ld name, 'is an excellent woman; refined and
cultivated, and everything she should be. And I have no doubt they are
all thoroughly deserving of the high character they bear. I thank you--I
really do--for having given me the opportunity of serving people who so
clearly deserve help. And these cases of bravely endured, almost
unsuspected poverty among the gently born appeal to one almost more than
the sufferings of the recognised "poor," though, of course, it is right
to help both.'

'Yes,' said Mrs Mildmay, 'I often feel it so. And it is very good of you
to put things in this way, Lady Myrtle. It takes away my qualms about
having interfered,' and she smiled a little.

'But, my dear, I have not done,' Lady Myrtle went on, a trifle testily,
'you must quite understand me. It is not _the very least_--no, no; quite
the other way--not the very least because they are Harpers that I am
glad to be of use to them. Neither this letter, nor your own
arguments--nothing, my dear, will alter the facts I stated to you the
other day.'

'No,' agreed Mrs Mildmay, and she could scarcely repress a little smile;
'that was what I said myself, dear Lady Myrtle; nothing _can_ alter
facts.'

'Your facts and mine are scarcely synonymous,' said Lady Myrtle, drily,
a little annoyed with herself perhaps, for having unconsciously made use
of Mrs Mildmay's own expression. But the annoyance was not deep, for in
another moment she added cheerfully, 'We are quite together on one
point, however, and that is in rejoicing that this help has come in
time, as we may hope, to save a valuable life and much sorrow to those
who cherish it. If _this_ prove a fact, I think, my dear Eugenia, we may
rest content.'

'Yes, indeed,' replied Mrs Mildmay, touched by her old friend's
gentleness, though to herself she added, 'for the present, that is to
say.'

And when to eager little Frances she related the upshot of her
intervention, she did not retract her former words about having made a
beginning.

'I _think_,' she said, 'I have got in the thin end of the wedge. When
honest-minded people are a little shaken in anything, they try hard to
persuade themselves by extra vehemence that they are not so.'

'Mamma, dear,' said Frances, 'I am beginning to believe not only that
you are the best but the very cleverest woman in the world.'

And Mrs Mildmay laughed the joyous laugh which was one of her charms.
The success which had attended this attempt of hers so far, di