ee her face. She was resting a foot, very patient, very
still, in an old brown skirt, an ill-shaped blouse, and a blue-green
tam-o'-shanter cap. Hilary turned up the light. He saw a round little
face with broad cheekbones, flower-blue eyes, short lamp-black lashes,
and slightly parted lips. It was difficult to judge of her figure in
those old clothes, but she was neither short nor tall; her neck was
white and well set on, her hair pale brown and abundant. Hilary noted
that her chin, though not receding, was too soft and small; but what he
noted chiefly was her look of patient expectancy, as though beyond the
present she were seeing something, not necessarily pleasant, which had
to come. If he had not known from the painter of still life that she was
from the country, he would have thought her a town-bred girl, she looked
so pale. Her appearance, at all events, was not "too matter-of-fact."
Her speech, however, with its slight West-Country burr, was
matter-of-fact enough, concerned entirely with how long she would
have to sit, and the pay she was to get for it. In the middle of their
conversation she sank down on the floor, and Hilary was driven to
restore her with biscuits and liqueur, which in his haste he took for
brandy. It seemed she had not eaten since her breakfast the day before,
which had consisted of a cup of tea. In answer to his remonstrance, she
made this matter-of-fact remark:

"If you haven't money, you can't buy things.... There's no one I can ask
up here; I'm a stranger."

"Then you haven't been getting work?"

"No," the little model answered sullenly; "I don't want to sit as most
of them want me to till I'm obliged." The blood rushed up in her face
with startling vividness, then left it white again.

'Ah!' thought Hilary, 'she has had experience already.'

Both he and his wife were accessible to cases of distress, but the
nature of their charity was different. Hilary was constitutionally
unable to refuse his aid to anything that held out a hand for it. Bianca
(whose sociology was sounder), while affirming that charity was wrong,
since in a properly constituted State no one should need help, referred
her cases, like Stephen, to the "Society for the Prevention of Begging,"
which took much time and many pains to ascertain the worst.

But in this case what was of importance was that the poor girl should
have a meal, and after that to find out if she were living in a decent
house; and since she appeare