CHAPTER II.
A BOARDING-HOUSE EVENING, AND AN IMPORTANT LETTER.
Boarding-houses all the world over have
certain features in common. These are the
result of haphazard association between
people without common interests.
No. 37, Beaconsfield Gardens, South Kensington, was no exception to the rule. Its inmates were chiefly women, the widows and daughters of professional men. A few childless married couples lived there, and a sprinkling of unmarried men who were either old or extremely young. Some of the people were well-connected, others well-off, all were dull, a few pious. Several secretly considered themselves superior to the others. They focussed the attributes of the British Philistine, and were an object-lesson as to the low intellectual level of average respectable humanity.
