first instance, for either papal or imperial purposes--it didn't matter which. In this bright music-room was gathered to-night a little company of the elect--Herr Wüllner and his violin, together with three other stringed instruments and their human complement. Patty at the piano, Eleanor, Mrs. Duff-Scott, and half-a-dozen more enthusiasts--with a mixed audience around them. In the dim, big room beyond, the major entertained the inartistic, outlawed few who did not care, nor pretend to care, for aught but the sensual comfort of downy chairs and after dinner chit-chat. And, at the farthest end, in a recess of curtained window that had no lamps about it, sat Elizabeth and Mr. Yelverton, side by side, on a low settee--not indifferent to the pathetic wail of the far-distant violins, but finding more entertainment in their own talk than the finest music could have afforded them. "I had a friend who gave up everything to go and work amongst the London poor--in the usual clerical way, you know, with schools and guilds and all the right and proper things. He used to ask me for money, and insist on my helping him with a lecture or a reading now and then, and I got drawn in. I had always had an idea of doing something--taking a line of some sort--and somehow this got hold of me. I couldn't see all that misery--you've no idea of it, Miss King--" "I have read of it," she said. "You would have to see it to realise it in the least. After I saw it I couldn't turn my back and go home and enjoy myself as if nothing had happened. And I had no family to consider. I got drawn in." "And _that_ is your work?" said Elizabeth. "I _knew_ it." "No. My friend talks of 'his work'--a lot of them have 'their work'--it's splendid, too--but they don't allow me to use that word, and I don't want it. What I do is all wrong, they say--not only useless, but mischievous." "I don't believe it," said Elizabeth. "Nor I, of course--though they may be right. We can only judge according to our lights. To me, it seems that when things are as bad as possible, a well meaning person can't make them worse and _may_ make them better. They say 'no,' and argue it all out as plainly as possible. Yet I stick to my view--I go on in my own line. It doesn't interfere with theirs, though they say it does." "And what is it?" she asked, with her sympathetic eyes. "Well, you'll hardly understand, for you don't know the class--the lowest deep of all--those who can't be dealt with by the Societies--the poor wretches whom nothing will raise, and who are abandoned as hopeless, outside the pale of everything. They are my line." "Can there be any abandoned as hopeless?"