When he opened the door Jane was
sewing busily, but it was only on hearing his footsteps that she had
so applied herself. He gave a friendly nod, and departed.
Still the same change in his manner. A little while ago he would
have chatted freely and forgotten the time.
Another week, and Jane made the acquaintance of the lady whose name
we have once or twice heard, Miss Lant, the friend of old Mr.
Percival. Of middle age and with very plain features, Miss Lant had
devoted herself to philanthropic work; she had an income of a few
hundred pounds, and lived almost as simply as the Snowdons in order
to save money for charitable expenditure. Unfortunately the earlier
years of her life had been joyless, and in the energy which she
brought to this self-denying enterprise there was just a touch of
excess, common enough in those who have been defrauded of their
natural satisfactions and find a resource in altruism. She was no
pietist, but there is nowadays coming into existence a class of
persons who substitute for the old religious acerbity a narrow and
oppressive zeal for good works of purely human sanction, and to this
order Miss Lant might be said to belong.
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