n ill-shaped blouse, and a blue-green
tam-o'-shanter cap. Hilary turned up the light. He saw a round little
face with broad cheekbones, flower-blue eyes, short lamp-black lashes,
and slightly parted lips. It was difficult to judge of her figure in
those old clothes, but she was neither short nor tall; her neck was white
and well set on, her hair pale brown and abundant. Hilary noted that her
chin, though not receding, was too soft and small; but what he noted
chiefly was her look of patient expectancy, as though beyond the present
she were seeing something, not necessarily pleasant, which had to come.
If he had not known from the painter of still life that she was from the
country, he would have thought her a town-bred girl, she looked so pale.
Her appearance, at all events, was not "too matter-of-fact." Her speech,
however, with its slight West-Country burr, was matter-of-fact enough,
concerned entirely with how long she would have to sit, and the pay she
was to get for it. In the middle of their conversation she sank down on
the floor, and Hilary was driven to restore her with biscuits and
liqueur, which in his haste he took for brandy. It seemed she had not
eaten since her breakfast the day before, which had consisted of a cup of
tea. In answer to his remonstrance, she made this matter-of-fact remark:

"If you haven't money, you can't buy things.... There's no one I can ask
up here; I'm a stranger."

"Then you haven't been getting work?"

"No," the little model answered sullenly; "I don't want to sit as most of
them want me to till I'm obliged." The blood rushed up in her face with
startling vividness, then left it white again.

'Ah!' thought Hilary, 'she has had experience already.'

Both he and his wife were accessible to cases of distress, but the nature
of their charity was different. Hilary was constitutionally unable to
refuse his aid to anything that held out a hand for it. Bianca (whose
sociology was sounder), while affirming that charity was wrong, since in
a properly constituted State no one should need help, referred her cases,
like Stephen, to the "Society for the Prevention of Begging," which took
much time and many pains to ascertain the worst.

But in this case what was of importance was that the poor girl should
have a meal, and after that to find out if she were living in a decent
house; and since she appeared not to be, to recommend her somewhere
better. And as in charity it is alwa