here, you're afraid to have it mentioned.'

Lady John perceived that Jean had quietly slipped away from the others,
and was standing behind her.

If Mrs. Heriot had not been too absorbed in Dick Farnborough and
Hermione she would have had a moment's pleasure in her handiwork--that
half-shamed scrutiny in Jean Dunbarton's face. But as the young girl
studied the quiet figure, looked into the tender eyes that gazed so
steadily into some grey country far away, the effect of Mrs. Heriot's
revelation was either weakened or transmuted subtly to something
stronger than the thing that it replaced.

As the woman sat there leaning her head a little wearily on her hand,
there was about the whole _Wesen_ an indefinable nobility that answered
questions before they were asked.

But Lady John, upon perceiving her niece, had said hurriedly--

'If what you say is so, it's the fault of those women agitators.'

'Sex-Antagonism wasn't their invention,' Miss Levering answered. 'No
woman begins that way. Every woman is in a state of natural
subjection'--she looked up, and seeing Jean's face, smiled--'no, I'd
rather say "allegiance" to her idea of romance and her hope of
motherhood; they're embodied for her in man. They're the strongest
things in life till man kills them. Let's be fair. If that allegiance
dies, each woman knows why.'

Lady John, always keenly alive to any change in the social atmosphere,
looked up and saw her husband coming downstairs with their guest. As she
went to meet them, Stonor stopped halfway down to say something. The two
men halted there deep in discussion. But scarcely deeper than those
other two Lady John had left by the writing-table.

'Who is it you are going to marry?' Miss Levering had asked.

'It isn't going to be announced for a few days yet.' And then Jean
relented enough to say in an undertone, almost confidentially, 'I should
think you'd guess.'

'Guess what?' said the other, absent-mindedly, but again lifting her
eyes.

'Who I'm going to marry.'

'Oh, I know him, then?' she said, surprised.

'Well, you've seen him.'

Miss Levering shook her head. 'There are so very many young men in the
world.' But she looked with a moment's wondering towards the window,
seeming to consider first Filey and then Farnborough.

'What made you think of going on that terrible pilgrimage?' asked the
girl.

'Something I heard at a Suffrage meeting.'

'Well, do you know, ever since that Sunday at the Freddys