Falconer rattled on, as they drove along the brilliant streets, through a
thousand topics, of which Godolphin heard as much as he pleased; and
Falconer was of that age and those spirits when a listener may be easily
dispensed with.

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.