She went out among the poor of her neighborhood and relieved their wants with such indiscriminate and munificent generosity as to draw down upon herself the rebuke of the clergy for encouraging habits of improvidence and dependence in the laboring classes.  As for the subjects of her benevolence, they received her bounty with the most extravagant expressions of gratitude and the most fulsome flattery.  This was so distasteful to Berenice that she oftened turned her face away, blushing with embarrassment at having listened to it.  Yet such was the gentleness of her spirit, that she never wounded their feelings by letting them see that she distrusted the sincerity of these hyperbolical phrases.

“Poor souls,” she said to herself, “it is the best they have to offer me, and I will take it as if it were genuine.”

Berenice was right in her estimate of their flattery.  Astonished at her lavish generosity, and ignorant of her great wealth, which made alms-giving easy, her poor neighbors put their old heads together to find out the solution of the problem.  And they came to the conclusion that this lady must have been a great sinner, whose husband had abandoned her for some very good reason, and who was now endeavoring to atone for her sins by a life of self-denial and benevolence.  This conclusion seemed too probable to be questioned.  This verdict was brought to the knowledge of Berenice in a curious way.  Among the recipients of her bounty was Mrs. Jones, the ladies’ nurse.  The old woman had fallen into a long illness, and consequently into extreme want.  Her case came to the knowledge of Berenice, who hastened to relieve her.  When the lady had made the invalid comfortable and was about to take leave, the latter said: 

“Ah, ‘charity covers a multitude of sins,’ ma’am!  Let us hope that all yours may be so covered.”

Berenice stared in surprise.  It was not the words so much as the manner that shocked her.  And Phoebe, who had attended her mistress, scarcely got well out of the house before her indignation burst forth in the expletives: 

“Old brute!  Whatever did she mean by her insolence?  My lady, I hope you will do nothing more for the old wretch.”

Berenice walked on in silence until they reached the spot where they had left their carriage, and when they had re-entered it, she said: 

“Something like this has vaguely met me before; but never so plainly and bluntly as to-day; it is unpleasant; but I must not punish one poor old woman for a misapprehension shared by the whole community.”

So calmly and dispassionately had the countess answered her attendant’s indignant exclamation.  But as soon as Berenice reached her own chamber she dismissed her maid, locked her door, and gave herself up to a passion of grief.

It was but a trifle—­that coarse speech of a thoughtless old woman—­a mere trifle; but it overwhelmed her, coming, as it did, after all that had gone before.  It was but the last feather, you know, only a single feather laid on the pack that broke the camel’s back.  It was but a drop of water, a single drop, that made the full cup overflow!