th a smile.

"She is on the stage,--Lizzy. The opera,--singing;--in choruses only,
now,--but it will be better soon."

Mrs. Sheppard let her bit of bread fall, then ate it with a gulp. Why,
every drop of the Shelby blood was clean and respectable; it was not easy
to have an emissary of hell, a tawdry actress, brought on the carpet
before her, with even this mild flourish of trumpets.

The silence grew painful. Grey glanced around quickly, then her Welsh
blood made her eyelids shake a little, and her lips shut. But she said
gently,--

"My sister is not albata ware,--that you hate, Mrs. Sheppard. She is no
sham. When God said to her, 'Do this thing,' she did not ask the neighbors
to measure it by their rule of right and wrong."

"Well, well, little Grey,"--with a forbearing smile,--"she is your
sister,--you're a clannish body. Your heart's all right, my
dear,"--patting the hard nervous hand that lay on the table,--"but you
never studied theology, that's clear."

"I don't know."

Mrs. Blecker's face grew hot; but that might have been the steam of the
coffee-urn.

"We'll be just to Lizzy," said her husband, gravely. "She had a hurt
lately. I don't think she values her life for much now. It is a hungry
family, the Gurneys,"--with a quizzical smile. "My wife, here, kept the
wolf from the door almost single-handed, though she don't understand
theology. You are quite right about that. When I came home here two months
ago, she would not be my wife; there was no one to take her place, she
said. So, one day, when I was in my office alone, Lizzy came to me,
looking like a dead body out of which the soul had been crushed. She had
been hurt, I told you:--she came to me with an open letter in her hand. It
was from the manager of one of the second-rate opera-troupes. The girl can
sing, and has a curious dramatic talent, her only one.

"'It is all I am capable of doing,' she said. 'If I go, Grey can marry.
The family will have a sure support.'

"Then she folded the letter into odd shapes, with an idiotic look.

"'Do you want me to answer it?' I asked.

"'Yes, I do. Tell him I'll go. Grey can be happy then, and the others will
have enough to eat. I never was of any use before.'

"I knew that well enough. I sat down to write the letter.

"'You will be turned out of church for this,' I said.

"She stood by the window, her finger tracing the rain-drops on the pane,
for it was a rainy night. She said,--

"'They won't unde