'Tregarva, the keeper: who can doubt?' answered they both at once.

'Has not Mellot succeeded perfectly?'

'Yes,' said Lancelot. 'But what wonder, with such a noble subject!
What a grand benevolence is enthroned on that lofty forehead!'

'Oh, you would say so, indeed,' interposed Honoria, 'if you knew
him! The stories that I could tell you about him! How he would go
into cottages, read to sick people by the hour, dress the children,
cook the food for them, as tenderly as any woman! I found out, last
winter, if you will believe it, that he lived on bread and water, to
give out of his own wages--which are barely twelve shillings a week-
-five shillings a week for more than two months to a poor labouring
man, to prevent his going to the workhouse, and being parted from
his wife and children.'

'Noble, indeed!' said Lancelot. 'I do not wonder now at the effect
his conversation just now had on me.'

'Has he been talking to you?' said Honoria eagerly. 'He seldom
speaks to any one.'

'He has to me; and so well, that were I sure that the poor were as
ill off as he says, and that I had the power of altering the system
a hair, I could find it in my heart to excuse all political
grievance-mongers, and turn one myself.'

Claude Mellot clapped his white woman-like hands.