ne in the booth with the
woman in the dark kirtle and black lace hood.

"For the poor of Paris, Madame," said the latter mechanically, holding
out her reticule.

Marguerite was looking at her intently. The face certainly seemed
familiar, recalling to her mind the far-off days in Paris, before
she married. Some young actress no doubt driven out of France by that
terrible turmoil which had caused so much sorrow and so much suffering.
The face was pretty, the figure slim and elegant, and the look of
obvious sadness in the dark, almond-shaped eyes was calculated to
inspire sympathy and pity.

Yet, strangely enough, Lady Blakeney felt repelled and chilled by this
sombrely-dressed young person: an instinct, which she could not have
explained and which she felt had no justification, warned her that
somehow or other, the sadness was not quite genuine, the appeal for the
poor not quite heartfelt.

Nevertheless, she took out her purse, and dropping some few sovereigns
into the capacious reticule, she said very kindly:

"I hope that you are satisfied with your day's work, Madame; I fear
me our British country folk hold the strings of their purses somewhat
tightly these times."

The woman sighed and shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, Madame!" she said with a tone of great dejection, "one does what
one can for one's starving countrymen, but it is very hard to elicit
sympathy over here for them, poor dears!"

"You are a Frenchwoman, of course," rejoined Marguerite, who had noted
that though the woman spoke English with a very pronounced foreign
accent, she had nevertheless expressed herself with wonderful fluency
and correctness.

"Just like Lady Blakeney herself," replied the other.

"You know who I am?

"Who could come to Richmond and not know Lady Blakeney by sight."

"But what made you come to Richmond on this philanthropic errand of
yours?"

"I go where I think there is a chance of earning a little money for
the cause which I have at heart," replied the Frenchwoman with the same
gentle simplicity, the same tone of mournful dejection.

What she said was undoubtedly noble and selfless. Lady Blakeney felt in
her heart that her keenest sympathy should have gone out to this
young woman--pretty, dainty, hardly more than a girl--who seemed to be
devoting her young life in a purely philanthropic and unselfish cause.
And yet in spite of herself, Marguerite seemed unable to shake off that
curious sense of mistrust which had