Thus Miss Blisset and Mr. Mallory were already talked about in a certain set, and Adrienne’s duties had made her name and herself familiar to another and a less distinguished public--to the working-people of Thanshope. She had been a notability amongst them before her sudden accession to wealth and friends; she was doubly well known to them now. She was busy and preoccupied, thought Myles, as he sat at his desk in the second office, and saw her almost daily pass the windows on her way to the Ladies’ Committee-room. She was a lady of property, sought after and busy, and he was a clerk on a high stool, to whom she scarce spoke a word from one week’s end to the other. Those years of distress brought about some strange acquaintances, and led to some unusual events. Though everything appeared on the outside to work so smoothly, there were active emotions stirring amongst the members of that Thanshope Relief Committee--emotions, quite unconnected with the wants of those for whose benefit they had assembled themselves. The circumstances were exceptional, and it was only under exceptional circumstances that those particular people could have not only met, but continued almost daily to meet and come in contact with one another. Gradually circumstances drew them together--gradually as they met, the half-forgotten, smouldering feelings of love and hate, contempt and pity, sprang into life and activity again, and emotion stepped to the front, and all these things acted and reacted one upon the other, till every story was modified, every life received a bend this way or that, a change in the even tenor of its way. CHAPTER VIII. A MEETING. Mr. Spenceley, the millionaire, the richest man in Thanshope, the man of boundless wealth and boundless callousness, was amongst those cotton lords who, to their lasting shame and disgrace, were determined at this crisis not to come forward and give of their abundance, but who preferred to hang back until the popular voice left them no option, and the universal indignation absolutely thrust them to the front. For a long time Mr. Spenceley had contented himself with abusing the sorely tried work-people, demanding to know why they did not all emigrate, and vowing that he would not waste his money upon them. He amused himself by everywhere calling Sebastian Mallory, behind his back, a fool and a madman, a spendthrift, a pernicious leveller, and so on: and by behaving to him before his face with the utmost courtesy and politeness, excusing conduct which might savour of double dealing by saying that such fools could never be made to see that they were fools, and that it was best to take them as you found them, and let them go their own way.