the best means of
relieving the famine then raging in India.

It seemed to Bettina that she had vaguely heard that there was such a
famine, but she had not felt more than a kindly casual interest in it
as an unfortunate matter which she could not help. Now, however, as
she read the account which this paper gave, and the lines which it
followed in the effort to render help, her heart burned within her.
Here was a man who had no more power than herself to give money
help--far less, indeed, perhaps. Yet how he was spending his soul,
his strength, his time, his talent, his very heart-beats, on this
effort to go to the rescue of these perishing thousands! No one who
read the throbbing sentences of that paper could have a doubt of the
writer's earnest desire to help, or of his ability to move the hearts
and wills of others to come to his aid. It wrought upon her
strangely.

How much money could she lay her hands on? She had no idea, but she
would make it her business to find out. There was her own little
income, which she had taken no account of since her marriage, and
there was the money which Lord Hurdly had put to her credit in the
bank. She would get all she could and send it--anonymously, of
course--to the famine fund which she had casually heard mentioned.
But, oh, what a pitiful offering it seemed compared with what this
man was giving with such lavish self-devotion! From the fervor of his
printed words, and his report of what had so far been accomplished,
she saw that the very passion of his heart was in it. Of his ardent
temperament, his quick sympathies, she had knowledge in her own
experience. Perhaps it had been these very traits of his which had
led him to the conduct which had separated them.

At this thought, that faint suspicion that he had been misrepresented
to her rose in her heart again; but she choked it back. That would be
too awful. Besides the hideous self-accusations which would have
followed the admission of this doubt, there was another argument
against it which still had its powerful hold on her. She had grown
accustomed to her great position in the social world, and her inborn
instinct for power and admiration was deliciously gratified by the
brilliancy of her present circumstances. She found it very agreeable
to be Lady Hurdly, with all that that name and title implied, and she
did not, even in this moment of such unwonted emotion, lose sight of
that fact.

Yet the reading of this little pa