aunted his client's bowed head.

"I'm not joking," he said. "God forbid! Do you read poetry?" And opening
a drawer, he took out a book bound in red leather. "This is a man I'm
fond of:

"'Life is mostly froth and bubble;
Two things stand like stone--
KINDNESS in another's trouble,
COURAGE in your own.'

"That seems to me the sum of all philosophy."

"Paramor," said Gregory, "my ward is very dear to me; she is dearer to
me than any woman I know. I am here in a most dreadful dilemma. On
the one hand there is this horrible underhand business, with all its
publicity; and on the other there is her position--a beautiful woman,
fond of gaiety, living alone in this London, where every man's instincts
and every woman's tongue look upon her as fair game. It has been brought
home to me only too painfully of late. God forgive me! I have even
advised her to go back to Bellew, but that seems out of the question.
What am I to do?"

Mr. Paramor rose.

"I know," he said--"I know. My dear friend, I know!" And for a full
minute he remained motionless, a little turned from Gregory. "It will be
better," he said suddenly, "for her to get rid of him. I'll go and see
her myself. We'll spare her all we can. I'll go this afternoon, and let
you know the result."

As though by mutual instinct, they put out their hands, which they shook
with averted faces. Then Gregory, seizing his hat, strode out of the
room.

He went straight to the rooms of his Society in Hanover Square. They
were on the top floor, higher than the rooms of any other Society in the
building--so high, in fact, that from their windows, which began five
feet up, you could practically only see the sky.

A girl with sloping shoulders, red cheeks, and dark eyes, was working
a typewriter in a corner, and sideways to the sky at a bureau littered
with addressed envelopes, unanswered letters, and copies of the
Society's publications, was seated a grey-haired lady with a long,
thin, weatherbeaten face and glowing eyes, who was frowning at a page of
manuscript.

"Oh, Mr. Vigil," she said, "I'm so glad you've come. This paragraph
mustn't go as it is. It will never do."

Gregory took the manuscript and read the paragraph in question.

"This case of Eva Nevill is so horrible that we ask those of our women
readers who live in the security, luxury perhaps, peace certainly,
of their country homes, what they would have done, finding t