Forth went the mother and daughter into the streets of London;--and their first care was to purchase a variety of articles of attire of a far better kind than that which they had just procured,--likewise a little jewellery and the necessary _paraphernalia_ of the toilette. The goods were all sent to the coffee-house where they had hired a chamber; and a couple of large trunks were the last objects they bought, and which were despatched to the same place. These matters having been accomplished, the old woman conducted her daughter into the fashionable quarter of Regent Street; and there Perdita beheld enough to excite her wonder and her admiration. The magnificent shops--the fine buildings--the splendid equipages--and the handsomely dressed gentlemen on horseback, all shared her attention in their turns:--nor was she, an observer, unobserved--for many an old voluptuary and stripling gallant paused to bestow a second glance upon the plainly but decently dressed young female whoso countenance was so strikingly beautiful, and in whose looks there was a subdued wantonness engendering the most voluptuous sensations. To Perdita’s mother how altered did London seem! Here was a street which she had never seen before--there a street had been pulled down to make way for some great thoroughfare. Here buildings once familiar had disappeared: there strange edifices had sprung up! In Regent Street she looked for the shops at which she had been accustomed to deal long years before, when she dwelt in the immediate neighbourhood, and when she was deemed a _saint_: but most of the establishments she sought had changed their proprietors and their nature,--a grocer’s having become a book-seller’s, a milliner’s a china warehouse, and so on. She had a great mind to pass into Burlington Street; but she had not quite the necessary courage to do _that_--at least for the present. Having threaded Regent Street from Oxford Circus to Waterloo Place, the two women turned into Pall Mall West, along which they proceeded for a short distance; when the mother suddenly clasped her daughter’s arm almost violently, exclaiming in a hasty whisper at the same time, “This is the mansion of the Earl of Ellingham!” Scarcely were these words uttered, when the door was opened, and forth came Charles Hatfield. Passing by the two females without noticing that he had immediately become the object of their most earnest attention,--and indeed, without observing them at all, so deeply was he absorbed in thought,--he moved on at a slow and uncertain pace, as if he had merely come out to seek the fresh air, and having no particular destination.