vileged as to behold the interior of the house
in Fitzgeorge-street brought away with them a sense of admiration that
was the next thing to envy. The pink and pattern of propriety within,
as it was the pink and pattern of propriety without, it excited in
every breast alike a wondering awe, as of a habitation tenanted by some
mysterious being, infinitely superior to the common order of
householders.

The inscription on the brass-plate informed the neighbourhood that No.
14 was occupied by Mr. Sheldon, surgeon-dentist; and the dwellers in
Fitzgeorge-street amused themselves in their leisure hours by
speculative discussions upon the character and pursuits, belongings and
surroundings, of this gentleman.

Of course he was eminently respectable. On that question no
Fitzgeorgian had ever hazarded a doubt. A householder with such a
door-step and such muslin curtains could not be other than the most
correct of mankind; for, if there is any external evidence by which a
dissolute life or an ill-regulated mind will infallibly betray itself,
that evidence is to be found in the yellowness and limpness of muslin
window-curtains. The eyes are the windows of the soul, says the poet;
but if a man's eyes are not open to your inspection, the windows of his
house will help you to discover his character as an individual, and his
solidity as a citizen. At least such was the opinion cherished in
Fitzgeorge-street, Russell-square.

The person and habits of Mr. Sheldon were in perfect harmony with the
aspect of the house. The unsullied snow of the door-step reproduced
itself in the unsullied snow of his shirt-front; the brilliancy of the
brass-plate was reflected in the glittering brightness of his
gold-studs; the varnish on the door was equalled by the lustrous
surface of his black-satin waistcoat; the careful pointing of the
brickwork was in a manner imitated by the perfect order of his polished
finger-nails and the irreproachable neatness of his hair and whiskers.
No dentist or medical practitioner of any denomination had inhabited
the house in Fitzgeorge-street before the coming of Philip Sheldon. The
house had been unoccupied for upwards of a year, and was in the last
stage of shabbiness and decay, when the bills disappeared all at once
from the windows, and busy painters and bricklayers set their ladders
against the dingy brickwork. Mr. Sheldon took the house on a long
lease, and spent two or three hundred pounds in the embellishment o