When the Public Relief Committee was established, and one and all, rich and poor, young and old, contributed something either in money, or kind, or assistance, or all, the chief inhabitant of Thanshope could no longer hold back. He allowed his name to appear as a member of the committee, sent a subscription of a hundred pounds, and deputed his son to act as his proxy at councils, committee meetings, and so on. Despite the bad times, he himself was so much engaged with business, that he had no time to attend to such things. Accordingly, Fred Spenceley periodically shed the light of his countenance upon the council board and those surrounding it. He continued to come, despite a terrible rebuff he received on the occasion of his first appearance upon the scene. It was that rebuff, and one or two incidents connected with it, which filled him with rage and bitterness; so that if he had been an Irish reaper, or an Oldham weaver, he would have proceeded to drink himself blind, and then gone home and maltreated his wife, or any other feminine creature within the range of his arm. Being in a different station from that occupied by reapers and weavers, and thinly veneered over into a poor, tinselly, outward semblance of a gentleman, he only raged frantically within himself, and cast about to find an instrument to execute a moral revenge, which, he had sense enough in his dull brutal brain to know, would far more torture the objects of it than all the corporal punishment in the world. He arrived one afternoon, thinking the whole business a great piece of ‘tomfoolery.’ The Relief Committee’s offices consisted of three rooms, opening one out of the other. The first was the Ladies’ Committee-room, a large, spacious place, where the ladies could meet, decide upon their proceedings, and hear the accounts of their wants and troubles brought to them by mothers, wives, and daughters from all parts of the town. Passing through this room, a second and smaller one was reached, in which sat the two clerks, Myles Heywood, and a lad who was under him. Through this second apartment, ingress was obtained to the Gentlemen’s Committee-room, where the council assembled, three times a week as a rule, and oftener if necessary. Coming to attend his first committee meeting, Fred Spenceley entered the first of these rooms, and, glancing round, beheld different groups scattered in different parts of the room. No one took any notice of him; they were all much too busy; but as he looked round, he perceived, in one of the windows apart from the rest, three persons: Sebastian Mallory, whom he had hated since first he saw his face, as only a true ‘cad’ can hate a true gentleman; and two ladies--one in black, whose back was turned towards him, the other his sister Helena, erect, animated, with her dark eyes flashing and her silks in some agitation. He walked up to the group, and touched Helena on the shoulder, inquiring graciously, ‘Well, little one, what’s the matter now?’