"I hope you never had to go through all that, Kingston," she said, very gently.
"Yes, ma'am, twice," said Kingston. "Once with my mother, and once with my little boy. They were both dead in the morning, but I didn't see 'em die."
"But where was your husband? Was he dead?" said Lesley, quickly.
"Oh, no, ma'am. But he was amusing himself. He was a gentleman, you see—more shame to me, perhaps you'll say. I couldn't expect him to think of things like candles."
"Oh!—And is he—is he dead?"
"No ma'am, he isn't dead," said Kingston. And from the shortness of her tone and the steadiness with which she averted her face Lesley came to the conclusion that she did not want to be questioned any more.
Lesley went down to dinner feeling that she had made some new and extraordinary discoveries. She noticed that her father and her aunt made several allusions which would have seemed mysterious and repellant to her the day before, but which now possessed an almost tragic interest. When before had she heard her aunt speak casually of a Mothers' Meeting and a Lending Library? These were common-place matters to the ordinary English girl; but to Lesley they possessed the elements of a romance. For was it not by means of hackneyed, common-place machinery of this kind that cultured men and women put themselves into relation with the great, suffering, coarse, uncultured, human-hearted poor?
CHAPTER XIII.
LESLEY SEEKS ADVICE.