re is a good deal done, but I think sometimes the methods are
not quite wise,' she said quietly. 'I am going to run my Club, as the
Americans say, on my own lines. You see, I am rather different, for I
have been a poor working girl myself, and I know both what they need and
what will do them most good.'

'You seem rather proud of the distinction,' he said involuntarily. 'Most
women in your position would have made a point of ignoring the past.
That is what half of Glasgow is trying to do all the time--forget where
they sprang from. Why are you so different?'

'I do not know.' Her lips curled in a fine scorn. 'As if it mattered,'
she said half-contemptuously,--'as if it mattered what anybody had
sprung from. I was reading Burns this morning, and I felt as if I could
worship him if for nothing more than writing these lines--

"The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that."'

'That's all very good in theory,' he said a trifle lazily; 'and besides,
it is very easy for you to speak like that, with centuries of lineage
behind you. I suppose the Grahams are as old as the Eglintons, or the
Alexanders, or even the great Portland family itself, if you come to
inquire into it. Yes, it is very easy for you to despise rank.'

'I don't despise it, and I am very proud in my own way that I do belong
to such an old family; but, all the same, it doesn't really matter.
There is nothing of any real value except honour and high character,
and, of course, genius.'

'When you speak like that, Gladys, and look like that, upon my word, you
make a fellow afraid to open his mouth before you,' he said quickly, and
there was something very winning in the humility and deference with
which he uttered these words.

Gladys was not unmoved by them, and had he followed up his slight
advantage, he might have won her on the spot; but at the propitious
moment Ellen brought in the tea-tray, and the conversation had to drift
into a more general groove.

'To return to my project,' said Gladys, when the maid had gone again, 'I
have one of my old acquaintances among the working girls here just now.
I expect she will help me a good deal. She was the friend of poor Lizzie
Hepburn, whom we have lost so completely. Is it not strange? What do you
think _can_ have become of her?'

'I'm sure I couldn't say,' he replied, with all the indifference at his
command.

Gladys, busy with the tea-cups, noticed nothing strange in his manner,