It was little to him whether the drawing-room in Queen Anne Street was ugly or pretty.

He was on the committee of his club, and he took care that the furniture there should be in all respects comfortable.
It was now June; and that month Lady Macleod was in the habit of spending among her noble relatives in London when she had succeeded in making both ends so far overlap each other at Cheltenham as to give her the fifty pounds necessary for this purpose.

For though she spent her month in London among her noble friends, it must not be supposed that her noble friends gave her bed or board.

They sometimes gave her tea, such as it was, and once or twice in the month they gave the old lady a second-rate dinner.

On these occasions she hired a little parlour and bedroom behind it in King Street, Saint James's, and lived a hot, uncomfortable life, going about at nights to gatherings of fashionable people of which she in her heart disapproved, seeking for smiles which seldom came to her, and which she excused herself for desiring because they were the smiles of her kith and her kin, telling herself always that she made this vain journey to the modern Babylon for the good of Alice Vavasor, and telling herself as often that she now made it for the last time.