Hammond began to feel like a man in a dream. He had walked straight out of tragedy into comedy. He had come to Hammersmith in search of an answer to the most terrible question which can present itself to a man who loves a woman, and he found himself in the midst of a children’s tea-party. Perhaps this was the answer, the best of answers, to the doubt which had striven to effect a lodgment in his mind. Sitting there, in the midst of Belle Yorke’s little brothers and sisters, as they trooped into the feast, watching her feed the hungry swarm, he found his dark thoughts dying away of themselves. Such an atmosphere was fatal to them; they could not live in it. So the millionaire forgot his millions and his marchionesses and his ambitions, and threw himself into the spirit of the festival with such cordiality that he won the children’s hearts. Mr. Yorke, forgetting his former animosity, cut him the biggest slice of the birthday-cake with his own hands, and edified him with a full, true, and particular account of his exploits on the football field in that famous match between the Hammersmith Juniors and the Brook Green Stars, which is now matter of history. Master Reginald Yorke insisted on sitting on the stranger’s knee, and sharing with him the contents of a paper of brown sweetmeats, highly flavored with peppermint, which he called bull’s eyes. Belle’s grateful looks repaid him for his submission to these outrages, and when he rose reluctantly to go away he felt there was a new tie between them, stronger than there had been before. “May I come to tea again, some time?” he pleaded, as she went with him to the door. “When you are asked,” said Belle. SCENE V A PERSON OF IMPORTANCE In a substantially-built house in the important suburb of Tooting, in a dining-room full of substantial furniture in that school of design which is the glory of Britain and the stupefaction of surrounding nations, sat Alderman Dobbin, J. P., reading the _Church Gazette_, and breathing Protestantism at every pore. The person of Alderman Dobbin was not less substantial than the chair which supported it. It was the hour of three in the afternoon; the alderman had just achieved a dinner of solid and ample materials, and a gentle flush which overspread his broad face was due perhaps equally to the silent struggle going on in the region of his waistcoat and to indignation at the insidious practices of Rome.