“Oh, sir!” she addressed the Mayor as they were drawing near the great city, while she was unable to resist putting her head out of the coach windows. “Let us try to catch the first sound of Bow bells; let us make my woman Rogers hear them. They do jingle so tunefully, one cannot wonder that they caused Whittington to return, even without the cat.” Lady Bell’s arrant native propensity for the life, the stir, and the variety of the town, had only been subdued into a grateful, intelligent acknowledgment that the country also had its charms, it was not routed out of her. She was inclined to return to her first love. Then, to add to the gladness of Lady Bell’s return, she was coming back under different and happier auspices. Instead of the helpless, penniless child, driven off to the cold welcome of St. Bevis’s, Lady Bell was an independent woman; and though she was not a rich young widow, as Mrs. Greenwood and Sneyd had once hoped for her, she was a young widow, with a modest but sufficient jointure, going to her friend’s friends, who were to consider it a credit and satisfaction to entertain her. The members of the Sundon family, who were in Cleveland Court, St. James’s, were Sir Peter and Lady Sundon and her two step-daughters. The only son of the family was a boy at school. Sir Peter was sixty-four, lank and lantern-jawed, and ailing, as his appearance betokened. He had come up to town to be under some of the medical faculty there. Lady Sundon was fifty-five, as hale as Sir Peter was the reverse, one of those hearty, brisk women who did not require rouge, she was so rosy in her matronly roundness of cheek; and did not want a stick, or the page’s arm, she was still so active in her fulness of figure. The Misses Sundon were between twenty and thirty, daughters of Sir Peter by a former marriage; while the son and heir was Lady Sundon’s only child. The Misses Sundon were young women to whom it seemed a matter of necessity to wear the highest heads and heels of the period, in order to lend distinction to their poverty of form and general colourlessness. “You’ll be after the sights, Lady Bell,” said Sir Peter at supper. “Ah! they ain’t worth the trouble and fatigue they give you,” he ended, shaking his head, as he called the grapes sour which he could no longer reach. “Bother! Sir Peter,” cried Lady Sundon, “to go and daunt my Lady Bell, and she as fresh as a daisy, and as nimble as a young colt. I’ll warrant she’ll be up to all the racketing, from the Queen’s caudle-drinking to the opening of Ranelagh, which we can cram into the next two or three months.” “Not so bad as that, Lady Sundon,” said Lady Bell; “but though I’ve seen the sights, save it may be the newest, I confess I’ve come up to try a taste of town gaieties again.” “And do you think such a fine young woman as you are will be let off with a taste, even if that were to content you, when every maccaroni left will be wild to make you take your fill of pleasure.”