who disliked egotism in themselves had to fight the temptation, and seldom won.  She did not believe—­no one but a fool (and she was not that) could have believed—­all the many things that were told her; the many things that must always, while pity and the need to be pitied endure, be told to the pitiful; but she seldom said so.  She merely looked at the teller with her long and lovely violet eyes, that took in so much and gave out such continual friendship, and saw how, behind the lies, the need dwelt pleading.  Then she gave, not necessarily what the lies asked for, but what, in her opinion, pity owed to that which pleaded.  She certainly gave, as a rule, quite too much, in whatever coin she paid.  That was inevitable.

“You give from the emotions,” Joseph Leslie told her, “instead of from reason.  How bad for you:  how bad for them.  And worse when it is friendship than when it is coin that you can count and set a limit to.  Yes.  Abominably bad for everyone concerned.”

“Should one,” wondered Felicity, “give friendship, as one is supposed to give money, on C.O.S. principles?  Perhaps so; I must think about it.”

But her thinking always brought her back to the same conclusion as before.  Consequently her circle of friends grew and grew.  She even included in it a few of the rich and prosperous, not wishing her chain of fellowship, whose links she kept in careful repair, to fail anywhere.  But it showed strain there.  It was forged and flung by the rich and prosperous, and merely accepted by Felicity.

Leslie, though rich and prosperous, stepped into the linked circle led by Peter, who was neither.  Having money, and a desire to make himself conscious of the fact by using it, he consulted Miss Hope as to how best to be philanthropic.  He wanted, it seemed, to be a philanthropist as well as a collector, and felt incapable of being either otherwise than through agents.  His personal share in both enterprises had to be limited to the backing capital.

Miss Hope said, “Start a settlement,” and he had said, “I can’t unless you’ll work it for me.  Will you?” So he started a settlement, and she worked it for him, and he came about the place and got in the way and wrote heavy cheques and adored Felicity and suggested at suitable intervals that she should marry him.

Felicity had no intention of marrying him.  She called him a rest.  No one likes being called a rest when they desire to be a stimulant, or even a gentle excitement.  Felicity was an immense excitement to Mr. Leslie (though he concealed it laboriously under a heavy and matter-of-fact exterior) and it is of course pleasanter when these things are reciprocal.  But Mr. Leslie perceived that she took much more interest even in her young cousin Peter than in him.  “Do you find him a useful little boy?” she asked him this afternoon, before Peter and Urquhart arrived.