“You have seen people—­really hungry?” she asked, with something like timidity in her face.

He laughed bitterly.

“That we see every moment of the time we spend down amongst them,” he answered.  “I have seen worse things.  I have seen the sapping away of character—­men become thieves and women worse—­to escape from starvation.  That, I think, is the greatest tragedy of all.  It makes one shudder when one thinks that on the shoulders of many people some portion of the responsibility at any rate for these things must rest.”

Her lips quivered.  She emptied the contents of a gold chain purse into her hands.

“It is we who are wicked, Mr. Brooks,” she said, “who spend no end of money and close our ears to all this.  Do take this, will you; can it go to some of the women you know, and the children?  There are only five or six pounds there, but I shall talk to mamma.  We will send you a cheque.”

He took the money without hesitation.

“I am very glad,” he said, earnestly, “that you have given me this, that you have felt that you wanted to give it me.  I hope you won’t think too badly of me for coming over here to help you spend a pleasant evening, and talking at all of such miserable things.”

“Badly!” she repeated.  “No; I shall never be able to thank you enough for telling me what you have done.  It makes one feel almost wicked to be sitting here, and wearing jewelry, and feeling well off, spending money on whatever you want, and to think that there are people starving.  How they must hate us.”

“It is the wonderful part of it,” he answered.  “I do not believe that they do.  I suppose it is a sort of fatalism—­the same sort of thing, only much less ignoble, as the indifference which keeps our rich people contented and deaf to this terribly human cry.”

“You are young,” she said, looking at him, “to be so much interested in such serious things.”

“It is my blood, I suppose,” he answered.  “My father was a police-court missionary, and my mother the matron of a pauper hospital.”

“They are both dead, are they not?” she asked, softly.

“Many years ago,” he answered.

Lady Caroom and Lord Arranmore came in together.  A certain unusual seriousness in Sybil’s face was manifest.

“You two do not seem to have been amusing yourselves,” Lady Caroom remarked, giving her hand to Brooks.

“Mr. Brooks has been answering some of my questions about the poor people,” Sybil answered, “and it is not an amusing subject.”

Lord Arranmore laughed lightly, and there was a touch of scorn in the slight curve of his fine lips and his raised eyebrows.  He stood away from the shaded lamplight before a great open fire of cedar logs, and the red glow falling fitfully upon his face seemed to Brooks, watching him with more than usual closeness, to give him something of a Mephistopheles aspect.  His evening clothes hung with more than ordinary precision about his long slim body, his black tie and black pearl stud supplied the touch of sombreness so aptly in keeping with the mirthless, bitter smile which still parted his lips.