me.

"They are martyrs to rheumatic gout, and of course have no means of
obtaining proper treatment; so we have secured a site at Harrogate and
are building a comfortable place, half hospital, half hotel, where they
can be put up for a shilling a day and have all the benefits of the
waters just as if they were staying at the Hotel Majestic. Do you want
to become a subscriber?"

"I am eager to," said I.

"Then come over here and I'll tell you all about it."

I sat with her in a corner of the room and listened to her fairy-tale.
She wrung my heart to such a pitch of sympathy that I rose and grasped
her by the hand.

"It is indeed a noble project," I cried. "I love the London cabby as my
brother, and I'll post you a cheque for a thousand pounds this evening.
Good-bye!"

I left her in a state of joyous stupefaction and made my escape. If it
had not fallen in with my general scheme of good works I should regard
it as an expensive method of avoiding unpleasant questions.

Another philanthropist, by the way, of quite a different type from Lady
Kynnersley, who has lately benefited by my eleemosynary mania is Rex
Campion. I have known him since our University days and have maintained
a sincere though desultory friendship with him ever since. He is also a
friend of Eleanor Faversham, whom he now and then inveigles into weird
doings in the impossible slums of South Lambeth. He has tried on many
occasions to lure me into his web, but hitherto I have resisted.
Being the possessor of a large fortune, he has been able to gratify a
devouring passion for philanthropy, and has squandered most of his money
on an institution--a kind of club, school, labour-bureau, dispensary,
soup-kitchen, all rolled into one--in Lambeth; and there he
lives himself, perfectly happy among a hungry, grubby, scarecrow,
tatterdemalion crowd. At a loss for a defining name, he has called it
"Barbara's Building," after his mother. His conception of the cosmos
is that sun, moon and stars revolve round Barbara's Building. How he
learned that I was, so to speak, standing at street corners and flinging
money into the laps of the poor and needy, I know not. But he came to
see me a day or two ago, full of Barbara's Building, and departed in
high feather with a cheque for a thousand pounds in his pocket.

I may remark here on the peculiar difficulty there is in playing Monte
Cristo with anything like picturesque grace. Any dull dog that owns
a pen and a bankin