Mr Bommaney was a British merchant of the highest rectitude and the most spotless reputation. He traded still under the name of Bommaney, Waite, and Co., though Waite had been long since dead, and the Company had gone out of existence in his father's time. The old offices, cramped and inconvenient, in which the firm had begun life eighty years before, were still good enough for Mr. Bommaney, and they had an air of solid respectability which newer and flashier places lacked. The building of which they formed a part stood in Coalporter's Alley, opposite the Church of St. Mildred, and the hum of the City's traffic scarcely sounded in that retired and quiet locality.