“I see you don’t know the worst,” he remarked, gravely. “If there were nothing more against Miss Yorke than the mere fact of her being on the music-hall stage it would not matter so much. But--” Another head-shake completed the sentence, and told the horrified alderman far more than any words could have done. “Poor girl! let us hope it is not all true,” murmured the marchioness, with Christian compassion. A minute or two later she rose to go. The alderman, aware from sundry creaking sounds overhead that his wife was hurrying through a frantic toilet up-stairs, remonstrated. “Won’t your ladyship stay and have a cup of tea? I expect Mrs. Dobbin to come in every minute.” “I am _so_ sorry. I particularly wish to make Mrs. Dobbin’s acquaintance, but I am afraid I cannot stay another moment. Some other day, if you will allow me, I hope to come out and call on her. But you see this is quite a confidential visit. What a charming situation you have here! Quite rural, I declare! It reminds me of our place in Worcestershire.” Mr. Despencer added his testimony that it was very like the Marquis of Severn’s place in Worcestershire--indeed it was, for there were grass and laurel-bushes in both. The visitors tore themselves away at last, and disappeared, a vision of varnished panels and gleaming harness and tossing horses’ heads and flying dust. And what did Alderman Dobbin do when they were gone? He did what every other well-conducted alderman in his situation would have done. He went forth into the town and bought a peerage. Then he shut himself up in his counting-house, and sat down to write a letter. SCENE VI WHAT PEOPLE SAID “Mr. Hammond!” Thus proclaimed the machine stationed outside the door of the principal drawing-room in Berkeley Square. It was the night of the marchioness’s concert, and a stream of splendidly clad dames, rustling in silk and velvet, and flashing in pearls and diamonds, and of meanly clad men, disguised as waiters, except for an occasional red or blue ribbon, slightly suggestive of that worn by a pet cat, was flowing up the stairs, and through the doorway, where the machine checked them off one by one like an automatic turnstile. And the proclamations were by no means a mere empty ceremony, for without them the marchioness would have been quite ignorant of the names of at least half of those with whom she was shaking hands on the other side of the threshold.