CHAPTER I

“To have what we want is riches; but to be able to do without it is power.”

“BUT the extraordinary thing is that it has happened!” The lady who seemed a victim of this surprise lay back in her luxurious chair and exhibited a small foot on the fender.

“Black velvet slippers,” said her companion critically, “on a brass fender are really, my dear, a poem. Where do you learn these things? Poor Muriel, her feet were always rather large!”

“She had everything in her favor,” said Mrs. le Mentier, the first speaker. “Money, position, a face and figure one could do a good deal with. She was simply ruined by her earnestness. I have often said to her, ‘Well, Muriel, why don’t you take up the Church?’ But she never did; she said it was too comfortable and that it would crush her. I’m sure she’s not too comfortable now!”

Mrs. Huntly rose and went to the window. It was raining dismally, with a constant reiterated drip, drip on the tiles. She turned back, shivering a little, to the cosey boudoir of her friend with whom she had just been lunching.

“I often wonder,” she said thoughtfully, “if it wasn’t Jack Hurstly after all. You know I had them last summer with me; and though poor Muriel always managed things very well, there were times—— And then he went off suddenly, you know; and she said she couldn’t imagine what I could see in him, though I know for certain she bore with that brutal bull-terrier of his, and pretended to like it, while all the time she loathed animals—dogs especially.”

“Ah!” said Mrs. le Mentier; “and she’s really dropped out—one can’t do anything! All the time when she isn’t actually at that tiresome Stepney club of hers she’s contriving things for it—positively it amounts to a terror! She asked me last week to sing at a smoking concert for some factory hands. I told her I thought smoking concerts for those kind of people were simply immoral, and she actually flamed up and cried, ‘You sing for Captain Hurstly and his do-nothing friends, who can afford to amuse themselves, and you won’t sing for men whose daily life is a hell, and whose only amusements are unspeakably degrading!’ Of course I stopped her at once. I told her she should give them Bible lessons. She saw how silly she had been then, and laughed in that dear old way of hers, and said, ‘You always had such a lot of common sense, Edith!’ But you see she must be dropped. She’ll begin to talk about her soul next!” Her friend yawned.

“Well, my dear,” she said, “don’t you get earnest too. That wretched Madame Veune is coming to fit me at three o’clock, so I must be off. Oh, by-the-bye, if Muriel should turn up to-morrow you might ask her to come and see me—I don’t know her slum address—one must do what one can, you know. Good-bye, dear.” And the two affectionately kissed and parted.

Mrs. Huntly frowned as she drove home. Muriel Dallerton had been an old friend of hers, and she really meant to do what she could for her.