They arrived at a little villa at Brompton: there was a little garden round it, and a little bower in one corner, all kept excessively neat; and the outside of the house had just been painted white from top to bottom; and there was a veranda to the house; and the windows were plate-glass, with mahogany sashes--only, here and there, a Gothic casement was stuck in by way of looking “tasty;” and through one window on the ground-floor, the lights shining within, showed crimson silk and gilded chairs, and all sorts of finery--Louis Quatorze in a nutshell! The reader knows the sort of house as well as if he had lived in it. Ladies of Fanny Millinger’s turn of mind always choose the same kind of habitation. It is astonishing what a unanimity of taste they have; and young men about town call it “taste” too, and imitate the fashion in their own little tusculums in Chapel street. After having threaded a Gothic hall four feet by eight and an oval conservatory with a river-god in the middle, the two visitors found themselves in the presence of Fanny Millinger. Godolphin had certainly felt no small curiosity to see again the frank, fair, laughing face which had shone on his boyhood, and his mind ran busily back to that summer evening when, with a pulse how different from its present languid tenor, and a heart burning with ardour and the pride of novel independence, the young adventurer first sallied on the world. He drew back involuntarily as he now gazed on the actress: she had kept the promise of her youth, and grown round and full in her proportions. She was extravagantly dressed, but not with an ungraceful, although a theatrical choice: her fair hands and arms were covered with jewels, and that indescribable air which betrays the stage was far more visibly marked in her deportment than when Godolphin first knew her; yet still there was the same freedom as of old, the same joyousness, and good-humoured carelessness in her manner, and in the silver ring of her voice as she greeted Falconer, and turned to question him as to his friend. Godolphin dropped his cloak, and the next moment, with a pretty scream, quite stage-effect, and yet quite natural, the actress had thrown herself into his arms. “Oh! but I forgot,” said she presently, with a mock salutation of respect, “you are married now; there will be no more cakes and ale. Ah! what long years since we met; yet I have never quite forgotten you, although the stage requires all one’s memory for one’s new parts. Alas! your hair--it was so beautiful, it has lost half its curl, and grown thin. Very rude in me to say so, but I always speak the truth, and my heart warms to see you, so all its thoughts thaw out.” “Well,” said Lord Falconer, who had been playing with a little muffy sort of dog, “you’ll recollect me presently.” “You! Oh! one never thinks of you, except when you speak, and then one recollects you--to look at the clock.”