way through a crowd of such slaves, if he could help it? I mean
slaves of Mammon, of course. To run the gauntlet of their faces in
Cornhill is enough to discourage a thoughtful man for hours. Well,
Jansenius, being high in the court of Mammon, is looking out for a good
post in the household for his son. Jansenius, by-the-bye is Miss Wylie's
guardian and the father of my late wife."

Agatha felt inclined to deny this; but, as it was true, she had to
forbear. Resolved to show that the relations between her family and
Trefusis were not cordial ones, she asked deliberately, "Did Mr.
Jansenius speak to you?"

Gertrude looked up, as if she thought this scarcely ladylike.

"Yes," said Trefusis. "We are the best friends in the world--as good as
possible, at any rate. He wanted me to subscribe to a fund for relieving
the poor at the east end of London by assisting them to emigrate."

"I presume you subscribed liberally," said Erskine. "It was an
opportunity of doing some practical good."

"I did not," said Trefusis, grinning at the sarcasm. "This Transcanadian
Railway Company, having got a great deal of spare land from the Canadian
government for nothing, thought it would be a good idea to settle
British workmen on it and screw rent out of them. Plenty of British
workmen, supplanted in their employment by machinery, or cheap foreign
labor, or one thing or another, were quite willing to go; but as they
couldn't afford to pay their passages to Canada, the Company appealed
to the benevolent to pay for them by subscription, as the change would
improve their miserable condition. I did not see why I should pay to
provide a rich company with tenant farmers, and I told Jansenius so.
He remarked that when money and not talk was required, the workmen of
England soon found out who were their real friends."

"I know nothing about these questions," said Sir Charles, with an air
of conclusiveness; "but I see no objection to emigration." "The fact
is," said Trefusis, "the idea of emigration is a dangerous one for us.
Familiarize the workman with it, and some day he may come to see what a
capital thing it would be to pack off me, and you, with the peerage,
and the whole tribe of unprofitable proprietors such as we are, to St.
Helena; making us a handsome present of the island by way of indemnity!
We are such a restless, unhappy lot, that I doubt whether it would not
prove a good thing for us too. The workmen would lose nothing but the
co