Ponderby withdrew, closing the door very gently behind him.
"I wonder," said the lady with the banner, "if we are trapped. This all seems too easy. I believe Lord Stranleigh has got us in here so that he can slip out unseen, for his motor-car drove up just as I came in. I should have remained on guard."
She rose impulsively from her chair, and gave a flirt to the banner that partially unrolled it.
"I'm off to intercept him," she said, but a very quiet old lady, with beautiful grey hair, spoke soothingly.
"Sit down, my dear. I know Lord Stranleigh. He would not do such a thing."
The girl, but half convinced, slowly re-seated herself. She was in a room where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile. She knew their sneaking ways. However, she made no audible protest, and her companions were all very quiet, as though rather awed by their surroundings, and the celerity with which their desire had been accomplished. The door opened, and the Earl of Stranleigh entered.
As he came in the door closed behind him without any visible motive power. His eye took in very quietly, yet without seeming to do so, the group awaiting him, and then lit up with pleasure as it recognised the thin, delicate old lady with grey hair who rose to greet him. His indolent manner fell from him like a discarded cloak. He came forward rapidly, bent over her proffered slender, white hand, and raised it to his lips with old-fashioned courtesy.
"We have rather stormed your citadel," she began.
"Dear madam, had you only let me know you were coming, you would have found my door wide open for your reception, yet you come so splendidly chaperoned that I fear this may be a business visit, and not a friendly call."
"I hope you will regard it as both."
"I cannot be so impartial, madam, and am certain to incline towards the friendliness, for, after all, I am but a poor business man."
"You are quite alone in that opinion, my lord. Indeed, we are here because of your latest coup in business, and so that we may not take you more by surprise than already has been the case, I warn you to prepare for an unanimous vote of censure."
"Dear lady," laughed Stranleigh, "why use a threat when I am eager to obey your slightest request?"
The girl who had been on guard slipped the stick with its furled banner out of sight behind her chair. This meeting was too much like a scene from a society play: there was nothing militant about it.
"Pray be seated, madam," said Stranleigh, "and that will allow me to take this chair fronting you all. They say that when danger threatens the best plan is to face it, which accordingly I do. To what successful coup do you refer?"
Stranleigh took a chair near a table.
"The newspapers have printed column after column about it. Assisted by the weight of your money, that arch-rascal, Bannerdale, secured his second line to the Pacific, and 'froze out,' I think is their term, meaning ruined, a vast number of unfortunate men opposed to him."
"Yes," said Stranleigh, "I received many hundreds of letters on that subject, and talking of votes of censure, I've been censured by every reputable journal in England. The incident just proves what I have been saying to you, namely, that I'm no man of business at all, but merely a gullible simpleton."
"Why, how can that be, if it is true that you cleared nearly a million by the deal?"
"I certainly gained a sum of money, the amount of which I have not had time to enquire, but that was an unintentional side-issue. I made no protest against what the journals said, yet I should be sorry for you to misjudge me. My mind has recently turned towards the possibility of giving away money by some method which will do good instead of harm. At a health resort on the Continent I met a man who seemed poor and ill, and at his behest I made a railway investment through a Frankfort firm. The profits, if any, were to go to him, while the loss, if any, was borne by me. It turned out that the person calling himself Garner was in reality the multi-millionaire railway king, Bannerdale. He needed the use of my name, and secured it. He published a quite untrue statement that I was his partner, and thus was enabled to consummate the deal he had in hand. He never applied to me for a penny of the money I made on his behalf, and so, you see, instead of wearing the hoofs and horns presented to me by the Press, I was merely the victim of a man much shrewder than myself. I confess that the contumely heaped upon me has not caused me an hour's wakefulness, but if you ladies add a vote of censure, then shall I be indeed desolate."
Many of the delegation laughed, and it was evident his young lordship had nothing to fear from that quarter. The lady with grey hair now spoke, very gently and very charmingly:
"I am sure I express the sentiment of this Committee when I say we are all glad to know you invested in an American railway speculation solely to benefit a fellow-creature whom you supposed to be in distress. We came here hoping to show you a better use for your money than that to which you had devoted it."
"You mean, madam, that I should contribute to the cause of Woman's Suffrage?"
"Yes."
"That I am very pleased to do, and if you assist me by naming the amount, I will send a cheque to your treasurer at once."
"On behalf of my fellow-workers, not only of those here, but of the thousands labouring elsewhere for our cause, I thank you for your great generosity. Our mission now being accomplished, I shall detain you no longer than it takes to tender our gratitude for your kind reception of us."
The young man was rather confused as he listened to these words, and the slight ripple of applause they called forth, but the tension of the situation was relieved by the young woman who carried the banner rising to her feet.
"I thought our chairwoman would, perhaps, embody those sentiments, with which we all agree, in a formal vote of thanks, and that in seconding this motion I should find opportunity for speaking on a subject very interesting to me. I gathered from the Earl of Stranleigh's remarks that he has given some thought towards the distribution of money to aid the down-trodden and the afflicted. If this is so, I should like to ask what success has followed his philanthropy?"
Stranleigh laughed a little, and tried to shake off his embarrassment.
"My efforts can hardly be dignified by such a term as philanthropy. It is a question that bristles with difficulties. When I give a sovereign to a sober ragamuffin, if I meet him again before the money is spent I regret to find he is then usually a drunk ragamuffin. In a larger way, where I depend on my own judgment, as was the case with the American I have spoken about, my effort has merely meant the discomfiture of people unknown to me that I would not willingly have injured. This is doubtless because I am rather a muddle-headed person, and a muddle-headed person with good intentions and plenty of money seems to be a distinct danger to the community. I try to inform myself of what wiser people have done, but my search has not proved encouraging.
"Through the genius of the late Sir Walter Besant a great people's palace was erected in the East End, which, I am told, has failed in its object on account of the abstention of those it was intended to benefit. That gracious lady whose memory is revered by us all, the late Baroness Burdett-Coutts, carried out what seemed a most practical project by building a huge market in the East End, where poor people might obtain good food at reasonable prices, but she merely disturbed, temporarily, the costermonger trade, and I think the great building, if not abandoned, is used for other purposes than the one for which it was erected. The poor, apparently, would have none of it.
"The
