Part 87 (2/2)

'Well, Mr. Pitt, haven't you done your part, as far as this case is concerned?'

'Have I? Would _you_ stop with that?'

Betty sat very quiet, but internally fidgeted. What did Pitt ask her these questions for? Why had he taken her on this expedition? She wished she had not gone; she wished she had not come to England; and yet she would not be anywhere else at this moment but where she was, for any possible consideration. She wished Pitt would be different, and not fill his head with lace-menders and London alleys; and yet--even so--things might be worse. Suppose Pitt had devoted his energies to gambling, and absorbed all his interests in hunters and racers. Betty had known that sort of thing; and now summarily concluded that men must make themselves troublesome in one way or another. But this particular turn this man had taken did seem to set him so far off from her!

'What would you do, Mr. Pitt?' she said, with a somewhat weary cadence in her voice which he could not interpret.

'Look at it, and tell me, from your standpoint.'

'If you took that woman out of those lodgings, there would come somebody else into them, and you might begin the whole thing over again. In that way the Duke of Trefoil might give you enough to do for a lifetime.'

'Well?--the conclusion?'

'How can you ask? Some things are self-evident.'

'What do you think that means: ”He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none”?'

'I don't think it means _that_,' said Betty. 'That you are to give away all you have, till you haven't left yourself an overcoat.'

'Are you sure? Not if somebody else needed it more? That is the question. We come back to the--”Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you.” ”Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils.” How, do you think, can I best do that in the case of Mrs.

Mills and her boy? One thing at a time. Never mind what the Duke of Trefoil may complicate in the future.'

'Raise the dead!' Betty echoed.

'Ay,' he said. 'There are worse deaths than that of the body.'

Betty paused, but Pitt waited.

'If they are to be kept alive in any sense,' she said at last, 'they must be taken out of that hole where they are now.'

'And, as you truly suggest that the number of persons wanting such relief is unlimited, the first thing to be done is to build proper houses for the poor. That is what I have set about.'

'_You_ have!' cried Betty.

'I cannot do much. True, but that is nothing whatever to the question.

I have begun to put up a few houses, which shall be comfortable, easy to keep clean, and rentable for what the industrious poor can afford to pay. That will give sufficient interest for the capital expended, and even allow me, without further outlay, to go on extending my accommodations. Mrs. Mills will move into the first of my new houses, I hope, next month.'

'What have you taken me all this day's expedition for, Mr. Dallas?'

Betty asked suddenly. The pain of the thing was pressing her.

'You remember, you asked a question of me; to wit, whether I were minded still as I seemed to be minded last year. I have showed you a fraction of the reasons why I should not have changed, and you have approved them.'

Betty found nothing to answer; it was difficult not to approve them, and yet she hated the conclusion. The conversation was not resumed immediately. All the quiet beauty of the scene around them spoke, to Betty, for a life of ease and luxury; it seemed to say, Keep at a distance from disagreeable things; if want and squalor are in the world, you belong to a different part of the world; let London be London, you stay in Kensington Gardens. Take the good of your advantages, and enjoy them. That this was the n.o.blest view or the justest conclusion, she would not say to herself; but it was the view in which she had been brought up; and the leopard's spots, we know, are persistent. Pitt had been brought up so too; what a tangent he had taken from the even round of society in general! Not to be brought back?

'I see,' she began after a while,--'from my window at your house I see at some distance what looks like a large and fine mansion, amongst trees and pleasure grounds; whose is it?'

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