transference of the care of his estates to him, and that was the apparent encouragement which both he and Lady Caroom gave to the friendship between Sybil and himself.  They had lunched with him twice in Medchester, and more often still the Enton barouche had been kept waiting at his office whilst Lady Caroom and Sybil descended upon him with invitations from Lord Arranmore.  After his talk with Mr. Ascough he put the matter behind him, but it remained at times an inexplicable puzzle.

On the evening of this particular visit he found Sybil alone in a recess of the drawing-room with a newspaper in her hand.  She greeted him with obvious pleasure.

“Do come and tell me about things, Mr. Brooks,” she begged.  “I have been reading the local paper.  Is it true that there are actually people starving in Medchester?”

“There is a great deal of distress,” he admitted, gravely.  “I am afraid that it is true.”

She looked at him with wide-open eyes.

“But I don’t understand,” she said.  “I thought that there were societies who dealt with all that sort of thing, and behind, the—­the workhouse.”

“So there are, Lady Sybil,” he answered, “but you must remember that societies are no use unless people will subscribe to them, and that there are a great many people who would sooner starve than enter the workhouse.”

“But surely,” she exclaimed, “there is no difficulty about getting money—­if people only understand.”

He watched her for a moment in silence—­suddenly appreciating the refinement, the costly elegance which seemed in itself to be a part of the girl, and yet for which surely her toilette was in some way also responsible.  Her white satin dress was cut and fashioned in a style which he was beginning to appreciate as evidence of skill and costliness.  A string of pearls around her throat gleamed softly in the firelight.  A chain of fine gold studded with opals and diamonds reached almost to her knees.  She wore few rings indeed, but they were such rings as he had never seen before he had come as a guest to Enton.  And there were thousands like her.  A momentary flash of thought carried him back to the days of the French Revolution.  There was a print hanging in his room of a girl as fair and as proud as this one, surrounded by a fierce rabble mad with hunger and the pent-up rage of generations, tearing the jewels from her fingers, tearing even, he thought, the trimming from her gown.

“You do not answer me, Mr. Brooks,” she reminded him.

He recovered himself with a start.

“I beg your pardon, Lady Sybil.  Your question set me thinking.  We have tried to make people understand, and many have given most generously, but for all that we cannot cope with such distress as there is to-day in Medchester.  I am secretary for one of the distribution societies, and I have seen things which are enough to sadden a man for life, only during the last few days.”