, but Mr.
Chiverton and he were not on intimate terms.

Bessie went to Castlemount under escort of Mrs. Betts. Mrs. Chiverton
was rejoiced to welcome her. "I like Miss Fairfax, because she is
honest. Her manner is a little brusque, but she has a good heart, and we
knew each other at school," was her reason given to Mr. Chiverton for
desiring Bessie's company. They got on together capitally. Mrs.
Chiverton had found her course and object in life already, and was as
deeply committed to philanthropic labors and letters as either Lady
Latimer or Lady Angleby. They were both numbered amongst her
correspondents, and she promised to outvie them in originality and
fertility of resource. What she chiefly wanted at Castlemount was a good
listener, and Bessie Fairfax, as yet unprovided with a vocation, showed
a fine turn that way. She reposed lazily at the end of Mrs. Chiverton's
encumbered writing-table, between the fire and the window, and heard her
discourse with infinite patience. Bessie was too moderate ever to join
the sisterhood of active reformers, but she had no objection to their
activity while herself safe from assaults. But when she was invited to
sign papers pledging herself to divers serious convictions she demurred.
Mrs. Chiverton said she would not urge her. Bessie gracefully
acquiesced, and Mrs. Chiverton put in a more enticing plea: "I can
scarcely expect to interest you in my occupations all at once, but they
bring to me often the most gratifying returns. Read that letter."

Bessie read that letter. "Very honeyed phrases," said she with her odd
twist of the mouth, so like her grandfather. It was from a more
practised philanthropist than the young lady to whom it was addressed,
and was in a strain of fulsome adulation, redolent of gratitude for
favors to come. Religious and benevolent egotism is impervious to the
tiny sting of sarcasm. Mrs. Chiverton looked complacently lofty, and
Bessie had not now to learn how necessary to her was the incense of
praise. Once this had provoked her contempt, but now she discerned a
certain pathos in it; she had learnt what large opportunity the craving
for homage gives to disappointment. "You cannot fail to do some good
because you mean well," she said after the perusal of more letters, more
papers and reports. "But don't call me heartless and unfeeling because
I think that distance lends enchantment to the view of some of your
pious and charitable objects."

"Oh no; I see you