It was then almost with cheerfulness that she set herself to keep house for her daughter-in-law and her grand-children under such widely different circumstances.
Before Christmas a house was found for them in Cheyne Walk.

The Chelsea Embankment was not then thought of, and the streets leading to it, like those now lying behind it, were mean and crowded.

It was a narrow house, with rooms so small that when the massive furniture from their old house was set up in it there was no space for moving about freely.

Madame had known only two houses--the old straggling, picturesque country manse in the Jura, with its walnut-trees shading the windows, and tossing up their branches now and then to give glimpses of snow-mountains on the horizon, and her husband's pleasant and luxurious house at Riversborough, with every comfort that could be devised gathered into it.

There was the river certainly flowing past this new habitation, and bearing on its full and rapid tide a constantly shifting panorama of boats, of which the children never tired, and from Felicita's window there was a fair reach of the river in view, while from the dormer windows of the attic above, where Felix slept, there was a still wider prospect.