in her a model whom he could have represented with sincerity.  Yet something was missing to her, her friends were dimly aware.  Her desirable surroundings kindled her to but a perfunctory interest in life—­the electric spark was absent.  Mrs. Simpson relied strategically upon the wedding preparations and hurried them on, announcing in May that it was quite time to think about various garments of which the fashion is permanent, but the issue was blank.  No ripple stirred the placid waters, unless indeed we take that way of describing Laura’s calm demand, when the decision lay between Valenciennes and Torchon lace for under-bodies, to hear whether Mrs. Simpson had ever known Duff Lindsay to be anxious about his eternal future.  The girl continued to give forth a mere pale reflection of her circumstances, and Mrs. Simpson was forced into the deprecation that perhaps one would hardly call her a joyous Christian.

But for the Zenana Light Society this impression of Miss Filbert might have deepened.  The committee of that body was almost entirely composed of Mrs. Simpson’s friends, and naturally came to learn much about her guest.  The matter was vastly considered, but finally Miss Filbert was asked to speak at one of the monthly meetings the ladies held among themselves to keep the society “in touch” with the cause.  Laura brought them, as one would imagine, surprisingly in touch.  She made pictures for them, letting her own eyelashes close deliberately while they stared.  She moved these ladies, inspired them, carried them away, and the fact that none of them found themselves able afterward to quote the most pathetic passages seemed rather to add to the enthusiasm with which they described the address.  The first result was a shower of invitations to tea, occasions when Laura was easily led into monologue.  Miss Filbert became a cult of evangelistic drawing-rooms, and the same kind of forbearance was extended to her little traces of earlier social experiences as is offered, in salons of another sort, to the eccentricities of persons of genius.  Very soon other applications had to be met and considered, and Mrs. Simpson freely admitted that Laura would not be justified in refusing to the Methodists and Baptists what she had given elsewhere.  She reasserted her platform influence over audiences that grew constantly larger, and her world began to revolve again in that great relation to the infinities which it was her life to perceive and point out.  Mrs. Simpson charged her genially with having been miserable in Plymouth until she was allowed to do good in her own way, and saw that she had beef-tea after every occasion of doing it.  She became in a way a public character, and a lady journalist sent an account of her, with a photograph, to a well-known London fashion paper.  Perhaps the strongest effect she made was as the voice of the Purity Association, when she delivered an address, in the picturesque costume she had abandoned, attacking measures contemplated by Government for the protection of the health of the Army in India.  This was reported in full in the local paper, and Mr. Simpson sent a copy to Duff Lindsay, who received it, I regret to say, with an unmistakable imprecation.  But Laura rejoiced.  Deprived of her tambourine she nevertheless rejoiced exceedingly.