"You must be very glad," she said. "You have me in your power at last. My stepfather is a grocer. He keeps a shop at Shepherd's Bush. He is one of the most horribly vulgar men that ever lived. Had I been at home my mother would not have consented to marry him. But my mother, although pretty and refined-looking, and in herself a lady, has little force of character, and she was quite alone and very poor indeed. You, who don't know the meaning of the word 'poor,' cannot conceive what it meant to her. Little Merry guessed--dear, dear little Merry; but as to you, you think when you subscribe to this charity and the other, you think when you adopt an East End child and write letters to her, and give of your superabundance to benefit her, that you understand the poor. I tell you you _don't_! Your wealth is a curse to you, not a blessing. You no more understand what people like mother and like myself have lived through than you understand what the inhabitants of Mars do--the petty shifts, the smallnesses, the queer efforts to make two ends meet! You in your lovely home, and surrounded by lovely things, and your aunt so proud of you--how _can_ you understand what lodgings in the hot weather in Shepherd's Bush are like? Mother understood--never any fresh air, never any tempting food; Tildy, that poor little faithful girl as servant--slavey was her right name; Tildy at every one's beck and call, always with a smut on her cheek, and her hair so untidy, and her little person so disreputable; and mother alone, wondering how she could make two ends meet. Talk of your knowing what the poor people in my class go through!" "I don't pretend that I do know, Maggie," said Aneta, who was impressed by the passion and strength of Maggie's words. "I don't pretend it for a moment. The poverty of such lives is to me a sealed book. But--forgive me--if you are so poor, how could you come here?" "I don't mind your knowing everything now," said Maggie. "I am disgraced, and nothing will ever get me out of my trouble. I am up to my neck, and I may as well drown at once; but Mrs. Ward--she understood what a poor girl whose father was a gentleman could feel, and she--oh, she was good!--she took me for so little that mother could afford it. She made no difference between you and me, Aneta, who are so rich, and your cousins the Cardews, who are so rich too. She said, 'Maggie Howland, your father was a gentleman and a man of honor, a man of whom his country was proud; and I will educate you, and give you your chance.' And, oh, I was happy here! And I--and I should be happy now but for you and your prying ways."