e knew or guessed at the unchronicled treachery or deceit which had
brought about that seemingly harsh word or deed.

She had not the exalted ideas about her fellow-creatures which Hester
had, but she possessed the rare gift of reticence. She exemplified the
text--"Whether it be to friend or foe, talk not of other men's lives."
And in Rachel's quiet soul a vast love and pity dwelt for these same
fellow-creatures. She had lived and worked for years among those whose
bodies were half starved, half clothed, degraded. When she found money
at her command she had spent sums (as her lawyer told her) out of all
proportion on that poor human body, stumbling between vice and
starvation. But now, during the last year, when her great wealth had
thrown her violently into society, she had met, until her strong heart
flinched before it, the other side of life--the starved soul in the
delicately nurtured, richly clad body, the atrophied spiritual life in
hideous contrast with the physical ease and luxury which were choking
it. The second experience was harder to bear than the first. And just as
in the old days she had shared her bread and cheese with those hungrier
than herself, and had taken but little thought for those who had bread
and to spare, so now she felt but transient interest in those among her
new associates who were successfully struggling against the blackmail of
luxury, the leprosy of worldliness, the selfishness that at last coffins
the soul it clothes. Her heart yearned instead towards the spiritually
starving, the tempted, the fallen in that great little world, whose
names are written in the book, not of life, but of Burke--the little
world which is called "Society."

She longed to comfort them, to raise them up, to wipe from their hands
and garments the muddy gold stains of the gutter into which they had
fallen, to smooth away the lines of mean care from their faces. But it
had been far simpler in her previous life to share her hard-earned bread
with those who needed it than it was now to share her equally
hard-earned thoughts and slow gleanings of spiritual knowledge, to share
the things which belonged to her peace.

Rachel had not yet wholly recovered from the overwhelming passion of
love which, admitted without fear a few years ago, had devastated the
little city of her heart, as by fire and sword, involving its hospitable
dwellings, its temples, and its palaces in one common ruin. Out of that
desolation she was