"Tush!" interrupted Lilburne, with some impatience; "I know not how our conversation fell on such a topic--but if you really ask my opinion in reference to any case in practical life, you shall have it. Look you, then Monsieur de Vaudemont, no man has studied the art of happiness more than I have; and I will tell you the great secret--have as few ties as possible. Nurse!--pooh! you or I could hire one by the week a thousand times more useful and careful than a bore of a child. Comforter!--a man of mind never wants comfort. And there is no such thing as sorrow while we have health and money, and don't care a straw for anybody in the world. If you choose to love people, their health and circumstances, if either go wrong, can fret you: that opens many avenues to pain. Never live alone, but always feel alone. You think this unamiable: possibly. I am no hypocrite, and, for my part, I never affect to be anything but what I am--John Lilburne." As the peer thus spoke, Vaudemont, leaning against the door, contemplated him with a strange mixture of interest and disgust. "And John Lilburne is thought a great man, and William Gawtrey was a great rogue. You don't conceal your heart?--no, I understand. Wealth and power have no need of hypocrisy: you are the man of vice--Gawtrey, the man of crime. You never sin against the law--he was a felon by his trade. And the felon saved from vice the child, and from want the grandchild (Your flesh and blood) whom you disown: which will Heaven consider the worse man? No, poor Fanny, I see I am wrong. If he would own you, I would not give you up to the ice of such a soul:--better the blind man than the dead heart!" "Well, Lord Lilburne," said De Vaudemont aloud, shaking off his reverie, "I must own that your philosophy seems to me the wisest for yourself. For a poor man it might be different--the poor need affection." "Ay, the poor, certainly," said Lord Lilburne, with an air of patronising candour. "And I will own farther," continued De Vaudemont, "that I have willingly lost my money in return for the instruction I have received in hearing you converse." "You are kind: come and take your revenge next Thursday. Adieu." As Lord Lilburne undressed, and his valet attended him, he said to that worthy functionary,-- "So you have not been able to make out the name of the stranger--the new lodger you tell me of?" "No, my lord. They only say he is a very fine-looking man." "You have not seen him?" "No, my lord. What do you wish me now to do?"