Page:"The Mummy" Volume 1.djvu/191

Rh

journey of the duke and Sir Ambrose to London had nothing in it to distinguish it from hundreds of other journeys, and they did not meet with a single adventure worthy of being recorded.

It happened by one of those singular coincidences in real life, which would be called improbable in a novel, that Mr. Montagu's mansion adjoined that of the duke, Mrs. Montagu having, like most of the parvenu genus, a most violent penchant for the neighbourhood of the great; perhaps, in the hope that gentility might be infectious, and that she might catch a little by being near it. Both houses were in the Strand, which was, as we