At these prompt, determined words her heart swelled, and again tears brimmed her eyes. "Oh, thank God that you will help them!" she said. "Now that I am sure of that, I can go away contented. It would have broken my heart to leave them so--yet I had not dared to hope that I could do anything. You have no idea of the extent of it. It will take a great deal of money to give them new houses, proper sanitary conditions, and all the things they need." "Never mind that--only tell me what to do." "But _can_ you do it? I know how comparatively limited you are as to money." "Comparatively only," he said, reassuringly. "I have much less than my predecessor had, but fortunately I have little pride and simple tastes. I can let the place in Leicestershire, where the hunting is good, and I can also lease the town house if necessary. Pray consider that the question of money is disposed of. I assure you that does not enter into it." Thus invited, Bettina sat down before the desk, while he took a seat near by, and with the papers before her she went fully into the questions at issue, showing a grasp of the situation which soon testified to her companion that she had studied it to some purpose. All the changes which she recommended were approved, but more than once his attention was diverted from the purpose of the future to an indignant contempt for the delinquencies of the past. It was hard for him to constrain himself to silence as to this, but Bettina thanked him in her heart for the successful effort which he made. She was too abject in her sense of compunction for her own past to feel inclined to severe judgment of another, and in her joy that these cherished plans of hers were to be immediately realized she was able to put by for the moment more personal trouble. She spoke with a fervor that made her beautiful face wellnigh adorable in its kind compassion, and when she would describe the wrongs and hardships of these poor simple folk her eyes at times would fill with tears of pity and her voice would tremble. She knew it not, but in this hour she was making a new revelation of herself to Horace, which answered to the need of his maturer nature as marvellously as the Bettina of old had satisfied the needs of the ardent young fellow that he was then. If he remembered that Bettina only as being beautiful and beloved, he saw in this one a far nobler and more perfect beauty, as he recognized in her qualities more worthy to command love.