However, not to digress, I had not seen so much of Uncle Jocelyn since I had grown up, partly on account of my mother's unabated dislike to him, partly because of the existence of a new interest in life. I had met Henry Arden. He was six-and-twenty, five years my senior. His position in life was a fairly good one, he having a small interest in a first-rate City business which gave him over three hundred a year; his character was irreproachable; and when I say that he was a general favourite wherever he went, it may be surmised that in my opinion he was, if not quite perfect, very closely akin to it. For myself I was passable--perhaps a little more than that; but I was penniless until my mother died; so it was a very astonishing thing to me how so desirable a _parti_ had fallen to my lot. He was certain to get on; the senior partners had been known to say so themselves. Consequently our start in life promised to be a fair one. And to be brief, we were married. Our honeymoon was of comparatively short duration, but it was long enough to cost Henry, as I afterwards learned, something like forty pounds, which was a considerable cut out of three hundred a year; for it had not occurred to him to lay by any spare cash for those unavoidable expenses. I had felt rather uneasy at the expenditure; but it was too early days to venture on any remonstrance, had I been so inclined; we were sure to live very quietly when we once settled down, and could easily then make up for any little extravagance of which at the outset we had been guilty. We were to live in London, and we were fully agreed on one point--lodgings were not to be thought of, we must have a house of our own. The prospect of possessing one jointly with Henry was very pleasant to me. I pictured an endless fund of amusement and occupation too, in furnishing and adorning it; but the mansion had still to be selected; so our first business was to find one to suit us, the next to get into it as soon as possible. We must have spent a small fortune in cab-hire before we finally found just what we wanted; even then, though the situation was good and the domicile desirable, the rent rather frightened us: it was eighty guineas a year unfurnished; but we should be so comfortable in it. The smallness of its size--and it was extremely small--was rather an advantage than otherwise, as it would require so little furniture; and two maids would be amply sufficient for our establishment, which in such a place would be a most creditable _ménage_.