“Suppose Christ had gone on that principle,” replied Felicia, with unusual persistence.  “Do you remember Dr. Bruce’s sermon on that verse a few Sundays ago:  ’For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich yet for our sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might become rich’?”

“I remember it well enough,” said Rose with some petulance, “and didn’t Dr. Bruce go on to say that there is no blame attached to people who have wealth if they are kind and give to the needs of the poor?  And I am sure that he himself is pretty comfortably settled.  He never gives up his luxuries just because some people go hungry.  What good would it do if he did?  I tell you, Felicia, there will always be poor and rich in spite of all we can do.  Ever since Rachel Winslow has written about those queer doings in Raymond you have upset the whole family.  People can’t live at that concert pitch all the time.  You see if Rachel doesn’t give it up soon.  It’s a great pity she doesn’t come to Chicago and sing in the Auditorium concerts.  She has received an offer.  I’m going to write and urge her to come.  I’m just dying to hear her sing.”

Felicia looked out of the window and was silent.  The carriage rolled on past two blocks of magnificent private residences and turned into a wide driveway under a covered passage, and the sisters hurried into the house.  It was an elegant mansion of gray stone furnished like a palace, every corner of it warm with the luxury of paintings, sculpture, art and modern refinement.

The owner of it all, Mr. Charles R. Sterling, stood before an open grate fire smoking a cigar.  He had made his money in grain speculation and railroad ventures, and was reputed to be worth something over two millions.  His wife was a sister of Mrs. Winslow of Raymond.  She had been an invalid for several years.  The two girls, Rose and Felicia, were the only children.  Rose was twenty-one years old, fair, vivacious, educated in a fashionable college, just entering society and already somewhat cynical and indifferent.  A very hard young lady to please, her father said, sometimes playfully, sometimes sternly.  Felicia was nineteen, with a tropical beauty somewhat like her cousin, Rachel Winslow, with warm, generous impulses just waking into Christian feeling, capable of all sorts of expression, a puzzle to her father, a source of irritation to her mother and with a great unsurveyed territory of thought and action in herself, of which she was more than dimly conscious.  There was that in Felicia that would easily endure any condition in life if only the liberty to act fully on her conscientious convictions were granted her.

“Here’s a letter for you, Felicia,” said Mr. Sterling, handing it to her.

Felicia sat down and instantly opened the letter, saying as she did so:  “It’s from Rachel.”

“Well, what’s the latest news from Raymond?” asked Mr. Sterling, taking his cigar out of his mouth and looking at Felicia with half-shut eyes, as if he were studying her.