After the dinner, the huge urns and the remnants of food were removed, and the windows opened for a minute to freshen the air. A curtain rose at the end of the room, revealing a small stage decorated with green branches and artificial flowers. A piano had been placed in the center where Hester sat, now seen for the first time, having reserved her strength for her special duty.

When the assembly caught sight of her turning over the leaves of her music, a great silence fell. The moment she began to play, however, all began to talk again. But with the first tone of her voice, they quieted again, for she had chosen a ballad with a sudden and powerful opening, and, further, nervous and a little irritated at the same time with their talking while she played, had begun in a voice that would have compelled attention from a herd of cattle.

But the ballad was a little too long for them, so by the time it was half sung they had resumed talking again and exchanging opinions concerning the song. All agreed that Miss Raymount had a splendid voice. But several, who were there by second-hand invitation, said they could find a woman to beat her easily! I believe most of this group regarded their presence as a favour to her, providing her an audience that she might show off her talents. Among the poor, you see, as in more so-called respectable circles, the most refined and the coarsest-grained natures are to be met side by side.

Vavasor had not heard about the gathering. In part from doubt of his sympathy, in part from dislike of talking instead of doing, Hester had said nothing to him about it. When she lifted her eyes at the close of her ballad, a little disappointed in having failed to interest her audience, a gush of pleasure swept through her to see him standing near the door. She assumed that he had heard of her purpose and had come to help her. Even at that distance she could see that he was looking very uncomfortable—annoyed, she did not doubt, by the behaviour of her guests. A rush of new strength and courage went from heart to brain. She rose, advanced to the front of the little stage, and called out in a clear voice,

“Mr. Vavasor, will you come and help me?”

Now Vavasor was in reality a little disgusted at what he beheld. He had called without a notion of what was going on, and, seeing the lights along the gallery as he was heading for the drawing room, he had changed his direction, knowing nothing about the room to which it led. Partially blinded by the glare and bewildered by the unexpectedness of the sight, he did not at first discern the kind of company he had entered. For a moment it seemed as if, thinking to enter Paradise, he had mistaken and opened the left-hand door.

Presently his eyes came to themselves and confirmed the fact that he was in the midst of a great number of the unwashed. He had often talked with Hester about the poor, for they were now even a rather fashionable subject in some of the minor circles of the world’s elect. But in the poor themselves he could hardly be said to have the most rudimentary interest, and that a lady should so degrade herself by singing to them and exposing both her voice and her person to their abominable remarks was to him simply incomprehensible. The admission of such people to a respectable house, and the entertainment of them as at a music hall, could have its origin only in some wild semi-political scheme of the old fellow, who had more eccentricities in his head than brain could well hold! It was a proceeding as disgraceful as extraordinary!