ised to have done, all that she had so passionately
wished to do. His name was on their lips continually; even the little
children lisped it. It was "his lordship this" and "his lordship
that," in a way that furnished a strange contrast to the studied
avoidance of the word under former conditions.

Somehow, glad as she was, it was hard for Bettina to bear. In the
midst of the accounts of what his lordship had done and said, and
how he was to right all their wrongs and make everybody happy, she
got up and took a hurried leave.

What was the use of her staying here? What was a little sympathetic
feeling, more or less, to these wretchedly poor creatures? It was
their material needs that they wished satisfied, and a stronger hand
than hers was at work on these. And if--as seemed so plain, as she
could so well imagine from her own knowledge of him--he was able and
willing to give them the sympathy and interest as well as the
practical help they needed, where was any use for her? There was
none--nobody needed her, she told herself, desperately, and the
sooner she lost herself in the oblivion of America the better.

Each cottage that she visited showed the same metamorphosis in its
inmates. A lame boy to whom she had once given a pair of crutches had
a new wheel-chair, and the crutches were thrown in a corner. A sick
child for whom she had bought some prepared food, which it had not
been able to take, had been sent off to a hospital for regular
treatment, and its poor mother was enjoying the first rest of many
years, with a consciousness that the child was better off than it
could possibly be with her. An old man who had been long bedridden,
and to whom she had sent some clean bedclothes, had been moved into
another room with complete new furnishings, while the occupant of
this room had been sent elsewhere, so that the distressing sense of
over-crowdedness for sick and well was entirely gone from the house.

In almost every cottage that she visited she saw the same evidences.
How pitiful her own efforts seemed beside these! What was heart
compared with hand? What was sympathy compared with money? And was
she so sure that she gave even the sympathy? She felt in her breast
now no sense of pity for their suffering, no consciousness even of
rejoicing in their relief. The only feeling there--and it seemed to
fill her whole heart--was pity for her own numb, gnawing
wretchedness, for which there could be no relief.

When the la