He was therefore now, in his middle age, and still unmarried, a man
decidedly wealthy; having, without ever playing miser, without ever
stinting a luxury, or denying a wish, turned nothing into something,
poverty into opulence.

It was noon; and Saville was slowly finishing his morning repast, and
conversing with a young man stretched on a sofa opposite in a listless
attitude. The room was in perfect keeping with the owner: there was
neither velvet, nor gilding, nor buhl, nor marquetrie--all of which would
have been inconsistent with the moderate size of the apartment. But the
furniture was new, massive, costly, and luxurious without the ostentation
of luxury. A few good pictures, and several exquisite busts and figures
in bronze, upon marble pedestals, gave something classic and graceful to
the aspect of the room. Annexed to the back drawing-room, looking over
Lord Chesterfield's gardens, a small conservatory, filled with rich
exotics, made the only feature in the apartment that might have seemed, to
a fastidious person, effeminate or unduly voluptuous.

Saville himself was about forty-seven years of age: of a person slight and
thin, without being emaciated: a not ungraceful, though habitual stoop,
diminished his height, which might be a little above the ordinary
standard. In his youth he had been handsome; but in his person there was
now little trace of any attraction beyond that of a manner remarkably soft
and insinuating: yet in his narrow though high forehead--his sharp
aquiline nose, grey eye, and slightly sarcastic curve of lip, something of
his character betrayed itself. You saw, or fancied you saw in them the
shrewdness, the delicacy of tact; the consciousness of duping others; the
subtle and intuitive, yet bland and noiseless penetration into the
characters around him, which made the prominent features of his mind.
And, indeed, of all qualities, dissimulation is that which betrays itself