It need scarcely be said that, after this, Miss Blanchard always looked out for The Brotherhood, and scanned its contents with much interest. She was pleased—even a little surprised—by the temperate and moderate tone in which it set forth existing wrongs and grievances, and appealed to the sense of justice and humanity of those with whom it lay to remedy them. She was not, of course, a very critical reader, and was happily ignorant of the practical difficulties that lie in the way of great reforms; and it seemed to her that such a cause, so advocated, must be sure to win the day. In particular, trained as she had been to look upon Christian practice as an essential part of Christianity, she could not believe that any professing Christian could withhold sympathy from pleadings which carried her own, as a matter of course. She had, from her childhood, been given to wondering how it was, that the very poor could bear the hardships of their lot as contentedly as they did; and now that, from the statistics and details which Roland Graeme industriously collected for his paper, she realized how much greater these hardships were, for many, than she had ever before imagined, she thought, in her simplicity, that every one who knew of them must desire to do something to lighten them. Her imagination was fired, too, by the idea, now presented to her for the first time, that hard, grinding poverty need not always prevail on the scale on which it now exists; that it is within the right and the duty of man to remove much of it. Such a hope, she thought, might well inspire to a new Crusade, far more truly Christian in its aims and methods than were those half-heathen wars of old, which took that sacred name.

But, except from her brother, whose experiences as a medical man had prepared him to agree with her on most of these questions, Nora found that she could secure little sympathy, or even toleration, for such "new-fangled notions." Most people would agree that, of course, there were many hard cases, just as there was misery of all kinds in the world, which could not be helped; but they would shake their heads discouragingly over each proposed remedy, which "was sure" to involve new evils greater than the disease, till she wondered if there must always be "a lion in the way" of every undertaking for the good of humanity.

She found she had not even Mr. Chillingworth on her side, when she somewhat timidly ventured to express herself to him on the subject of The Brotherhood, at a grand luncheon-party at Mrs. Farrell's, a few days after the dinner at Mr. Pomeroy's. It was chiefly a "ladies' luncheon," also given in honor of Miss Harley; but two or three gentlemen were especially privileged, including Mr. Chillingworth and Mr. Wharton, who were not supposed to be engaged at that early hour.

Mr. Chillingworth was a good deal surprised when he found that Miss Blanchard actually claimed Mr. Graeme as an acquaintance; and, furthermore, that she entered with so much sympathy into his views of social questions. Somehow, Mr. Chillingworth did not find it easy to reconcile his sense of her grace, refinement and culture, with a "movement" that he vaguely associated with vulgar "strikes," violence, and other democratic developments, from which his Æsthetic sensitiveness shrank with utter repugnance.

"Undoubtedly, my dear Miss Blanchard," he said, "there are many directions in which reform is needed. The poverty about us is but one, and reform cannot come by any sudden or artificial means; the only cure for this, as for all evils, is the radical cure from within—the spirit of Christ acting on individual hearts. Much of the poverty, also, arises from the faults of the poor themselves. Many of them would be miserable in any case. And, you know, even our divine Master said, 'The poor ye have always with you.'"

"But He could never have meant that other people were to keep them poor," replied Nora, her cheek flushing. "And you know He told the young man 'to sell all his goods and give to the poor.'"

"Ah, but that was only in one case! He wanted to try him,—test whether he really loved his neighbor as himself, as he thought he did."

"And don't you think there are many people who need the same test, now?" Nora could not help replying.

"Oh, certainly, certainly;" he replied, dreamily; "but it seems to me you are forgetting to enjoy your luncheon. Let me help you to some of this delicious cream."

Nora could see very well that the subject they had been discussing only bored the clergyman, so she dropped it; listening, however, as well as she could, through intervening droppings of talk, to a discussion that Mr. Wharton and Miss Harley were carrying on, as to the differences of aspect presented by the labor question in England and in America. And she could not help wondering again and again, as she surveyed the luncheon-table, profusely supplied with expensive delicacies, whether that same Lord who had bidden the rich young man "sell all that he had and give to the poor," might not have had something to say to people who "had fared sumptuously every day," while Lazarus starved at their gates. And then, with a fastidious sense of honor, she checked a thought that seemed like ungenerous treachery to her hospitable entertainers. Only,—if poor Lizzie Mason could have had a share of the superfluous luxury, how good it would have been for her!

