digious new sash, with ringlets hot and
crisp from the tongs of a Marylebone hairdresser, We had seen the cherub
faces of some of these darlings pressed against the drawing-room
windows as our carriage drove up to the door; when, after a few minutes'
conversation, another vehicle arrived, away they dashed to the windows
again, the innocent little dears crying out, "Here's the Marquis;"
and in sadder tones, "No, it isn't the Marquis," by which artless
expressions they showed how eager they were to behold an expected guest
of a rank only inferior to Dukes in this great empire.

Putting two and two together, as the saying is, it was not difficult
for me to guess who the expected Marquis was--and, indeed, the King's
College youth set that question at once to rest, by wagging his head at
me, and winking his eye, and saying, "We expect Farintosh."

"Why, my dearest children," Matronly Virtue exclaimed, "this anxiety
to behold the young Marquis of Farintosh, whom we expect at our modest
table, Mrs. Pendennis, to-day? Twice you have been at the window in your
eagerness to look for him. Louisa, you silly child, do you imagine that
his lordship will appear in his robes and coronet? Rodolf, you absurd
boy, do you think that a Marquis is other than a man? I have never
admired aught but intellect, Mrs. Pendennis; that, let us be thankful,
is the only true title to distinction in our country nowadays."

"Begad, sir," whispers the old Major to me, "intellect may be a doosid
fine thing, but in my opinion, a Marquisate and eighteen or twenty
thousand a year--I should say the Farintosh property, with the Glenlivat
estate and the Roy property in England, must be worth nineteen thousand
a year at the very lowest figure and I remember when this young man's
father was only Tom Roy, of the 42nd, with no hope of succeeding to the
title, and doosidly out at elbows too--I say what does the bankeress
mean by chattering about intellect? Hang me, a Marquis is a Marquis; and
Mrs. Newcome knows it as well as I do." My good Major was growing
old, and was not unnaturally a little testy at the manner in which his
hostess received him. Truth to tell, she hardly took any notice of him
and cut down a couple of the old gentleman's stories before he had been
five minutes in the room.

To our party presently comes the host in a flurried countenance, with a
white waistcoat, holding in his hand an open letter, towards which
his wife looks with some alarm. "H