Once, in an impetuous mood, she joined a Ladies' League for the supply of soup and bread to a select company of the deserving poor in a West End parish. There were more ladies altogether than there were afterwards recipients of their charity; and they all met weekly in one another's houses to organize their system of relief during the cold weather. The cold weather came along before the preliminaries were arranged. There were no gentlemen at these meetings until after the business had been transacted, when afternoon tea was brought in, and a _recherché_ reception followed. But the frost continued, and there seemed no prospect of the sufferers ever receiving their bread and their soup. Just before Christmas, it came to Lady Joan's turn to hold the meeting in her house. It took place in a dingy old library that day, and there was no reception afterwards, and no afternoon tea. Lady Joan herself moved three resolutions at the opening of the sitting: the first was that there should be no more meetings; the second, that all future business should be transacted by a committee of gentlemen only; and the third, that the charity, if given at all, should be administered to all sufferers, irrespective of character. All three motions were thrown out indignantly, and their proposer sent in her resignation the next day.
"Philanthropy is the selfish pastime of the great, and I was an owl to meddle with it," she said gloomily to Sir Marcus, who happened to be lunching with her one day about that time. Sir Marcus always came to see her whenever he came to town, and told her of his last letter to the papers, or his last effort to improve the condition of the working-man;--she had loved his boy, and she always listened without laughing at him; these were the two ideas he vaguely connected with her in his mind. Another man, a less easily impressed one, might have been killed by the suddenness of Jack's death; but Sir Marcus, although his infatuation for his scapegrace son had been the deepest attachment he had ever felt for any one, had been really more affected by the tragedy of his end than by his actual death; and so it came about that he was considerably aged by the shock, and yet was able to return again to his books and his hobbies.