Mr. Chillingworth, too, both puzzled and disappointed her. His eloquent altruistic appeals—his exaltation of the high Christian ideal—so stirred her enthusiastic nature that she felt herself irresistibly drawn toward the man who could so well express the idealism of Christianity. But, out of the pulpit—when it came to the practical application of his own principles—he often brought her up short in wonder at what she felt to be the inconsistency of his remarks about the details of ordinary life. There seemed to her a strange gap between the glowing enthusiasm on the one side, and a chilling narrowness and lack of sympathy on the other. Like an electrical influence under different conditions, he sometimes attracted and sometimes repelled her. When she compared him with Mr. Alden, she felt the great difference, though she could not analyze it. Briefly put, however, the main differences were these: it was not that Mr. Chillingworth was insincere; he was as sincere, in his own way, as Mr. Alden. But to his conception, religion consisted mainly in emotion—in a high-strung ideality, and in adoration of the supreme, Infinite Love. To Mr. Alden on the other hand, religion, though winged by emotion, must have its solid basis in obedience—righteousness—the service of God manifesting itself in the service of man. To Mr. Chillingworth—a natural egoist—a clergyman was primarily a "ruler" of the flock, though its shepherd as well. To Mr. Alden, long sitting at his Master's feet had taught the lesson that the minister must be—if the leader—also the "servant of all." Mr. Chillingworth could sympathize only with what harmonized with his own ideals and opinions. Mr. Alden, though himself a man of strong convictions, could adopt the heathen poet's declaration, that nothing that concerned humanity was alien to him. In a word, Mr. Chillingworth was an ecclesiastic; Mr. Alden was, or sought to be, in all things, a simple follower of Christ. Which view was the more in accordance with the New Testament ideal, each must decide for himself.

Nora was feeling these differences dimly in her own mind, with a vague sense of pain and disappointment that she scarcely cared to admit, when Mr. Chillingworth turned to her with his most persuasive air, saying that he had a great favor to ask. "But I know your generosity," he added, "so I don't think you will refuse!" Nora, smiling, waited to hear what it was.

"One of the members of our quartette has been laid up with a severe cold, and I fear it is out of the question that she can take her part at our Christmas evening Service of Song. I don't very well see how we are to replace her, unless—a certain kind friend of mine will come to my help!"

His voice was soft and low, as he could make it when he chose, and his eyes sought Miss Blanchard's with even more persuasive earnestness than the occasion seemed to call for. She colored, turned her eyes away, and replied, in a tone as low as his, that she was very sorry—but it was impossible. She had promised to sing at Mr. Alden's "Helping Hands" entertainment, on Christmas evening.

Mr. Chillingworth looked more annoyed than she had ever seen him look before.

"I really think," He said, "that Mr. Alden might spare you to us for that evening. It can't make much difference to those people what sort of singing they have. They can't appreciate anything very good, so you will be quite thrown away on them. And your voice is just what we want. I think you might beg off, for our sake!"

"I have promised," replied Nora gently, and with real regret in her tone.

"Ah, you hold to the good old Puritan rules, I see. Well, it does seem too bad! We shall have to put up with some very inferior voice that could have pleased that sort of audience just as well. Alden's very good and zealous, I know, and I quite understand his desire to give people like that some rational enjoyment, to keep them out of mischief; still, I think he would do better to keep to old-established ways. And that 'Helping Hands Society' of his is a curious omnium gatherum affair. I am told he's got all sorts and conditions of people in it, Unitarians, Socialists, Knights of Labor, Agnostics!"

"I don't think-it's quite so bad as that!" Nora exclaimed, in amaze.

"Well, I'm told that this agitator, this Roland Graeme, actually belongs to it, and I believe he's a rank agnostic, if not an atheist."

"Oh, I am sure he can't be an atheist!" said Nora.

"An agnostic then, at any rate! Archer told me so. After all, there isn't much to choose between them. The atheist will tell you there's no God—the agnostic, that he doesn't know of one. Practically, there's no difference."

Nora was a good deal shocked. To her, as to the large majority of earnest, reverent Christians, the position of an "agnostic" implied something very terrible—a wilful throwing away of truth and walking in darkness. To think of the gentle, generous, enthusiastic Roland as such a one, seemed to her impossible. Presently she said, rather timidly:

"Mr. Graeme seems to me to have a large share of the Christian spirit."

