th the better
classes another mode of amusing a weary social life. But she soon made
out a generous theory to satisfy herself on that point. Soame Rivers,
she felt sure, put on that panoply of cynicism only to guard himself
against the weakness of yielding to a futile sensibility. He was very
poor, she thought. She had lordly views about money, and she thought a
man without a country house of his own must needs be wretchedly poor,
and she knew that Soame Rivers passed all his holiday seasons in the
country houses of other people. Therefore, she made out that Soame
Rivers was very poor; and, of course, if he was very poor, he could not
lend much practical aid to those who, in the East End or otherwise, were
still poorer than he. So she assumed that he put on the mask of cynicism
to hide the flushings of sensibility. She told him as much; she said she
knew that his affected indifference to the interests of humanity was
only a disguise put on to conceal his real feelings. At first he used to
laugh at her odd, pretty conceits. After a while he came to encourage
her in the idea, even while formally assuring her that there was nothing
in it, and that he did not care a straw whether the poor were miserable
or happy.

Chance favoured him. There were some poor people whom Helena and her
father were shipping off to New Zealand. Sir Rupert, without Helena's
knowledge, asked his secretary to look after them the night of their
going aboard, as he could not be there himself. Helena, without
consulting her father, drove down to the docks to look after her poor
friends, and there she found Rivers installed in the business of
protector. He did the work well--as he did every work that came to his
hand. The emigrants thought him the nicest gentleman they had ever
known. Helena said to him, 'Come now! I have found you out at last.' And
he only said, 'Oh, nonsense! this is nothing.' But he did not more
directly contradict her theory, and he did not say her father had sent
him--for he knew Sir Rupert would never say that of himself.

Rivers found himself every day watching over Helena with a deepening
interest and anxiety. Her talk, her companionship, were growing to be
indispensable to him. He did not pay her compliments--indeed, sometimes
they rather sparred at one another in a pleasant schoolboy and
schoolgirl sort of way. But she liked his society, and felt herself
thoroughly companionable and comrade-like with him, and she never
thoug