With that she retired, and shutting the door behind her left Helmsley to
himself.

Many and conflicting were the thoughts that chased one another through
his brain during the quiet half-hour he gave to his morning meal,--a
whole fund of new suggestions and ideas were being generated in him by
the various episodes in which he was taking an active yet seemingly
passive part. He had voluntarily entered into his present circumstances,
and so far, he had nothing to complain of. He had met with friendliness
and sympathy from persons who, judged by the world's conventions, were
of no social account whatever, and he had seen for himself men in a
condition of extreme poverty, who were nevertheless apparently contented
with their lot. Of course, as a well-known millionaire, his secretaries
had always had to deal with endless cases of real or assumed distress,
more often the latter,--and shoals of begging letters from people
representing themselves as starving and friendless, formed a large part
of the daily correspondence with which his house and office were
besieged,--but he had never come into personal contact with these
shameless sort of correspondents, shrewdly judging them to be
undeserving simply by the very fact that they wrote begging letters. He
knew that no really honest or plucky-spirited man or woman would waste
so much as a stamp in asking money from a stranger, even if such a
stranger were twenty times a millionaire. He had given huge sums away to
charitable institutions anonymously; and he remembered with a thrill of
pain the "Christian kindness" of some good "Church" people, who, when
the news accidentally slipped out that he was the donor of a
particularly munificent gift to a certain hospital, remarked that "no
doubt Mr. Helmsley had given it anonymously _at first_, in order that it
might be made public more effectively _afterwards,_ by way of a personal
_advertisement_!" Such spiteful comment often repeated, had effectually
checked the outflow of his naturally warm and generous spirit,
nevertheless he was always ready to relieve any pressing cases of want
which were proved genuine, and many a wretched family in the East End of
London had cause to bless him for his timely and ungrudging aid. But
this present kind of life,--the life of the tramp, the poacher, the
gypsy, who is content to be "on the road" rather than submit to the
trammels of custom and ordinance, was new to him and full of charm. He
took a pe