But Milly didn't hear: for she was occupied in telling me an immense long story about her waltzing with the Count de Schloppenzollern at the City ball to the Allied Sovereigns; and how the Count had great large white moustaches; and how odd she thought it to go whirling round the room with a great man's arm round your waist. "Mr. Roundhand has never allowed it since our marriage--never; but in the year 'fourteen it was considered a proper compliment, you know, to pay the sovereigns. So twenty-nine young ladies, of the best families in the City of London, I assure you, Mr. Titmarsh--there was the Lord Mayor's own daughters; Alderman Dobbins's gals; Sir Charles Hopper's three, who have the great house in Baker Street; and your humble servant, who was rather slimmer in those days--twenty-nine of us had a dancing-master on purpose, and practised waltzing in a room over the Egyptian Hall at the Mansion House. He was a splendid man, that Count Schloppenzollern!" "I am sure, ma'am," says I, "he had a splendid partner!" and blushed up to my eyes when I said it. "Get away, you naughty creature!" says Mrs. Roundhand, giving me a great slap: "you're all the same, you men in the West End--all deceivers. The Count was just like you. Heigho! Before you marry, it's all honey and compliments; when you win us, it's all coldness and indifference. Look at Roundhand, the great baby, trying to beat down a butterfly with his yellow bandanna! Can a man like _that_ comprehend me? can he fill the void in my heart?" (She pronounced it without the h; but that there should be no mistake, laid her hand upon the place meant.) "Ah, no! Will _you_ be so neglectful when _you_ marry, Mr. Titmarsh?" As she spoke, the bells were just tolling the people out of church, and I fell a-thinking of my dear dear Mary Smith in the country, walking home to her grandmother's, in her modest grey cloak, as the bells were chiming and the air full of the sweet smell of the hay, and the river shining in the sun, all crimson, purple, gold, and silver. There was my dear Mary a hundred and twenty miles off, in Somersetshire, walking home from church along with Mr. Snorter's family, with which she came and went; and I was listening to the talk of this great leering vulgar woman. I could not help feeling for a certain half of a sixpence that you have heard me speak of; and putting my hand mechanically upon my chest, I tore my fingers with the point of my new DIAMOND-PIN. Mr. Polonius had sent it home the night before, and I sported it for the first time at Roundhand's to dinner. "It's a beautiful diamond," said Mrs. Roundhand. "I have been looking at it all dinner-time. How rich you must be to wear such splendid things! and how can you remain in a vulgar office in the City--you who have such great acquaintances at the West End?"