in these
days substantially-built houses do not pay. It could hardly have
been warm, for, to speak the truth, it was even yet not finished
throughout; and as for the size, though the drawing-room was a noble
apartment, consisting of a section of the whole house, with a corner
cut out for the staircase, it was very much cramped in its other
parts, and was made like a cherub, in this respect, that it had
no rear belonging to it. "But if you have no private fortune of
your own, you cannot have everything," as the countess observed
when Crosbie objected to the house because a closet under the
kitchen-stairs was to be assigned to him as his own dressing-room.

When the question of the house was first debated, Lady Amelia had
been anxious that St. John's Wood should be selected as the site, but
to this Crosbie had positively objected.

"I think you don't like St. John's Wood," Lady Amelia had said to
him somewhat sternly, thinking to awe him into a declaration that he
entertained no general enmity to the neighbourhood. But Crosbie was
not weak enough for this.

"No; I do not," he said. "I have always disliked it. It amounts to a
prejudice, I dare say. But if I were made to live here I am convinced
I should cut my throat in the first six months."

Lady Amelia had then drawn herself up, declaring her sorrow that her
house should be so hateful to him.

"Oh, dear, no," said he. "I like it very much for you, and enjoy
coming here of all things. I speak only of the effect which living
here myself would have upon me."

Lady Amelia was quite clever enough to understand it all; but she
had her sister's interest at heart, and therefore persevered in her
affectionate solicitude for her brother-in-law, giving up that point
as to St. John's Wood. Crosbie himself had wished to go to one of the
new Pimlico squares down near Vauxhall Bridge and the river, actuated
chiefly by consideration of the enormous distance lying between that
locality and the northern region in which Lady Amelia lived; but
to this Lady Alexandrina had objected strongly. If, indeed, they
could have achieved Eaton Square, or a street leading out of Eaton
Square,--if they could have crept on to the hem of the skirt of
Belgravia,--the bride would have been delighted. And at first she was
very nearly being taken in with the idea that such was the proposal
made to her. Her geographical knowledge of Pimlico had not been
perfect, and she had nearly fallen into a fatal