CHAPTER III.
Millborne was a householder in his old district, though not in his old street, and Mrs.Millborne and their daughter had turned themselves into Londoners.

Frances was well reconciled to the removal by her lover's satisfaction at the change.

It suited him better to travel from Ivell a hundred miles to see her in London, where he frequently had other engagements, than fifty in the opposite direction where nothing but herself required his presence.

So here they were, furnished up to the attics, in one of the small but popular streets of the West district, in a house whose front, till lately of the complexion of a chimney-sweep, had been scraped to show to the surprised wayfarer the bright yellow and red brick that had lain lurking beneath the soot of fifty years.
The social lift that the two women had derived from the alliance was considerable; but when the exhilaration which accompanies a first residence in London, the sensation of standing on a pivot of the world, had passed, their lives promised to be somewhat duller than when, at despised Exonbury, they had enjoyed a nodding acquaintance with three- fourths of the town.

Mr.Millborne did not criticise his wife; he could not.