I referred to was what I had referred to the night we met in Upper
Baker Street--the relative importance (relative to virtue) of other

gifts. She asked me if I called virtue a gift--a thing handed to
us in a parcel on our first birthday; and I declared that this very

enquiry proved to me the problem had already caught her by the
skirt. She would have help however, the same help I myself had

once had, in resisting its tendency to make one cross.
"What help do you mean?"

"That of the member for Clockborough."
She stared, smiled, then returned: "Why my idea has been to help

HIM!"
She HAD helped him--I had his own word for it that at Clockborough

her bedevilment of the voters had really put him in. She would do
so doubtless again and again, though I heard the very next month

that this fine faculty had undergone a temporaryeclipse. News of
the catastrophe first came to me from Mrs. Saltram, and it was

afterwards confirmed at Wimbledon: poor Miss Anvoy was in trouble-
-great disasters in America had suddenly summoned her home. Her

father, in New York, had suffered reverses, lost so much money that
it was really vexatious as showing how much he had had. It was

Adelaide who told me she had gone off alone at less than a week's
notice.

"Alone? Gravener has permitted that?"
"What will you have? The House of Commons!"

I'm afraid I cursed the House of Commons: I was so much
interested. Of course he'd follow her as soon as he was free to

make her his wife; only she mightn't now be able to bring him
anything like the marriage-portion of which he had begun by having

the virtual promise. Mrs. Mulville let me know what was already
said: she was charming, this American girl, but really these

American fathers--! What was a man to do? Mr. Saltram, according
to Mrs. Mulville, was of opinion that a man was never to suffer his

relation to money to become a spiritual relation--he was to keep it
exclusively material. "Moi pas comprendre!" I commented on this;

in rejoinder to which Adelaide, with her beautiful sympathy,
explained that she supposed he simply meant that the thing was to

use it, don't you know? but not to think too much about it. "To
take it, but not to thank you for it?" I still more profanely

enquired. For a quarter of an hour afterwards she wouldn't look at
me, but this didn't prevent my asking her what had been the result,

that afternoon--in the Regent's Park, of her taking our friend to
see Miss Anvoy.

"Oh so charming!" she answered, brightening. "He said he
recognised in her a nature he could absolutely trust."

"Yes, but I'm speaking of the effect on herself."
Mrs. Mulville had to remount the stream. "It was everything one

could wish."
Something in her tone made me laugh. "Do you mean she gave him--a

dole?"
"Well, since you ask me!"

"Right there on the spot?"
Again poor Adelaide faltered. "It was to me of course she gave

it."
I stared; somehow I couldn't see the scene. "Do you mean a sum of

money?"
"It was very handsome." Now at last she met my eyes, though I

could see it was with an effort. "Thirty pounds."
"Straight out of her pocket?"

"Out of the drawer of a table at which she had been writing. She
just slipped the folded notes into my hand. He wasn't looking; it

was while he was going back to the carriage." "Oh," said Adelaide
reassuringly, "I take care of it for him!" The dear practical soul

thought my agitation, for I confess I was agitated, referred to the
employment of the money. Her disclosure made me for a moment muse

violently, and I dare say that during that moment I wondered if
anything else in the world makes people so gross as unselfishness.

I uttered, I suppose, some vague synthetic cry, for she went on as
if she had had a glimpse of my inward amaze at such passages. "I

assure you, my dear friend, he was in one of his happy hours."
But I wasn't thinking of that. "Truly indeed these Americans!" I

said. "With her father in the very act, as it were, of swindling
her betrothed!"

Mrs. Mulville stared. "Oh I suppose Mr. Anvoy has scarcely gone
bankrupt--or whatever he has done--on purpose. Very likely they

won't be able to keep it up, but there it was, and it was a very
beautiful impulse."

"You say Saltram was very fine?"
"Beyond everything. He surprised even me."

"And I know what YOU'VE enjoyed." After a moment I added: "Had he
peradventure caught a glimpse of the money in the table-drawer?"

At this my companionhonestly flushed. "How can you be so cruel
when you know how little he calculates?"

"Forgive me, I do know it. But you tell me things that act on my
nerves. I'm sure he hadn't caught a glimpse of anything but some

splendid idea."
Mrs. Mulville brightly concurred. "And perhaps even of her

beautiful listening face."
"Perhaps even! And what was it all about?"

"His talk? It was apropos of her engagement, which I had told him
about: the idea of marriage, the philosophy, the poetry, the

sublimity of it." It was impossible wholly to restrain one's mirth
at this, and some rude ripple that I emitted again caused my

companion to admonish me. "It sounds a little stale, but you know
his freshness."

"Of illustration? Indeed I do!"
"And how he has always been right on that great question."

"On what great question, dear lady, hasn't he been right?"
"Of what other great men can you equally say it?--and that he has

never, but NEVER, had a deflexion?" Mrs. Mulville exultantly
demanded.

I tried to think of some other great man, but I had to give it up.
"Didn't Miss Anvoy express her satisfaction in any less diffident

way than by her charming present?" I was reduced to asking instead.
"Oh yes, she overflowed to me on the steps while he was getting

into the carriage." These words somehow brushed up a picture of
Saltram's big shawled back as he hoisted himself into the green

landau. "She said she wasn't disappointed," Adelaide pursued.
I turned it over. "Did he wear his shawl?"

"His shawl?" She hadn't even noticed.
"I mean yours."

"He looked very nice, and you know he's really clean. Miss Anvoy
used such a remarkable expression--she said his mind's like a

crystal!"
I pricked up my ears. "A crystal?"

"Suspended in the moral world--swinging and shining and flashing
there. She's monstrously clever, you know."

I thought again. "Monstrously!"
CHAPTER VIII

George Gravener didn't follow her, for late in September, after the
House had risen, I met him in a railway-carriage. He was coming up

from Scotland and I had just quitted some relations who lived near
Durham. The current of travel back to London wasn't yet strong; at

any rate on entering the compartment I found he had had it for some
time to himself. We fared in company, and though he had a blue-

book in his lap and the open jaws of his bag threatened me with the
white teeth of confused papers, we inevitably, we even at last