years older than when you used to know me. And
then I'm suffering from a serious bereavement, too. I've lost my good
opinion of myself."

"Perhaps I can be of some help in restoring it to you."

"That is the question.... Besides ageing immensely, I'm also getting
frightfully modern, you see...."

And pursuing this latter thought a little, she presently replied to him:

"Oh, no--sociology, not politics.... I've been thinking for some time of
inspecting the Works, to see if it needed repairs. How horrid of you to
laugh! Don't you think a woman should take some interest in how the
money is made that she lives on?..."

She said this smiling, in the lightest way imaginable. Small wonder if
Hugo didn't guess that she had thought twenty times in two weeks of
actually doing this thing she spoke of. Still less if it never occurred
to him that he here confronted again the footprint of the condemned
revivalist fellow, lately become his beloved's sworn friend....

"Have you asked your father that question yet?"

"I thought I'd better get the advice of a prominent lawyer first. Tell
me what you think?"

"The point would early arise as to how you would know, on visiting the
Works, whether or not it needed repairs. You've inspected many
factories, of course?"

"That's true!--I know nothing in the world about it. Of course not!"

She spoke with a sort of eagerness; but went on presently in another
tone: "Do you know, I really don't know anything ...? I've never thought
of it specially before, but all at once I'm constantly being impressed
with my ignorance...."

And Hugo, with all his accomplishment and skill, could not thenceforward
bring the conversation back where it belonged. Only the time and the
place were his to-night, it seemed....

"I," said the girl, "belong to the useless classes. I don't pay my way.
I'm a social deadbeat. So Mr. Pond told me the other night. You must
meet Mr. Pond, Hugo, the Director of the Settlement you gave all that
money to last year. He can be as horrid as anybody on earth, but is
really nice in a rude interesting way. He's packed full of quarrelsome
ideas. You know, he doesn't believe in giving money to the poor under
any circumstances. Harmful temporizing, he calls it ..." A rather wide
sweep here gave Mr. Pond's views on poor relief in detail ... "Are you
listening, Hugo? This information is being given for your benefit. And
oh, he wants me to learn millinery from Mme. Smythe (Jennie