"Don't preach, Lionel. Money is better than sermons." "To such as you and Jim, no doubt. But setting aside the spiritual need, a sermon on your extravagance would do you good." "I'm afraid not," rejoined Lady Jim, putting on the brake for the St. James's Street incline; "it would only go in at one ear and out of the other. When I want sermons I'll come and hear you preach in that dirty little church of yours. Meantime, you must help to get Jim and me out of this scrape." Lionel was annoyed by her reference to his church, but from experience he knew it was worse than useless to argue with Lady Jim. "I cannot help you," he said stiffly; "you know my small means." "Bless the man, I don't mean you to put your hand in your pocket. I am quite aware that the clergy are better at asking than at giving." "You have no right to say that," remonstrated Kaimes, warmly. "We help the poor and needy." "In that case you have now a chance of practising what you preach." Lady Jim negotiated Cockspur Street and felt her way along Trafalgar Square in the hope of hitting Whitehall. Only when the car was buzzing down that thoroughfare did Lionel speak. "I am sitting in a most expensive machine," he said, indignantly, "swathed in a costly rug, and beside a woman with a fortune on her back in the way of clothes." "Then you ought to be very happy," said Leah, calmly; "but I'll drop you at Lambeth soon, and then you can get back to the mud and rags, which you seem to prefer." "My meaning is, that if you were poor you could not afford these luxuries." "Nonsense. It is only poor people who _can_ afford them. The rich make their money by self-denial, and wearing clothes which don't fit, in houses furnished with the riff-raff of auction-rooms. Jim and I have been brought up to better things." "To better worldly things," corrected Lionel, bitterly. "And very pleasant they are, my dear man." "It is people such as you and your husband who make the poor discontented," insisted the curate. "I'm sure I don't see why the poor should be," murmured Lady Jim, vaguely; "there are lots of shelters and soup-kitchens and workhouses. And I always put ten shillings into the plate on Hospital Sunday, not to speak of the way in which I've danced and sung at performances--got up to help people who don't need the money so much as I do." "Nero fiddling, while Rome burned." "Well, and what else could the poor man have done?" retorted Leah. "There were no fire-brigades in those days, were there?" Lionel felt helpless. "You don't understand!" "Oh yes, I do. You mean to be nasty. If I were a vindictive woman I would drop you into the river, car and all"--they were crossing Westminster Bridge by this time--"but I always like to be nice. Being nasty brings wrinkles, and makes one so old. But about our trouble," she went on, determined to have her own way. "Lady Canvey won't help us, and no one else either. There's the Duke----" "He has done enough for you."