HAROLD JERNINGHAM lived in Park Lane. To say this, and to say in addition to this that it was his privilege to inhabit a snug little bachelor dwelling, with bay-windows from the roof to the basement, is to say that he was one of those favoured beings for whom this world must needs be a terrestrial paradise. There are mansions in Park Lane, stately and gigantic--mansions with lofty picture-galleries, and staircases of polished marble, and conservatories which roof-in small forests of tropical verdure: but the glory of this western Eden lies not in them. Are there not mansions in Belgravia and Tyburnia, in Piccadilly and Mayfair? Palaces are common enough in this western hemisphere, and the roturier may find one ready for his occupation, seek it when he will. But it is only in Park Lane that those delicious little bachelor snuggeries are to be found, those enchanting toy-houses, “too small to live in, and too big to hang at your watch-chain,” as Lord Hervey said of the Duke’s cottage at Chiswick--those irregular little edifices, with bow-windows, and balconies, and miniature conservatories breaking out in every direction, and with a perfume of the country still about them. The house which Harold Jerningham occupied when he favoured the metropolis by his presence was one of the most enchanting of these enviable habitations. The house had been a pretty old-fashioned cottage with bow-windows, when Mr. Jerningham took it in hand, but in his possession it had undergone considerable change. He had transformed the rustic bows into deep roomy bays, and had thrown out balconies of iron scroll-work, whereon there flourished bright masses of flowers, and ferns, and mosses, amidst which no eye save that of the nurseryman’s minions ever beheld a faded leaf. He had built mysterious and spacious chambers at the back of the small dwelling, on ground that had once been a garden; and beyond these chambers you came suddenly upon a shady quadrangle roofed-in with glass, where there was a wonderful tesselated pavement, which had been transported bodily from a chamber in Pompeii, and where there were ferns and cool grasses, and a porphyry basin of water-lilies, and the perpetual plashing of a fountain.