Page 601 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

CHAPTER V. MR. RICHARD

DEVINE SURPRISED.

he town house of Mr. Richard Devine was in Clarges
TStreet. Not that the very modest mansion there situ-
ated was the only establishment of which Richard Devine
was master. Mr. John Rex had expensive tastes. He neither
shot nor hunted, so he had no capital invested in Scotch
moors or Leicestershire hunting-boxes. But his stables were
the wonder of London, he owned almost a racing village
near Doncaster, kept a yacht at Cowes, and, in addition to
a house in Paris, paid the rent of a villa at Brompton. He
belonged to several clubs of the faster sort, and might have
lived like a prince at any one of them had he been so mind-
ed; but a constant and haunting fear of discovery—which
three years of unquestioned ease and unbridled riot had not
dispelled—led him to prefer the privacy of his own house,
where he could choose his own society. The house in Clarg-
es Street was decorated in conformity with the tastes of its
owner. The pictures were pictures of horses, the books were
records of races, or novels purporting to describe sporting
life. Mr. Francis Wade, waiting, on the morning of the 20th
April, for the coming of his nephew, sighed as he thought of
the cultured quiet of North End House.
Mr. Richard appeared in his dressing-gown. Three years

00 For the Term of His Natural Life