also that he wanted to get it over, that he was desirous to know the worst or the best as quickly as possible. I wondered if he was a relation of Captain Carbury's, and if he was going to speak about him; but I did not think it would be like Captain Carbury to put his own affairs into the hands of anyone else. Still, I had always liked Lord Hawtrey, although quite in a daughterly fashion.

"What is it?" I said, gently. "Are you related to—to him?"

"I have hardly any relations, little Heather Grayson," was his next remark. "I am a very lonely man."

"I did not know that rich people were ever lonely," I said.

He laughed.

"Rich people are the loneliest of all," he said.

"I cannot understand that," I answered.

"Why, you see, it is this way," he answered, bending slightly forward, and looking at me—oh! so respectfully, and with, as far as I could guess, such a very fatherly glance; "rich people, who live on unearned incomes, have neither to work nor to beg; they just go on day after day, getting every single thing they wish for. Not one desire enters their minds that they cannot satisfy. Thus, little Miss Grayson, it is the law of life, desire itself ever gratified, fades away and is not, and the people I speak of are utterly miserable."

"I do not understand," I replied.

"I am rich, and yet I am one of the most lonely and, in some respects, one of the most miserable men in London."

I sprang to my feet and confronted him.

"Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself," I said. "If you are rich, rich like that, think what good you ought to do with your money; think what grand use you ought to make of it; think of the people who are out of employment, and the poor young people—girls especially—who are so shamefully underpaid, and think of the hospitals that need more funds, and the big, great charities that are crying aloud for more help! If you want to be happy, to use your money right, you ought to give to all of these, and you ought to learn to give with discrimination and judgment. When I lived in the country Aunt Penelope taught me a lot about the right giving of charity, so I can understand. You need not be quite so frightfully rich if you give of your abundance to those who have much less; and if you not only give of your money, but of 

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