 Mrs. Wititterly, of Cadogan Place,
Sloane Street, that same forenoon.
    Cadogan Place is the one slight bond that joins two great extremes; it is
the connecting link between the aristocratic pavements of Belgrave Square, and
the barbarism of Chelsea. It is in Sloane Street, but not of it. The people in
Cadogan Place look down upon Sloane Street, and think Brompton low. They affect
fashion too, and wonder where the New Road is. Not that they claim to be on
precisely the same footing as the high folks of Belgrave Square and Grosvenor
Place, but that they stand, with reference to them, rather in the light of those
illegitimate children of the great who are content to boast of their connexions,
although their connexions disavow them. Wearing as much as they can of the airs
and semblances of loftiest rank, the people of Cadogan Place have the realities
of middle station. It is the conductor which communicates to the inhabitants of
regions beyond its limit, the shock of pride of birth and rank, which it has not
within itself, but derives from a fountain-head beyond; or, like the ligament
which unites the Siamese twins, it contains something of the life and essence of
two distinct bodies, and yet belongs to neither.
    Upon this doubtful ground, lived Mrs. Wititterly, and at Mrs. Wititterly's
door Kate Nickleby knocked with trembling hand. The door was opened by a big
footman with his head floured, or chalked, or painted in some way (it didn't
look genuine powder), and the big footman, receiving the card of introduction,
gave it to a little page; so little, indeed, that his body would not hold, in
ordinary array, the number of small buttons which are indispensable to a page's
costume, and they were consequently obliged to be stuck on four abreast. This
young gentleman took the card up stairs on a salver, and pending his return,
Kate and her mother were shown into a dining-room of rather dirty and shabby
aspect, and so comfortably arranged as to be adapted to almost any purpose
rather than eating and drinking.
    Now, in the ordinary course of things, and according to all authentic
descriptions of high life, as set forth in books, Mrs. Wititterly ought to have
been in her boudoir; but whether it was that Mr. Wititterly was at that moment
shaving himself in the boudoir or what not, certain it is that Mrs. Wititterly
gave audience in the drawing-room, where was everything proper and necessary,
including curtains and furniture coverings of a roseate hue
