In one corner was an ingenious receptacle for canes, sticks, and whips--I should not like, in these bad times, to have paid the bill for them;--and, mounting guard by that receptacle, stood a pair of boots as bright as Baron Levy's--"the force of brightness could no further go." Frank was in his dressing-gown--very good taste--quite Oriental--guaranteed to be true India cachmere, and charged as such. Nothing could be more neat, though perfectly simple, than the appurtenances of his breakfast-table;--silver tea-pot, ewer and basin--all fitting into his dressing-box--(for the which may Storr and Mortimer be now praised, and some day paid!) Frank looked very handsome--rather tired, and exceedingly bored. He had been trying to read the _Morning Post_, but the effort had proved too much for him. Poor dear Frank Hazeldean!--true type of many a poor dear fellow who has long since gone to the dogs. And if, in this road to ruin, there had been the least thing to do the traveller any credit by the way! One feels a respect for the ruin of a man like Audley Egerton. He is ruined _en roi!_ From the wrecks of his fortune he can look down and see stately monuments built from the stones of that dismantled edifice. In every institution which attests the humanity of England, was a record of the princely bounty of the public man. In those objects of party, for which the proverbial sinews of war are necessary--in those rewards for service, which private liberality can confer--the hand of Egerton had been opened as with the heart of a king. Many a rising member of Parliament, in those days when talent was brought forward through the aid of wealth and rank, owed his career to the seat which Audley Egerton's large subscription had secured to him; many an obscure supporter in letters and the press looked back to the day when he had been freed from the gaol by the gratitude of the patron. The city he represented was embellished at his cost; through the shire that held his mortgaged lands, which he had rarely ever visited, his gold had flowed as a Pactolus; all that could animate its public spirit, or increase its civilisation, claimed kindred with his munificence, and never had a claim disallowed. Even in his grand careless household, with its large retinue and superb hospitality, there was something worthy of a representative of that time-honoured portion of our true nobility--the untitled gentlemen of the land. The great commoner had, indeed, "something to show" for the money he had disdained and squandered. But for Frank Hazeldean's mode of getting rid of the dross, when gone, what would be left to tell the tale? Paltry prints in a bachelor's lodging; a collection of canes and cherry-sticks; half-a-dozen letters in ill-spelt French from a _figurante_; some long-legged horses, fit for nothing but to lose a race; that damnable Betting-Book; and--_sic transit gloria_--down sweeps some hawk of a Levy, on the wings of an I O U, and not a feather is left of the pigeon!