The house to which Byrne had brought his companions was built into the graveyard, and its front door was in a line with the raised wall already spoken of. It was an old-fashioned, red-brick house, and had doubtless at one time been the residence of the rector, or of some other functionary connected with the church that was no longer there. From the windows, both back and front, the view must have been dismal in the extreme. To-night the whole house looked as dark and deserted as the graveyard in which it stood. Not a single glimmer of light was visible in any of its windows. Byrne, after taking a cautious look round, drew his companions forward. There was a square brass plate let into the door, on which, by the light of a lamp near at hand, they all three read these words:
MAX VAN DUREN.
General Agent, &c.
"He has changed his name!" said Murray, turning suddenly on Byrne.
"There's nothing to wonder at in that," said Byrne, with a shrug. "In London one comes across queer changes every day."
[CHAPTER X.]
IN HARLEY STREET.
By the end of the first week in February Sir Thomas Dudgeon and his family were comfortably settled in Harley Street.
Sir Thomas, having no permanent residence in London, had been obliged to take a furnished house for the season. Since the early years of their marriage, the baronet and his wife had never spent more than three weeks, or, at the most, a month, of each season in town; neither had they travelled much abroad. Their adoption of a quiet country life all these years had not been without good and sufficient reasons. The chief reason of all was a laudable desire to economize in money matters. The estate had come to Sir Thomas considerably burdened, and till every penny of mortgage upon it should be cleared off, both Sir Thomas and his wife were determined to cut down every expense as much as possible. The establishment at Stammars was kept up with due regard to comfort, as well as to the family's position in society; but no luxuries were indulged in, and all extravagances were carefully eschewed. A whole season in town, and an autumn on the Continent, however much she might have enjoyed them, would certainly have been set down by Lady Dudgeon as needless extravagances: and she had sufficient heroism in her disposition to give them up without a word of repining. But all this now belonged to the past. Every penny of incumbrance had been cleared off the estate some two years ago, and matters of late had been still further assisted by a handsome legacy from a distant relative. Then, just in the nick of time, had come the opportunity for Sir Thomas to offer himself as member for Pembridge. Lady Dudgeon had been the first to seize the occasion. From the first, she had seen in her mind's eye all the brilliant results that might be made to follow "in sequence due" this one bold step. As in a vision, she had seen the whole glittering pageant. No longer would she be compelled to content herself with a miserable three weeks in London: she would have a whole glorious season to flutter through. She would have a new brougham, and there should be no handsomer horses than hers seen in the Park. As for garden parties and flower shows, as for the opera and the theatre--she would simply do her best to make up for lost time. Poor Sir Thomas, when he allowed himself; very much against his will, to be nominated at the hustings in place of the late lamented Mr. Rackstraw, had not the faintest notion of the splendid conceptions which even then were fermenting in his wife's brain. But he had not been many days in London before he got some glimmering of what was in store for him.
"I feel, dear, as if we had been buried all these years--as if we had never really begun to enjoy life till now," said her ladyship to him one morning at breakfast.