o let me
share their grief, and I think sometimes I was able to help just a
little."

"I know how you helped," said Pamela; "the Macdonalds told me. Do you
know, I think I envy you. You have suffered much, but you have loved
much. Your life has meant something. Looking back I've nothing to think
on but social successes that now seem very small and foolish, and years
of dressing and talking and dancing and laughing. My life seems like a
brightly coloured bubble--as light and as useless."

"Not useless. We need the flowers and the butterflies and the things
that adorn.... I wish Jean would give herself over to pleasure for a
little. Her poor little head is full of schemes--quite practical schemes
they are too, she has a shrewd head--about helping others. I tell her
she will do it all in good time, but I want her to forget the woes of
the world for a little and rejoice in her youth."

"I know," said Pamela. "I was astonished to find how responsible she
felt for the misery in the world. She is determined to build a heaven in
hell's despair! It reminds one of Saint Theresa setting out holding her
little brother's hand to convert the Moors!... Now I've stayed too long
and tired you, and Augusta will have me assassinated. Thank you, my very
dear lady, for letting me come to see you, and for--telling me about
your sons. Bless you...."

CHAPTER XXII

"For never anything can be amiss
When simpleness and duty tender it."

_As You Like It_.

The lot of the conscientious philanthropist is not an easy one. The kind
but unthinking rich can strew their benefits about, careless of their
effect on the recipients, but the path of the earnest lover of his
fellows is thorny and difficult, and dark with disappointment.

To Jean in her innocence it had seemed that money was the one thing
necessary to make bright the lives of her poorer neighbours. She
pictured herself as a sort of fairy godmother going from house to house
carrying sunshine and leaving smiles and happiness in her wake. She soon
found that her dreams had been rosy delusions. Far otherwise was the
result of her efforts.

"It's like something in a fairy-tale," she complained to Pamela. "You
are given a fairy palace, but when you try to go to it mountains of
glass are set before you and you can't reach it. You can't think how
different the people are to me now. The very poor whom I thought I could
help don't treat me any longer like a friend to whom t