Lady Macleod I cannot say that the house in Queen Anne Street was a pleasant house.

I am now speaking of the material house, made up of the walls and furniture, and not of any pleasantness or unpleasantness supplied by the inmates.

It was a small house on the south side of the street, squeezed in between two large mansions which seemed to crush it, and by which its fair proportion of doorstep and area was in truth curtailed.

The stairs were narrow; the dining-room was dark, and possessed none of those appearances of plenteous hospitality which a dining-room should have.

But all this would have been as nothing if the drawing-room had been pretty as it is the bounden duty of all drawing-rooms to be.