To this part of London, therefore, he naturally turned at last, and following the sound rule that a man’s rent should be one-tenth of his income--if that income is moderate--he looked about for a large and comfortable house. The very streets had separate atmospheres for him. He fixed at last upon what seemed a very nice house indeed in Queen Anne Street. First he looked at it well from without, admired the ironwork and the old places for lanterns, and the extinguishers; he looked at the solid brick, and at that expression which all houses have from the position of their windows. It was a house such as his own people might have built or lived in under George III, and in the earlier part of the reign of that unfortunate, though virtuous, monarch. In a little while he had gone so far as to get his ticket from the agent, and he would view the house. He came one day and another; he was very much taken with the arrangement of it and with the quiet rooms at the back, and he was pleased to see that the second staircase was so arranged that there would be little noise of service. He remembered with a sort of sentimental but pleasing feeling his childhood passed in such a house, for his father had been a surgeon, somewhat famous, and they lived in such rooms and in such a neighbourhood. He was pleased with the old-fashioned arrangements for heating the water; he did not propose to change them. But he was glad that electric light had taken the place of gas, and he did propose to change the disposition of this light made by the last tenants. With every day that he visited the place it pleased him more. It became a daily occupation of his, and it took up most of his thoughts. The agents were gentle and kind; no mention of competitors was made, and the reason for this would have been plain to any other but himself, for he was offering a larger rent than the house was worth. But his offer was not yet confirmed. Many years of successful investment, in which, as I have said, he had neither increased nor diminished his fortune, had given him a just measure of prudence in these affairs, and he would not sign in a definite way until the whole scheme was quite clear in his mind. For a week he visited and revisited, until the caretaker, an elderly woman of rich humour, began to count upon the conversation which she enjoyed at his daily appearances. * * * * *