a shade nearer the monument. Stonor made a sharp move
forward, and took her by the arm.

'We're going now,' he said.

'Not yet--oh, _please_ not just yet,' she pleaded as he drew her round.
'Geoffrey, I do believe----'

She looked back, with an air almost bewildered, over her shoulder, like
one struggling to wake from a dream.

Stonor was saying with decision to Lady John, 'I'm going to take Jean
out of this mob. Will you come?'

'What? Oh, yes, if you think'--she had disengaged the chain of her
eyeglass at last. 'But isn't that, surely it's----'

'Geoffrey----!' Jean began.

'Lady John's tired,' he interrupted. 'We've had enough of this
idiotic----'

'But you don't see who it is, Geoffrey. That last one is----' Suddenly
Jean bent forward as he was trying to extricate her from the crowd, and
she looked in his face. Something that she found there made her tighten
her hold on his arm.

'We can't run away and leave Aunt Ellen,' was all she said; but her
voice sounded scared. Stonor repressed a gesture of anger, and came to a
standstill just behind two big policemen.

The last-comer to that strange platform, after standing for some seconds
with her back to the people and talking to Ernestine Blunt, the tall
figure in a long sage-green dust coat and familiar hat, had turned and
glanced apprehensively at the crowd.

It was Vida Levering.

The girl down in the crowd locked her hands together and stood
motionless.

The Socialist had left the platform with the threat that he was 'coming
down now to attend to that microbe that's vitiating the air on my right,
while a lady will say a few words to you--if she can myke 'erself
'eard.'

He retired to a chorus of cheers and booing, while the chairman, more
harassed than ever, it would seem, but determined to create a diversion,
was saying that some one had suggested--'and it's such a good idea I'd
like you to listen to it--that a clause shall be inserted in the next
Suffrage Bill that shall expressly give to each Cabinet Minister, and to
any respectable man, the power to prevent a vote being given to the
female members of his family, on his public declaration of their lack
of sufficient intelligence to entitle them to one.'

'Oh! oh!'

'Now, I ask you to listen as quietly as you can to a lady who is not
accustomed to speaking--a--in Trafalgar Square, or--a--as a matter of
fact, at all.'

'A dumb lady!'

'Hooray!'

'Three cheers for the dumb lady!'

The c