'It was an act of cowardice,' she said,—'wearing the dress yesterday. I had got used to it, and did not feel safe without it; but I shall not wear it any more.'
'I think you are right,' said Falconer. 'The nearer any friendly act is associated with the individual heart, without intervention of class or creed, the more the humanity, which is the divinity of it, will appear.'
He then told her about Nancy.
'I will keep her about myself for a while,' said Miss St. John, 'till I see what can be done with her. I know a good many people who without being prepared, or perhaps able to take any trouble, are yet ready to do a kindness when it is put in their way.'
'I feel more and more that I ought to make some friends,' said Falconer; 'for I find my means of help reach but a little way. What had I better do? I suppose I could get some introductions.—I hardly know how.'
'That will easily be managed. I will take that in hand. If you will accept invitations, you will soon know a good many people—of all sorts,' she added with a smile.
About this time Falconer, having often felt the pressure of his ignorance of legal affairs, and reflected whether it would not add to his efficiency to rescue himself from it, began such a course of study as would fit him for the profession of the law. Gifted with splendid health, and if with a slow strength of grasping, yet with a great power of holding, he set himself to work, and regularly read for the bar.
CHAPTER VIII. MY OWN ACQUAINTANCE.
It was after this that my own acquaintance with Falconer commenced. I had just come out of one of the theatres in the neighbourhood of the Strand, unable to endure any longer the dreary combination of false magnanimity and real meanness, imported from Paris in the shape of a melodrama, for the delectation of the London public. I had turned northwards, and was walking up one of the streets near Covent Garden, when my attention was attracted to a woman who came out of a gin-shop, carrying a baby. She went to the kennel, and bent her head over, ill with the poisonous stuff she had been drinking. And while the woman stood in this degrading posture, the poor, white, wasted baby was looking over her shoulder with the smile of a seraph, perfectly unconscious of the hell around her.