at this hour from side to side, she had suddenly
caught sight of a never-forgotten face--a hungry face, full of malice,
full of a wicked exultation, keen for revenge.

Cora Walcott, crossing the road, and halting for a moment at the central
landing-place, was gazing at the people as they poured out of St. James'
Hall. As Alan helped Lettice into the hansom and bent forward to speak
to her, she recognized him at once.

Without a pause she plunged madly into the labyrinth of moving carriages
and cabs; and it was then that Lettice saw her, less than three yards
away, and apparently in the act of hurling a missile from her uplifted
hand.

It was all the work of an instant. The woman shrieked with impotent
rage; the drivers shouted and stormed at her; men and women, seeing her
danger, cried out in their excitement; and, just as she came within
reach of her husband's cab, she was struck by the shaft of a passing
brougham, and fell beneath the horse's hoofs.

It was Lettice's hands that raised the insensible body from the mire. It
was Alan who lifted her into an empty cab, and took her to the nearest
hospital--whence she never emerged again until her last narrow home had
been made ready to receive her.

Cora did not regain consciousness before she died. There was no
death-bed confession, no clearing of her husband's name from the
dishonor which she had brought upon it, no reawakening of any kind. Alan
would have to go through the world unabsolved by any justification that
she was capable of giving. But with Lettice at his side, he was strong
enough, brave enough, to hear Society's verdict on his character with a
smile, and to confront the world steadily, knowing what a coward thing
its censure not unfrequently is; and how conscious courage and purity
can cause it to slink, away abashed.

* * * * *

On a certain evening, early in the session of 1885, some half-dozen men
were gathered together in a quiet angle of the members' smoking-room at
the Oligarchy Club.

During the past day or two there had been unwonted jubilation in every
corner of the Oligarchy, and with reason, as the Oligarchs naturally
thought; for Mr. Gladstone's second Administration had suddenly come to
an end. It had puzzled many good Conservatives to understand how that
Administration, burdened by an accumulation of blunders and disasters,
was able to endure so long; but at any rate the hour of doom had struck
at last,