various garments of which the
fashion is permanent, but the issue was blank. No ripple stirred the
placid waters, unless indeed we take that way of describing Laura's calm
demand, when the decision lay between Valenciennes and Torchon lace for
under-bodies, to hear whether Mrs. Simpson had ever known Duff Lindsay
to be anxious about his eternal future. The girl continued to give forth
a mere pale reflection of her circumstances, and Mrs. Simpson was forced
into the deprecation that perhaps one would hardly call her a joyous
Christian.

But for the Zenana Light Society this impression of Miss Filbert might
have deepened. The committee of that body was almost entirely composed
of Mrs. Simpson's friends, and naturally came to learn much about her
guest. The matter was vastly considered, but finally Miss Filbert was
asked to speak at one of the monthly meetings the ladies held among
themselves to keep the society "in touch" with the cause. Laura brought
them, as one would imagine, surprisingly in touch. She made pictures for
them, letting her own eyelashes close deliberately while they stared.
She moved these ladies, inspired them, carried them away, and the fact
that none of them found themselves able afterward to quote the most
pathetic passages seemed rather to add to the enthusiasm with which they
described the address. The first result was a shower of invitations to
tea, occasions when Laura was easily led into monologue. Miss Filbert
became a cult of evangelistic drawing-rooms, and the same kind of
forbearance was extended to her little traces of earlier social
experiences as is offered, in salons of another sort, to the
eccentricities of persons of genius. Very soon other applications had to
be met and considered, and Mrs. Simpson freely admitted that Laura would
not be justified in refusing to the Methodists and Baptists what she had
given elsewhere. She reasserted her platform influence over audiences
that grew constantly larger, and her world began to revolve again in
that great relation to the infinities which it was her life to perceive
and point out. Mrs. Simpson charged her genially with having been
miserable in Plymouth until she was allowed to do good in her own way,
and saw that she had beef-tea after every occasion of doing it. She
became in a way a public character, and a lady journalist sent an
account of her, with a photograph, to a well-known London fashion paper.
Perhaps the strongest effect she made