“Oh, dear no! you needn’t fear anything of that kind. Improper songs are quite gone out at the halls now. All Belle Yorke’s are about seamstresses who starve to death in the East End, and ragged boys who insist on taking off their jackets to wrap them round their little sisters on doorsteps in the snow. She makes people cry like anything. I have seen a stockbroker sobbing in the stalls of the Empire as if his heart would break when the ragged boy gets frozen to death, and the little sister wonders why he doesn’t answer her any more.” “How sweetly touching! I shall insist on her singing that one here. I am sure I shall cry.” The marchioness lifted a small gold watch, the size of a bean, that swung from a brooch on her left shoulder. “Can you reach the bell? I must speak to Victoria before anybody comes.” Despencer rose, and walked across the room to press a small malachite knob placed in the wall beside the fireplace, in accordance with that mysterious law of connection which every one must have observed, though we believe it has never been decided whether the bell is an acquired characteristic of the fireplace, or the fireplace an acquired characteristic of the bell. A perfectly constructed machine, bearing considerable resemblance to a human being, attired in a chocolate-colored suit relieved with pink braid, opened the door, and glided noiselessly into the room, stopping with a slight jerk, as though the clockwork had run down, at about three paces inside. “That is settled, then,” the marchioness was saying when the machine entered. “I shall get her here, and see what she is like.” Her ladyship turned to the machine. “Go and find Lady Victoria, and tell her I want to speak to her.” The machine made an inclination, revolved on its castors, and noiselessly disappeared. The marchioness continued: “I must have Mr. Hammond here as well, I suppose?” “That is indispensable,” was the answer. “And, by the way, I think it will be better not to say anything beforehand to Lord Severn.” The marchioness looked surprised. “Why?” she demanded. Despencer gave another shrug. “I thought we agreed just now that he was a trifle Early Victorian in some of his ideas. He may have heard the rumors, you know.” The marchioness had caught a step approaching. She raised her hand with a warning gesture. “Not a word before Victoria!” SCENE II THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE While the marchioness was confiding her maternal anxieties to Mr. Despencer’s sympathetic ear, her daughter, Lady Victoria Mauleverer, was engaged in calmly defying her affectionate parent’s behests.