This made him appear a battered martyr, parting every day with some of the finest gold, in the service of mankind.
"I can't think," Rachel exclaimed, "how any one does it!"
"Explain, Miss Vinrace," said Richard. "This is a matter I want to clear up."
His kindness was genuine, and she determined to take the chance he gave her, although to talk to a man of such worth and authority made her heart beat.
"It seems to me like this," she began, doing her best first to recollect and then to expose her shivering private visions.
"There's an old widow in her room, somewhere, let us suppose in the suburbs of Leeds."
Richard bent his head to show that he accepted the widow.
"In London you're spending your life, talking, writing things, getting bills through, missing what seems natural. The resu
