e corner!' What merit is in that? Do you call that a
virtue? But where charity really becomes a heroism, Linn, is when a
poor, suffering, neuralgic woman, without any impulse from abundance of
health or abundance of comfort, sets laboriously to work to do what she
can for her fellow-creatures. Then that is something to regard--that is
something to admire--"

Lionel burst out laughing.

"A very pretty description of Francie Wright!" he cried. "Francie a
poor, suffering, wretched woman--because she happened to have a touch of
neuralgia the last Sunday you were down here! There's very little of the
poor and suffering about Francie; she's as contented and merry a lass as
you'd find anywhere."

Mangan was silent for a second or two; and then he said, with a little
hesitation,

"Didn't you tell me Miss Wright had not been up yet to see 'The Squire's
Daughter?'"

"No, she has not," Lionel answered, lightly. "I don't know whether you
have been influencing her, Maurice, or whether you have picked up some
of her highly superior prejudices; anyhow, I rather fancy she doesn't
quite approve of the theatre--I mean, I don't think she approves of the
New Theatre, for she'd go to any other one fast enough, I suppose, if
you could only get her away from her sick children. But not the New
Theatre, apparently. Perhaps she doesn't care to see me making myself a
motley to the view."

"She has a great regard for you, Linn. I wouldn't call her opinions
prejudices," Mangan said--but with the curious diffidence he displayed
whenever he spoke of Lionel's cousin.

"Oh, Francie should have lived in the fifteenth century--she would have
been a follower of Savonarola," Lionel said, with a laugh. "She's far
too exalted for these present days."

"Well, Linn," said his friend, "I'm glad you know at least one person
who has some notion of duty and self-sacrifice, who has some fineness of
perception and some standard of conduct and aim to go by. Why, those
people you associate so much with now seem to have but one pursuit--the
pursuit of pleasure, the gratification of every selfish whim; they seem
to have no consciousness of the mystery surrounding life--of the fact
that they themselves are inexplicable phantoms whose very existence
might make them pause and wonder and question. No, it is the amassing of
wealth, and the expending of it, that is all sufficient. I used to
wonder why God should have chosen the Jews, of all the nations of the
earth