"Oh, sir, I have sympathy and compassion to give them. I doubt they get enough of the gospel, and that the company of a woman who can feel for their sufferings and soothe them in their pain is not without use. There is no sick-bed that I have sat by where I have not been entreated to return. The poor creatures like to tell me their troubles, to expatiate on their miseries, and I listen, and never let them think I am tired."
"You scatter gold among them; you demoralize them by your reckless almsgiving."
"No, no, no! I feed them. If there come days when the larder is empty, they have at least the memory of a feast. Your gospel will not stop the pangs of hunger. That is but a hysterical devotion which goes famishing to bed to dream of the Golden City with jasper walls, and the angels standing round the throne. Dreams, dreams, only dreams! You stuff those suffering creatures with dreams."
"I strive to make them look beyond their sufferings here to the unspeakable bliss of the life hereafter," Stobart answered gravely; and then he entreated her to go no more into those alleys where he now worked every day, and from which he came to her two or three times a week to report progress.
He came to her after his work, in the hour before the six o'clock tea at which she was rarely without visitors. If he was told she had company he went away without seeing her; but between five and six was the likeliest hour for finding her alone, since her drawing-rooms were crowded with morning visitors, and her evenings were seasons of gaiety at home or abroad.
She received him always in the library, a room she loved, and where they had had their first serious conversation. Here, if he looked tired, she would order in the urn and tea-things, and would make tea for him, while he told her the story of the day. To sit in an easy-chair beside the wood fire and to have her minister to him made an oasis of rest in the desert of toil, and he soon began to look forward to this hour as the bright spot in his life, the recompense for every sacrifice of self.
The first thunder of a footman's double knock, the clatter of high heels and rustle of brocade in the hall, sent him away. He had made no second appearance among her modish visitors.
"Go and shine, and sparkle, and flutter your jewelled wings among other butterflies," he said. "I claim no part in your life in the world; but I am proud to know that there are hours in which you are something better than a woman of fashion."
The pleasures of the town and the assiduities of Antonia's friends and admirers became more absorbing as her influence in the great world increased. Her open-handed hospitality, the splendour of her house, and the success of her entertainments had placed her on a pinnacle of ton.