Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VI. Her Ladyship's Plans. JIADY LAURA VERSCHOYLE'S house was a small excrescence on a sort of by-way which connected a fashionable London square with a fashionable London street. Lady Laura always spoke of her house as 27, Egmont Street, which was true, only it would have been more correct to have said 2 7A, Egmonl Street. The letter A seemed a very trifling addition, yet the difference that such a small sign indicated between the houses was somewhat startling; for whereas No. 27, Egmont Street, would have been termed 'that desirable family mansion, ' and was the town house of a baronet with £15,000 a-year, 27A, Egmont Street, would have been advertised as 'an elegant bijou residence,' and was the sole dwelling-place of Lady Laura Verschoyle, who on .£1,500 a-year found it very difficult to compete with her more fortunate neighbours. Had she been contented to live on the other sideof the Park, she might have had a cheerful, comfortable house instead of this inconvenient one, where, to make a tolerably good reception-room, all the other apartments had been robbed of their height or breadth. 2 7 A had a most cheerless prospect, the front being shadowed by the high garden wall of a grand house which looked into the Park. All the back windows were frosted over, that no glimpse might be caught of the mews into which they opened. Taking it as a whole, it would have been difficult to find a like rented abode with so little to recommend it besides what was to Lady Laura its all-powerful attraction—the fact of its being situated in one of the most fashionable localities of London. The jesting, laughing, and quarrelling which Lady Laura could not help hearing from the back could not offend her so much when she remembered that it came from the grooms or coachmen of a marq...