Highbourne Gardens was one of those London suburbs which contrive to preserve a faint aroma of gentility for many years after the real gentlefolk have left it. It had many old houses of the plain and specious order, inhabited a century ago by great London merchants. In the floors of these houses might be found vast beams of some foreign wood, hard enough to turn the keenest chisel; in the gardens at their backs were copper beeches, mulberry trees, and an occasional cedar of Lebanon. Modern London, with its vast invasion of mean streets, stopped respectfully before the proud exclusiveness of Highbourne Gardens. It was one of the last localities to have roads which were marked "Private," guarded by locked gates, and to employ watchmen in faded liveries, who dwelt in tiny sentry-boxes and at stated hours collected the letters of the residents. It was precisely the kind of neighbourhood for such a man as Archibold Masterman to make his first social experiment, and he was quick to recognise its advantages. Eagle House, Highbourne Gardens, was a thoroughly respectable address; if it did not convey the impression of social distinction, it clearly did imply solid competence, which was a good deal better. Jones, the well-known city tailor, lived there, and drove a pair of horses which any lord might envy; there were half a dozen brokers who kept as good tables as any man in London; and there was Loker, the famous manufacturer of soaps, whose rhymed advertisements met the eye in every railway-carriage. According to the views of Archibold Masterman, in his present stage of social enlightenment, these illustrious persons composed a real aristocracy of solid merit. Above all, there was in Highbourne Gardens a church, at which most of these prosperous persons were regular attendants, and Archibold Masterman was shrewd enough to see that such a church was admirably adapted to the plan of social advancement which he had in view. It was not an Episcopal church, it was true; but that scarcely mattered in a neighbourhood which was by long tradition Non-conformist. It was enough for him that it contained the people he wished most to know, and his first act on settling at Eagle House was to rent the most expensive pew in the church which then chanced to be at liberty. The day when he took possession of this pew was a red-letter day in his life. He was conscious that he was well-dressed, and that he and his family were favourably remarked. Loker, the soap manufacturer, took the collection in his aisle, and when Masterman put a new five-pound note upon the plate, he knew that he had created a sensation. When he left the church, Loker shook his hand with great cordiality, and from that hour his position was assured.