To the benevolent and pitiful. Fifty pounds will save a wretched wife and mother from ruin and disgrace. Help implored: by letter or personal interview. Address, Suppliant, 050271, Daily Post.
No one instituting a philanthropic mission could have been less adequately equipped for it in one way than Gilead himself. Beginning by presuming in all others an integrity as pure as his own, he had from the first to put force upon his nature to cultivate that suspicion of motive, that moral self-guardedness, which are the first essentials of practical benevolence. He had, in short, in recognizing the eternal human duplicities, to learn to distinguish finely between cant and sincerity; and he was not always successful. Practice and experience did much for him; yet there were occasions still when guile found the opportunity to encounter him triumphantly on his emotional side.
Such was the case in the affair which we have entitled as above—a quest which he could never recall without humiliation, and the memory of which made him feel sore for years afterwards. But it is true that he was hit, in its connection, on quite another than the humanitarian side; and it was that wound, no doubt, which most rankled.
He himself saw and interviewed ‘Suppliant’ during the temporary, and unfortunate, absence of Miss Halifax, who, by his desire, had undertaken the case. He entrusted many such to her now, especially where feminine appeals were concerned. It seems slanderous to apply so shrewd a term to those soft and seductive orbs, but indeed the amanuensis had a ‘lynx eye’ for the shams and hypocrisies of her own sex. Without doubt her native perspicacity had saved her employer from the clutches of many a plausible impostor miscalled of the weaker vessel.
‘Suppliant’—she introduced herself hurriedly, diffidently by the name—entered upon Gilead in one of the unguarded moments. He was impressed by her appearance at once; it was all that it should have been under the circumstances—quiet and unaffected, though with a suggestion of strong repressed emotion in the thickly-veiled face. She seemed a young woman, she was certainly a graceful and slender, as her sober frock betrayed. It was of black, and just sufficiently faded to confess long usage. There was a heavy trimming of beads at the skirt hem, which weighed down its folds prettily about the tips of a couple of little shoes, worn but shapely. The long motor veil which embraced her hat and neck was of a heliotrope colour, not so diaphanous as to reveal, yet enough to suggest the entreaty of two large plaintive eyes.
But the attractive, the moving thing about her was her voice—so soft, so musical, that, before she had half uttered her prayer, it was granted.
Gilead, as he placed a chair for the visitor, apologized in his courteous way.
“I am so sorry. The lady, Miss Halifax, who has made your case her interest, is unhappily engaged elsewhere for the moment. If you would prefer to await her return—”
The visitor made a little distressed movement.
“I did not know,” she said, hesitating—there was that low huskiness in her voice which seems to caress—“I did not know. Since receiving your letter—I heard, I have been told—are you not Mr Balm?”