"Oh, no doubt—no doubt," said Mr Chillingworth, impatiently, "thanks to his Christian education! 'Train up a child in the way he should go'—you know. But there is no class so dangerous as these half Christian agnostics, regular wolves in sheep's clothing! They go about, putting people off their guard by plausible talk, and then ensnare them unawares. I consider that young man's influence most dangerous to this community I beg you to listen to him as little as possible!"

Nora had a tolerably quick sense of humor, and, notwithstanding the shock it gave her to hear such things of Mr. Graeme, she could hardly resist a smile at what seemed to her the curiously inappropriate epithet of "a wolf in sheep's clothing," applied to the altruistic young reformer. It occurred to her that the metaphor might, in his case, be reversed—that "a sheep in wolf's clothing" would surely be more appropriate.

"What are you two looking so serious about?" asked Kitty, teasingly, as they all rose to adjourn into the drawing room. Then, as she linked her arm into Nora's, and drew her away into a quiet corner, she added, "I've been watching you both for some time, and I really thought Mr Chillingworth must be proposing! He was talking in such a low voice, and looking so irresistible. Only I suppose people don't usually propose at luncheons."

"Kitty!" exclaimed Nora, with reproachful severity.

"Well, you know very well he likes you, one always does!" she added, somewhat obscurely.

"I should be sorry to think he disliked me," replied Nora. "But he was only proposing—that I should sing in the quartette, at his Service of Song on Christmas evening, in some one else's place."

"Which, of course, you promised to do, like a dear."

"Which I can't possibly do, as I have promised to be elsewhere."

"Oh, poor Mr. Chillingworth! No wonder he looked so sad and serious! Oh, don't you know, I've always thought his eyes had a sort of melancholy look, as if he had had some great sorrow in his life? Well, Miss Harley says she is almost sure that she once heard him preach in England, and that she heard some tragic story about him, she couldn't remember exactly what, only she knew it was very sad!"

"Really!" exclaimed Nora, looking much interested.

"Yes, and do you know, I've always had an idea—a sort of instinct you know—that he may be a widower. He has that sort of look, some way!"

"What sort of look? I didn't know you could tell widowers by looking at them."

"Well, I can't exactly describe it, but I know it when I see it. And you know he might easily have been married in England, and we shouldn't know it. Lots of men have been—like that you know—and they don't think it necessary to talk about it."

Nora disliked the idea, she scarcely knew why, but set it down as one of Kitty's fancies. There might be many kinds of tragedy in a man's life. If Mr. Chillingworth had suffered, it seemed to give him a stronger claim on her sympathy.

But Kitty wanted to know where she was going on Christmas evening.

"Oh, I've heard about that," she said, when Nora had told her. "Mr. Waldberg told me about it. He says that Mr. Graeme—you know—was to read at it; he lives in the same house with him, and they are great friends. Hermann says he's the best fellow he ever knew."

Nora had no very high estimate of Waldberg's judgment; still, after Mr. Chillingworth's condemnation, even this tribute was pleasant to hear. But she caught up Kitty at once.

"I didn't know you had got on quite so far as to call Mr. Waldberg, Hermann." she remarked.

"Well, you see the poor fellow is away from home and everybody belonging to him, so he likes to have some one to call him by his old home name. You know Germans have such nice romantic ideas!"

"Kitty, Kitty! You ought really to take care! You don't know what mischief you may do!"

"Oh, he knows all about that!" she said, laughing and coloring, but holding out her finger, on which flashed and sparkled a solitaire diamond. "And look here," she added, holding out, for Nora's inspection, a new acquisition, a ring set with sapphire and pearls. "Isn't this lovely? It was a birthday gift from Harold this morning."

Nora looked "serious," as Kitty called it. She had been afraid about Kitty of late, and still more afraid for young Waldberg. "Well, be sure you know your own mind, and stick to it," she said, gravely. "Remember, Kitty dear, it really isn't worth while to be a Lady Clara Vere de Vere, even if you could; and flirting is a dangerous amusement!"

"Never fear," laughed Kitty, "I'm not going to hurt anybody, that I know of. But do look at Mr. Wharton and Miss Harley—at it still! I declare it looks as if there was going to be——"

"'An International Episode'!" suggested Nora, smiling.