The first-floor back was tenanted by a widow with two children, twins, a little more than a year old. Being unable to find any other means of living she had, by force of circumstances, drifted into the rear ranks of the ballet, where she helped to fill the stage on a salary of two shillings a night. Commencing late in life to learn to dance, there was for her no hope of promotion in the ranks. Her lot was hard enough, Heaven knows; but she would have found it harder, because of the impossibility of leaving her babies every night for a good many hours together, had it not been for the kindness of the law-writer's wife and daughter, who often looked after them when the mother was absent. In the rooms on the second floor, which were very small attics with slanting roofs, lived Nansie, Kingsley, and their daughter. Mr. Loveday took his meals with them, but slept elsewhere. The front attic was used as a living-room during the day, and as a bedroom during the night--the shut-up bedstead being sometimes occupied by Kingsley alone and sometimes by Hester. Altogether there slept in this small house twenty-eight persons. The frontage of the house was twelve feet, its depth twenty feet; and it will be gathered from these dimensions how utterly unsuitable it was in the way of health and morals for so large a number of occupants. In this respect anything more vicious can scarcely be imagined, and yet this house was but one of many built upon land owned by an enormously wealthy man, one who helped to make laws for the social regeneration of the people. Were the facts forced upon his knowledge in the way of accusation, he would doubtless plead ignorance of the circumstances, as others have pleaded before him; but this convenient blindness to the truth will not serve; this convenient shifting of responsibility is of no avail; an unfaithful steward he has been, and an unfaithful steward he remains. CHAPTER XXXI. It was a great night at the Wilberforce Club, and the members mustered in force. Numbers were unable to obtain admission, and the spaces outside the room in which the club held its meetings were thronged by working-men and lads, many of them members of the Wilberforce. These, although disappointed at being shut out, did not give vent to their feelings in the shape of grumbling, but good-humoredly accepted the position, and split themselves into convenient knots for the purposes of discussion.