,« answered Lambourne,
»wherefore you have shown yourself so desirous to accompany me on this party?«
    »I told you my motive,« said Tressilian, »when I took share in your wager, -
it was simple curiosity.«
    »La you there now!« answered Lambourne: »see how you civil and discreet
gentlemen think to use us who live by the free exercise of our wits! Had I
answered your question by saying that it was simple curiosity which led me to
visit my old comrade Anthony Foster, I warrant you had set it down for an
evasion, and a turn of my trade. But any answer, I suppose, must serve my turn.«
    »And wherefore should not bare curiosity,« said Tressilian, »be a sufficient
reason for my taking this walk with you?«
    »Oh, content yourself, sir,« replied Lambourne; »you cannot put the change
on me so easy as you think, for I have lived among the quick-stirring spirits of
the age too long, to swallow chaff for grain. You are a gentleman of birth and
breeding - your bearing makes it good; of civil habits and fair reputation -
your manners declare it, and my uncle avouches it; and yet you associate
yourself with a sort of scant-of-grace, as men call me; and, knowing me to be
such, you make yourself my companion in a visit to a man whom you are a stranger
to, - and all out of mere curiosity, forsooth! - The excuse, if curiously
balanced, would be found to want some scruples of just weight, or so.«
    »If your suspicions were just,« said Tressilian, »you have shown no
confidence in me to invite or deserve mine.«
    »Oh, if that be all,« said Lambourne, »my motives lie above water. While
this gold of mine lasts,« - taking out his purse, chucking it into the air, and
catching it as it fell, - »I will make it buy pleasure, and when it is out, I
must have more. Now, if this mysterious Lady of the Manor - this fair
Lindabrides of Tony Fire-the-Fagot, be so admirable a piece as men say, why
there's chance that she may aid me to melt my nobles into groats; and, again, if
Anthony be so wealthy a chuff as report speaks him, he may prove the
philosopher's stone to me, and convert my groats into fair rose-nobles again.«
    »A