, or she'll miss her train.'

Miss Levering vanished.

'I didn't know her name was Vida; how did you?' said Jean.

Stonor bent his head silently over the book. Perhaps he hadn't heard.
That deafening old gong was sounding for luncheon.

CHAPTER XVI

The last of the Trafalgar Square meetings was half over when the great
chocolate-coloured motor, containing three persons besides the
chauffeur, slowed up on the west side of the square. Neither of the two
ladies in their all-enveloping veils was easily recognizable, still less
the be-goggled countenance of the Hon. Geoffrey Stonor. When he took off
his motor glasses, he did not turn down his dust collar. He even pulled
farther over his eyes the peak of his linen cap.

By coming at all on this expedition, he had given Jean a signal proof of
his desire to please her--but it was plain that he had no mind to see in
the papers that he had been assisting at such a spectacle. While he gave
instructions as to where the car should wait, Jean was staring at the
vast crowd massed on the north side of the column. It extended back
among the fountains, and even escaped on each side beyond the vigilance
of the guardian lions. There were scores listening there who could not
see the speakers even as well as could the occupants of the car. In
front of the little row of women on the plinth a gaunt figure in brown
serge was waving her arms. What she was saying was blurred in the
general uproar.

'Oh, that's one!' Jean called out excitedly. 'Oh, let's hurry.'

But even after they left the car and reached the crowd, to hurry was a
thing no man could do. For some minutes the motor-party had only
occasional glimpses of the speakers, and heard little more than
fragments.

'Who is that, Geoffrey?'

'The tall young fellow with the stoop? That appears to be the chairman.'
Stonor himself stooped--to the eager girl who had clutched his sleeve
from behind, and was following him closely through the press. 'The
artless chairman, I take it, is scolding the people for not giving the
woman a hearing!' They laughed together at the young man's foolishness.

Even had an open-air meeting been more of a commonplace to Stonor, it
would have had for him that effect of newness that an old thing wears
when seen by an act of sympathy through new eyes.

'You must be sure and explain _everything_ to me, Geoffrey,' said the
girl. 'This is to be an important chapter in my education.' Merrily and
with