"I hope you know how grateful I am to you for helping my daughter in her philanthropic work," Lorimer said gravely. "She tells me you are a tower of strength in the East End, a kind of suffragan to Father Romney."

"She places my poor services far too high. I have enjoyed the work."

"It was new to you, I fancy. You hadn't done any slumming before?"

"No; it was the opening up of a new world."

"Well, you know our system-the wife's and minewith our only child. We made up our minds about it when she was a baby. We would never thwart her; so that if God were to take away the blessing He gave us, we might, at least, in our desolation, be able to look back and say, 'She grew up in perfect liberty, as free and as beautiful as a hedgerow flower.' We knew somehow that she would never desire any evil thing, that all her impulses and instincts would be noble and true, that she would grow always straight up towards the skies; and we were not disappointed. So when she came under Mrs. Bellingham's influence, and took up the cause of toilers and strugglers, and sinners and outcasts, as the chief business of her life, we did not complain. It was a blow all the same, for you see their gain was our loss. We would have liked her to go everywhere with us, to shine in society, and to marry young; so that we might see our grandchildren growing up, before our time came to blow out the candle and say good night."

"She is very young still. There is time enough for her to realize all your hopes."

But I

"Perhaps; if she meets a man she can love. doubt if she will ever care for any man who is not willing to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, and devote his life to the kind of work she lives for. And there are not many such men-though there are plenty of oily hypocrites who would pretend anything, I dare say, to catch such a wife. But she would not be taken in by that sort."

"And would you be satisfied if she were to make such a marriage: choose a husband who had no worldly advantages to offer her, who was greatly her inferior in worldly wealth ?"

'Worldly wealth need not count for much where Rachel is concerned. A girl who thinks it a sin to spend money on hot-house strawberries while there are needlewomen living on eight shillings a week, wouldn't be likely to let her husband squander her fortune on a racing-stable at Newmarket, or trente-et-quarante at Monte Carlo. The man who marries my girl must make up his mind to do without most of the amusements and indulgences that are a necessity of existence to the modern young man. Cards, sport, society, all must be a dead letter for him-at least while Rachel thinks as she does now. The world changes, and my daughter may change as time goes on. Her sons and daughters may teach her to take pleasure in common things, and in her own home. Who knows?" "I cannot imagine her other than she is pity."

an angel of

"True; but she may find other means of doing good; she may sacrifice something less of her own life. When she began the work, I gave her carte blanche as to money; but I did not think that hussies and brats in the East End would have the first call upon my daughter. No more did her mother. But we stick to our old rule of not thwarting her; and we know that if we don't have half, or even a quarter of her life, we have her love."

XII.

THAT Confidential talk with David Lorimer set Arden's heart on fire. For some time past he had lived upon the hope that Rachel was not indifferent to him, that their daily companionship was almost as dear to her as it was to him. In her frank friendliness, in the kindly greeting of every day, there had been something, perhaps, to discourage; but there had been thrilling moments for him in which some sign of feeling, too subtle to be translated into words, had told him that he was more than a friend, and that her heart-beats answered to the intenser feeling that made him suddenly incapable of replying to some commonplace question with a commonplace reply. Few engaged lovers had ever been more in each other's company than these two who were nominally friends. They had tramped the long monotonous streets together, threaded darksome alleys, mounted squalid staircases, fed the little children, and comforted the sick, watched by the bed of death, entered heart and soul into the lives that were so remote from their own in every circumstance, from the cradle to the grave. They had taken counsel together as to the help that was to be given, and the best manner of giving it; and gradually, as Arden became familiar with the people, penetrated all their mysteries, and weighed them in the scale of a sound logical mind, she came to regard him as an oracle, and to submit every question to his decision. Hooligans were reclaimed and taught an industry; emigrants were sent out into new worlds; wretched women were provided for, at his advice; and Father Romney, previously paramount, was content to take the second place. The priest had no doubt as to Rachel's feelings, and watched Arden with keen attention, questioning whether he were worthy of so rich a prize; for

though he had been indefatigable in works of charity, he had rarely been seen in the church, and Father Romney feared that there was something wanting. He discussed the situation confidentially with Mrs. Bellingham one winter night, walking westward with her in search of a cab, after one of his Happy Evenings.

"I don't think Miss Lorimer would marry an unbeliever," he said, after a silence, and with no reference to their previous talk.

"I don't think she would. But what led you to say that?"

"Isn't it easy for you to guess? Her friendship with Mr. Arden seems likely to lead to an engagement; and it would grieve me more than I can say to see her marry a man who was not a Christian."

"Do you suspect Walter Arden of not being a Christian, after all his goodness to your people?"

"Oh, that is no criterion. Some of the men who have helped me most have been outside the pale in religious matters, men who have thought it a stringent duty to brighten the lot of the wretched ones of this earth because, in their barren creed, there is nothing to come after; no counterbalance for sufferings patiently endured; no reward for humble virtues, self-sacrifice, the ineffable charities of the poor to the poor; nothing but darkness and the grave. Arden reminds me of those men. He is lavish of time, pains, and money; but he has never knelt at our altar or shown any interest in our services, or our guilds, or our religious offices of any kind."

"It may be as you think," Mrs. Bellingham answered quietly, "but he is young enough to change his opinions. We all know the restless spirit of youth, and how many phases of faith and unfaith a mind may suffer before it settles down into passive acceptance of orthodox doctrines. I should not be afraid to see Rachel Lorimer marry a man of noble heart and intellect, even though his views of religion were unsound."

Father Romney had hailed a crawling cab, so there was no time to continue the argument on this occasion.

Arden had a staunch friend in Mrs. Bellingham, who was on very confidential terms with Rachel's father and mother,

and who knew that their most earnest wish was to see their daughter happily married to a good man. She knew that they had renounced all ambitious views, after their disappointment of the previous year, and that in the fear of seeing Rachel enrol herself in some Anglican sisterhood, a spinster by profession, if not a nun, they would be contented with a very modest alliance.

A marriage with Lord Wildernsea's youngest brother would satisfy Mrs. Lorimer's aspiration for blue blood, while his lack of wealth would matter nothing to Rachel, whose vision of the Christian life was to live plainly, and devote her surplus means to works of charity. To Mrs. Bellingham it seemed that such a marriage would be an ideal union-the veritable marriage of true minds.

There was a breath of spring in the land in the early days of March, and the flower-sellers' baskets were bright with daffodils and mimosa, golden yellow in the sunshine, as Arden walked from Jermyn Street to Bedford Square. Mrs. Bellingham's sitting-room was dazzling, great brown bowls of daffodils on tables, yellow tulips, mimosa, violets, hyacinths. Flowers were her only extravagance, in a house where the solid and somewhat sombre furniture had not been changed since her marriage, five and thirty years before, to a physician and specialist of some renown. She had been nearly twenty years a widow; but she loved the spacious old house in which her happy married life had been spent, and would hardly have changed it for what the auctioneers call "a bijou residence" in Mayfair or Belgravia. She even liked that busy unbeautiful central London, which many people consider detestable; the London of the workers, the great middle-class, for whom London means both a livelihood and a settled home; not a pleasure-place for a three-months' season, not merely a few choice streets of expensive shops, in which to buy finery three or four times a year, passing through between Scotland and the Riviera.

Arden called this afternoon in response to a letter in which Mrs. Bellingham had expressed her wish to see him, in order to talk over the case of two young men who were going to Canada, men who had done badly in London, but