The plan which D’Almayne had settled with Kate was this:--she was sitting for her portrait to an artist friend of Horace’s, to whose painting-room she went twice a-week; D’Almayne proposed to send away the carriage and servants, when he would have a hired brougham in readiness to convey her to the obscure suburb in which Mrs. Leonard’s poverty compelled her to reside; he would meet her on her arrival there, and introduce her to Mrs. Leonard; she could then return to the artist’s, whence her own carriage could again fetch her and convey her home. Kate disliked all this clandestine contrivance; but, considering the end of sufficient importance to justify the means, she was unable to devise any less objectionable scheme, and so reluctantly consented. She reached her destination without adventure. The dwelling occupied by Mrs. Leonard was situated in one of the labyrinths of small, unwholesome streets which lie between Islington and Pentonville, and contain a description of houses too good, or, more truly speaking, too expensive, for the very lowest orders to reside in, and yet so confined and comfortless that it appears incredible that any persons, accustomed to even the ordinary requirements of respectable life, can tolerate them. D’Almayne was waiting in readiness to receive her, and, offering her his arm, led her up the narrow steps and into a miserable parlour, some eight feet square, with the same elaborate and coxcombical politeness with which he would have conducted her across the receiving-room of a duchess. Mrs. Leonard was a singularly gentle, lady-like person, evidently worn down by her continued struggle to support herself and family, which consisted of two boys and three girls, the eldest son and daughter being respectively fourteen and fifteen, whence their ages decreased down to a little pale thing of four years old, whose juvenile roses could not bloom for want of purer air and more nutritious diet. To them, with the greatest tact and kindness, did Kate proceed to enact the character of guardian angel; and, ere she had been half-an-hour in the house, had completely won all their affections, from the poor mother, who began to see light breaking in upon her darkness, to the olive-branch of four--whose visions of unlimited sugar-plums bade fair to be realised. Ah! it is easy to buy golden opinions of the poor and needy in this world: generosity, _i.e._, judiciously disposing of superfluous cash, is a virtue strangely overrated. The widow’s mite is an offering for which one can feel respect, even with a well-filled stomach; but that shrine for an Englishman’s heart must be indeed empty, ere he can thank Dives for his crumbs. But, when Kate smiled brightly, and spoke kindly and tenderly as she opened her purse-strings, what wonder that the inmates of that house of mourning were ready almost to worship her beauty and munificence? nay, in the excess of her gratitude, poor Mrs. Leonard so