There was nothing of the saint by nature nor of the instinctive philanthropist about Leam. She was too concentrated for general benevolence, and men and women whom she did not know were little more than symbols to her. When she loved it was with her whole heart, her whole being: failing this kind of love, she had but weak affections and no curiosity, in which much of our ordinary charity consists. When the servants told her of such and such distressing circumstances, she was sorry because they were sorry, not because she realized in her own emotions the troubles she did not share or see. When prompted she sent improper things in the way of diet and useless things in the way of dress for the benefit of the poor fever patients--and she sent generously--but it never occurred to her as possible that she should go to see them in their own homes. When we read of a cyclone in China which has killed half a hundred mandarins and a small army of coolies, we realize the sorrow of the survivors no more than we realize the distress of a disturbed ant-hill; and Leam's attitude of mind toward the poor of her native village was precisely the same as ours toward the Chinese killed in a cyclone or the ants murdered in their hill. But she went daily to Steel's Corner, because she knew the Corfields and in her own way liked Alick. Mrs. Corfield assured her there was no danger, not a particle, with her free use of disinfectants and her cunning devices of ventilation. And Leam believed her, and acted on her belief, which gave her a false look of heroism and devotion that won the heart of poor Pepita's "crooked stick" for ever. She thought it so good of the girl, so brave and unselfish; and you could scarcely have expected such nice feeling from Leam, now could you? she used to ask her husband half a dozen times a day, ringing the changes on Leam's good qualities as no one in the place had ever rung them before, and disturbing the poor doctor in his calculations on the varying strength of henbane and aconite till he wished that Leam Dundas had never been born. Mrs. Corfield was just as wrong in ascribing heroic qualities to the girl for her daily visits to ask after Alick as she had been when she had credited her with moral faults because of her intellectual ignorance. She was not afraid because she knew nothing about infection, and had therefore the boldness of ignorance, and she went daily to ask after Alick because she somehow slipped into the groove of doing so; and a groove was a great thing to conservative Leam. Nevertheless, she was really concerned at the illness of her first North Astonian friend, and wished that he would soon get well. She never thought that if he died she would be rid of the only person who knew her deadly secret. Leam was not one who would care to buy her own safety at the price of another's destruction; and, more than this, she was not afraid that Alick would betray her.