Fagot—be so admirable a piece as men say, why, there is chance that she may aid me to melt my nobles into groats; and, again, if Anthony be so wealthy a chuff as report speaks him, he may prove the philosopher’s stone to me, and convert my groats into fair rose-nobles again.”
“A comfortable proposal truly,” said Tressilian; “but I see not what chance there is of accomplishing it.”
“Not to-day, or perchance to-morrow,” answered Lambourne; “I expect not to catch the old jack
