was silent for a moment, then he said: "No, I have no son or
daughter. I am childless. The person of whom I speak is a young girl, no
relation of mine, scarcely a friend, save for the fact that I have been
of service to her, and that she regards me as the only friend she has.
We live in the same block of buildings--have met as ships pass in the
night. She is a poor girl who has been working as a kind of secretary,
but her employer has died suddenly, and she is now penniless and
helpless."

The Marquess started to his feet and paced the room again.

"I feel as if I were in a dream, a nightmare," he said. "Here are you,
suddenly springing to life, poor, almost destitute, and you come to me,
not asking for all that is yours by right, not even for money for
yourself, but for someone, for some girl who is not even of your kith
and kin, has no claim on you. I always thought you mad, Wilfred, in the
old days when we were boys together. I still think you're mad. How could
I think otherwise?"

"We are all mad, more or less, Talbot," rejoined Mr. Clendon, with the
flicker of a grim smile on his thin lips. "But this young girl--I have
taken her misery to heart. If you had seen her as I have seen her--but
you haven't, and I have to try to impress her case on you, enlist your
sympathies, as well as I can. She is a lady, not by birth, perhaps, but
by instinct and training. She has been well educated. That's been
against her, of course. It always is with persons in her position;
anyway, it makes her lot a still harder one."

"Well, well!" broke in the Marquess. "You want me to give her money. Of
course, you can have what you want, any sum; you have but to ask--_Ask!_
it is all yours; you have but to _demand_!--No, no, I don't mean to be
angry, brutal; but, surely, you can understand what I am feeling. How
much do you want?"

"Nothing," said Mr. Clendon, with another flickering smile. "My dear
Talbot, you don't understand. But I don't blame you; how should you? All
the same, we poor people have our little pride; the girl of whom I
speak--well, I found her starving in her miserable little room, because
she was too proud to descend a flight of steps to mine, to ask for the
bread for which she was dying."

The Marquess stared. "Is it possible that such cases can exist?"

"Oh, yes, my dear Talbot," responded Mr. Clendon, with grim irony.
"There are more persons die of starvation in London every day than the
Boards of Guardians wot