Edgar Sutherland was not the man to do any good deed by halves. Thanks to his generosity, Adèle Lambert was removed to a better lodging, and comfortably nursed; the doctor’s opinion being that the disease, though certainly mortal, would progress slowly, and that much might be done to alleviate her distressing condition. Not content with assisting her with money, the young man visited her almost daily, and did his best to lighten her miserable lot; talked to her cheerfully, read to her; and without obtruding any moral or religious sentiment, contrived to turn her bewildered and despairing thoughts in the direction of some heavenly compassion. In the course of these kindly visits he learned the whole story of the unfortunate girl’s connection with the French adventurer, whom he had again recognised. That story cannot be told here; it would be too shocking for a society that hushes up revolting truths, and bases its moral security on the existence of an evil which philosophers contemplate with tranquillity, and men of the world with pleasant cynicism. Not even in the pages of a fiction with a purpose can an English writer print the record of what is at the best an accursed human sacrifice, a trade to which the slave trade was venial; a social abomination which destroys the body and too often obliterates the germinating soul. I know well how, in discussing this question, philosophy and sentimentalism are at issue; how statistics have been twisted to show that actual seduction is rare, and rarest upon the man’s side; how the majority of the lost live happily, healthily, and long; how their existence is a necessity of civilisation, the security of virtue, the protection of the household, the safeguard of the morals of the State. Well, I say with Sutherland, God help our civilisation if this be so! So long as such a canker exists, so long as the moral holocaust continues, there is no hope for any living woman, and the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, which poets have dreamed of, is whole eternities away. CHAPTER XXVIII.--AT THE COUNTESS AURELIA’S. Once or twice during the season it was the custom of the Countess Aurelia Van Homrigh to give a literary party. This party had at first been but a small social gathering, invitations being issued only to a few of the most select of the lady’s literary and scientific friends, but every year the invitations had grown more numerous, until the yearly reunions became quite the mode, and each one was an event to which the world of art, science, and letters looked forward with delight. The Countess was a pretty little Englishwoman, married to a foreign adventurer, who had made an enormous fortune in certain obscure branches of trade. While yet a maiden Miss Aurelia Blackeston was well known in aesthetic circles as the writer of many charming volumes of verse, and as the favoured lady to whom a certain great and titled poet addressed the lines commencing