‘Miss Redwing tells me you saw her yesterday,’ Wilfrid said.

‘Yes, for the first time.’

‘Was she conscious?’

’Quite.  But I was afraid to talk to her more than a minute or two; even that excited her too much.  I fear you must not let her know yet of your presence.’

’I am glad I knew nothing of this till the worst was over.  From the way in which she spoke of her father I should have feared horrible things.  Did you know him with any intimacy?’

’Only slightly, I am sorry to say.  The poor man seems to have had a very hard life; it is clear to me that sheer difficulty in making ends meet drove him out of his senses.  Are you a student of political economy?’ she asked suddenly, looking into Wilfrid’s face with a peculiar smile.

‘I am not.  Why do you ask?’

’It is the one subject on which my husband and I hold no truce.  Mr. Baxendale makes it one of his pet studies, whilst I should like to make a bonfire of every volume containing such cruel nonsense.  You must know, Mr. Athel, that I have an evil reputation in Dunfield; my views are held dangerous; they call me a socialist.  Mr. Baxendale, when particularly angry, offers to hire the hall in the Corn Exchange, that I may say my say and henceforth spare him at home.  Now think of this poor man.  He had a clerkship in a mill, and received a salary of disgraceful smallness; he never knew what it was to be free of anxiety.  The laws of political economy will have it so, says my husband; if Mr. Hood refused, there were fifty other men ready to take the place.  He couldn’t have lived at all, it seems, but that he owned a house in another town, which brought him a few pounds a year.  I can’t talk of such things with patience.  Here’s my husband offering himself as a Liberal candidate for Dunfield at the election coming on.  I say to him:  What are you going to do if you get into Parliament?  Are you going to talk political economy, and make believe that everything is right, when it’s as wrong as can be?  If so, I say, you’d better save your money for other purposes, and stay where you are.  He tells me my views are impracticable; then, I say, so much the worse for the world, and so much the more shame for every rich man who finds excuses for such a state of things.  It is dreadful to think of what those poor people must have gone through.  They were so perfectly quiet under it that no one gave a thought to their position.  When Emily used to come here day after day, I’ve often suspected she didn’t have enough to eat, yet it was impossible for me to ask questions, it would have been called prying into things that didn’t concern me.’

‘She has told me for how much kindness she is indebted to you,’ Wilfrid said, with gratitude.