Ruggles had heard both sides. She was adored by the poor, and, as far as rumor knew, she spent thousands on the London paupers, and the Westerner, who had never been given to reveling in scandals and to whom there was something wicked in speaking ill of a woman, no matter whom she might be, listened with embarrassment to tales he had been told in answer to his other questions; and turned with relief to the stories of Letty Lane’s charity, and to the stories of her popularity and her success. They were more agreeable, but they couldn’t make him forget the rest, and now as he looked at her face across the bouquet of orchids and ferns, it was with a sinking of heart, a great pity for her, and still a decided enmity. He disapproved of her down to the ground. He didn’t let himself think how he felt, but it was for the boy. Ruggles was not a man of the world in any sense; he was simple and Puritan in his judgments, and his gentle nature and his big heart kept him from pharisaical and strenuous measures. He had been led in what he was doing to-night by a diplomacy and a common sense that few men east of the Mississippi would have thought out under the circumstances. “Tell Mr. Ruggles,” he heard Dan say to her, “tell him—tell him!” And she answered: “I was telling Mr. Blair that, as he is so frightfully rich, I want him to give me some money.” Ruggles gasped, but answered quietly: “Well, he’s a great giver, Miss Lane.” “I guess he is if he’s like his father!” she returned. “I am trying to get a lot, though, out of him, and when you asked me to dine to-night I said to myself, ‘I’ll accept, for it will be a good time to ask Mr. Blair to help me out in what I want to do.’” At Ruggles’ face she smiled sweetly and said graciously: “Oh, don’t think I wouldn’t have come anyway. But I’m awfully tired these days, and going out to supper is just one thing too much to do! I want Mr. Blair,” she said, turning to Ruggles as if she knew a word from him would make the thing go through, “to help me build a rest home down on the English coast, for girls who get discouraged in their art. When I think of the _luck_ I have had and how these things have been from the beginning, and how money has just poured in, why,” she said ardently, “it just makes my heart ache to think of the girls who try and fail, who go on for a little while and have to give up. You can’t tell,”—she nodded to Ruggles, as though she were herself a matron of forty,—“you can not tell what their temptations are or what comes up to make them go to pieces.” Ruggles listened with interest.