Little by little, step by step, had David Dundyke risen in the world. There had come a day when he was made a fourth partner in that famous tea-importing house, with which he had been so long connected. He was now the third partner, and his income was a large one. There had also come a day when he was elected a common councilman (I am not sure but this has been previously mentioned), and now the old longing, the height of his ambition, was really and truly dawning upon him. In the approaching autumn he was to be proposed for sheriff; and _that_, as we all know, leads in time to the civic chair. You will readily understand that it was not at all consistent for a partner in a wealthy tea house, and a common councilman rising into note and attending the civic feasts, to remain the tenant of two humble rooms. Mr. Dundyke had made a change long ago. He and his wife, clinging still to apartments, as being less trouble, and also less expense on the whole, had moved into handsome ones; and there they remained for some years. But the prospect of the shrievalty demanded something more; and latterly Mr. Dundyke had taken a handsome villa at Brixton, had furnished it well, and set himself up there with two maid servants and a footman. In some degree his old miserly habits were on him still, and he rarely spent where he could save, or launched into any extravagance unless he had an end in view in doing it; but he had never very much loved money for its own sake alone, only as means to an end. His great care, now that the glorious end was near, was to blazon forth his importance. He wanted the world (_his_ little world) to forget what he had been; to forget the pinching and saving, the poor way of living, the red-herring dinners, and the past in general. He did what he could to blot out the past in the present. He looked out for correspondents to address him as "esquire;" and he took to wear a ring with a crest upon it. In this very month of July, when you saw Henry Arkell and the dean's daughter walking in the Bishop's Garden--and a very hot July it was--Mr. Dundyke came to the decision of taking a tour. What first put it into his unfortunate head to do so, his wife never knew; though she asked herself the question afterwards many and many a time. He debated the point with himself, to go or not to go, some little while; balancing the advantages against the drawbacks. On the one hand, it would cost time and money; on the other, it would certainly be another stepping-stone in his advancing greatness, the more especially if he could get the _Post_ or some other fashionable organ to announce the departure of "David Dundyke, Esquire, and Lady, on a Continental tour." One sultry afternoon, when Mrs. Dundyke was sewing in her own sitting-room, he returned home somewhat earlier than usual.