s--of the music-and-dancing connection was sold to a successor only too
ready to jump into the place, the Millbornes having decided to live in
London.

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. Whatever defects of hardness and acidity his original treatment and
the lapse of years might have developed in her, his sense of a realized
idea, of a re-established self-satisfaction, was always thrown into the
scale on her side, and out-weighed all objections.

It was about a month after their settlement in town that the household
decided to spend a week at a watering-place in the Isle of Wight, and
while there the Reverend Percival Cope (the young curate aforesaid) came
to see them, Frances in particular. No formal engagement of the young
pair had been announced as yet, but it was clear that their mutual
understanding could not end in anything but marriage without grievous
disappointment to one of the parties at least. Not that Frances was
sentimental. She was rather of the imperious sort, indeed; and, to say
all, the young girl had not fulfilled her father's expectations of her.
But he hoped and worked for her welfare as sincerely as any father could
do.

Mr. Cope was introduced to the new head of the family, and stayed with
them in the Island two or three days.