the spurious magnificence that subsists so handsomely upon bills endorsed
by friends of "great expectations."

The minister and his protege were seated at breakfast, the first reading
the newspaper, the last glancing over his letters; for Randal had arrived
to the dignity of receiving many letters,--ay, and notes, too, three-
cornered and fantastically embossed. Egerton uttered an exclamation, and
laid down the newspaper. Randal looked up from his correspondence. The
minister had sunk into one of his absent reveries.

After a long silence, observing that Egerton did not return to the
newspaper, Randal said, "Ahem, sir, I have a note from Frank Hazeldean,
who wants much to see me; his father has arrived in town unexpectedly."

"What brings him here?" asked Egerton, still abstractedly. "Why, it
seems that he has heard some vague reports of poor Frank's extravagance,
and Frank is rather afraid or ashamed to meet him."

"Ay, a very great fault, extravagance in the young!--destroys
independence; ruins or enslaves the future. Great fault,--very!
And what does youth want that it should be extravagant? Has it not
everything in itself, merely because it is? Youth is youth--what needs
it more?"

Egerton rose as he said this, and retired to his writing-table, and in
his turn opened his correspondence. Randal took up the newspaper, and
endeavoured, but in vain, to conjecture what had excited the minister's
exclamations and the revery that succeeded it.

Egerton suddenly and sharply turned round in his chair--"If you have done