"They look well," Beau Bufton said, while assuming the cynical smile which he practised in private, so that it should not fail him when required in public. "They give their possessor an air of sumptuousness. To draw one out 'twixt thumb and finger from a well-gallooned waistcoat, and present it to, say, Ariadne's tiring maid, or some scurvy groom, bespeaks wealth and ease. So, so. 'Tis very well." Then he fell to counting the guineas and half-guineas which he had also tumbled out of the silken purse, though, as he did so, his chin seemed to grow longer. "Humph!" he muttered, "seventy-nine guineas in all. Devilish little. I thought there had been more. And where are more to be gotten? Seventy-nine guineas---- Come in!" he cried, breaking off. Come in!"--a knock being heard at the door, Yet, even as he did so, he thrust a copy of the _Universal Chronicle_ over the little heap, or, rather, endeavoured to do so. "The chink of money is always agreeable to the ears of the poor," said a man who now entered the room, "especially when those ears have learnt to discriminate 'twixt gold and baser metals. And how does the illustrious Beau Bufton find his health and spirits to-day?" The new-corner who asked this question was a man of about the same age as the Beau, neither of them being yet thirty, or within a year or so of it; yet, except in point of age, there was no similarity between them, for Bufton's clothes were of the newest and best--as why should they not be, since still the creditors were confiding; his ruffles and neck-lace were clean and expensive. But with the other man things were mighty different. His coat was cloth, 'tis true, but cloth well worn; his linen and his lace were, say, dingy; and his wig had had never a shilling spent on it at the curler's for many a long day. Also his spadroon stuck out two inches from its leathern scabbard and clinked against a heel that needed sadly the cobbler's aid. Nevertheless, he was a better-looking man than the Beau, in so far that his features were softly turned and much more manly. "Has't done it?" asked Bufton now, his dark eye roaming over the other's worn garments, and resting with extreme displeasure on the sight of his visitor's feet, which were lifted with an indifferent air on to a neighbouring chair, across which was thrown a scarlet cloak. "Has't done it, Granger?" "Ay! ay! She loves you, Algernon, as I do think. The letter is in her hands, and she awaits you in the lime-tree avenue. Thursday is the night. Fortunate man!" "You have rid post haste back?" "Post-haste! Ay, in the devil's chariot. A lumbering waggon thing from Portsmouth was my coach. A waggon lined with straw; and, for comrades, two of Knowles' sailors, drunk; a demirep; also a Jew who furnishes for the Press-gang. What travelling! What a sumptuous coach! I protest, Algy, you starve your jackal."