Mr. Topsparkle sipped his chocolate, and tried to read his papers: but this morning he found himself in no humour for public news--the last letter from the Continent--the last highway robbery in Denmark Street, St. Giles--or even for the more appetising private scandal, about the Lady at Richmond Court who had suddenly retired from society, but was _not_ in a wasting sickness, or the celebrated Duchess, once a famous beauty, whose housemaids had left her in a body because the ducal board wages were two shillings a week under the customary allowance. Mr. Topsparkle's mind was too intently occupied upon his own business to compassionate the Richmond lady or to speculate whether the anonymous duchess was the mighty Sarah of Blenheim, or her mad Grace of Buckinghamshire, both alike notorious for pride and parsimony. He flung the journals aside with an oath. "These scribblers are the stupidest scoundrels alive," he muttered, "there is not an ounce of wit in the whole fraternity. O, for the days of Steele and Addison, when one was sure of pleasant reading with one's breakfast! Their trumpery imitators give the outward form of the essay without its inward spirit." The footman appeared "A lady is below, sir, who says she will be mightily obliged if you will allow her ten minutes' conversation." "Pray, who is the lady who calls at such an extraordinary hour, before a gentleman's day has begun?" "She gave no name, sir." "Go ask who she is." The man retired, and returned to say the lady was a stranger to Mr. Topsparkle, and asked an interview as a favour. "So! That sounds mysterious," said Topsparkle. "Pray, what manner of personage is she? Does she look like a genteel beggar, elderly and shabby, in a greasy black-silk hood and mantle, eh, my man?" "No, sir, the person is young and handsome. She looks rather like one of the foreign singing-women your honour is pleased to patronise." "Singing women! Why, do you know, block-head, that those singing women, as you call them, are the beloved of princes, and have the salaries of prime ministers? Singing women, forsooth! And this stranger is young and pretty, you say?" "Yes, sir." "And a foreigner?" "I am sure of that, sir." "You can show her up." Mr. Topsparkle composed himself into an attitude on the sofa, like Louis XIV. Flatterers told him that he resembled that superb monarch, as he did in the fact that much of his dignity and splendour was derived from costume. Seated upon his cut velvet sofa, with the skirts of his coat spreading wide, his jewelled rapier at his side, he had certainly an almost regal air, calculated to overawe a nameless foreign woman, who was in all probability an adventuress whose audacity was her only passport to that stately mansion.