Lady Alice lingered curiously over Lesley's remarks on "The Unexplored." She had not read the book herself. She had seen it and heard of it very often--so often that she thought she knew all that it contained. But for Lesley's sake she resolved to read it now. Perhaps it held strange, dangerous doctrines, against which her daughter ought to be cautioned. Of course the house did not contain a copy. But early in the day Lady Alice went to the nearest bookseller's and bought a copy. The obliging book-seller, who did not know her, remarked that "Brooke's 'Unexplored'" was always popular, and asked her whether she would like an unbound copy, or one bound in neat great cloth. Lady Alice took the latter: she had a distaste for paper-covered books. She read "The Unexplored" in her own room that morning, but of course she was not struck by it exactly as Lesley had been. The facts which had horrified Lesley were no novelties to her. She was, in truth, slightly angry that her innocent Lesley should have so much of the great city's misery and shame laid bare to her. She acknowledged the truth of the portraiture, the beauty of the descriptions, the eloquence of the author's appeals to the higher classes; but she acknowledged it with resentment. Why had Caspar written a book of this sort? a book that taunted the higher classes with their birth, and reproached the wealthy with their riches? It was rather a disgrace than otherwise, in Lady Alice's aristocratic eyes, to be connected in any way with the writer of "The Unexplored." Nevertheless, the book stirred in her the desire to vindicate the worth of her order and of her sex; and the next day, after having despatched a long and tender letter to Lesley (with a formal message of thanks to her husband), she went out to call on a lady, who was noted in her circle as a great philanthropist, and mentioned to her in a timid way that she wished she could be of any use amongst the poor, but she really did not see what she could do. Her friend, Mrs. Bexley, was nothing if not practical. "But, my dearest Lady Alice, you can be of every use in the world," she said. "I am going to drive to the East End to-morrow morning, to distribute presents at the London Hospital--it is getting so close to Christmas, you know, that we really must not put it off any longer. I generally go once a week to visit the children and some of the other patients. Won't you come with me?" "I am afraid I should be of very little use," said Lady Alice. "But we shall not want you to do anything--only to say a kind word to the patients now and then, and give them things." "I think I could do that," said Lesley's mother, softly. She went back to her father's house quite cheered by the unexpected prospect of something to do--something which should take her out of the routine of ordinary work--something which should bring her closer (though she did not say it to herself) to the aims and objects of Lesley and Caspar Brooke.