“Me and my poor husband calls your aunt our father confessor, ma’am,” said a consumptive tailor’s wife to Mildred. “We’re never afraid to tell her anything—even if it seems foolish like—and she always gives us rare good advice—don’t she, Joe?”
The invalid nodded approvingly over his basin of beef-tea, Miss Fausset’s beef-tea, which was as comforting as strong wine.
In one of the houses they found an Anglican Sister, an elderly woman, in a black hood, to whom Miss Fausset introduced her niece. There was an old man dying by inches in the next room; and the Sister had been sitting up with him all night, and was now going home to the performance of other duties. Mildred talked with her for some time about her life, and heard a great many details of that existence which seemed to her still so far off, almost impossible, like a cold pale life beyond the grave. How different from that warm domestic life at Enderby! amidst fairest surroundings, in those fine old rooms, where every detail bore the impress of one’s own fancy, one’s own pursuits: a selfish life, perhaps, albeit tempered with beneficence to one’s immediate surroundings; selfish inasmuch as it was happy and luxurious, while true unselfishness must needs surrender everything, must refuse to wear purple and fine linen and to fare sumptuously, so long as Lazarus lies at the gate shivering and hungry.
Her aunt almost echoed her thoughts presently when she spoke of her goodness to the poor.
“Yes, yes, Mildred, I do some little good,” she said, almost impatiently; “but not enough—not nearly enough. It is only women like that Sister who do enough. What the rich give must count for very little in the eyes of the Great Auditor. But I do my best to make up for a wasted girlhood. I was as foolish and as frivolous as your young friend Pamela once.”
“That reminds me, aunt, I want so much to talk to you about Pamela.”
“What of her?”
“I am afraid that she admires Mr. Castellani.”
“Why should she not admire him?”
“But I suspect she is in danger of falling in love with him.”