opped an
instant and waved his hand to his sobbing sweetheart in the gallery.
Hurd also turned irresolutely.

"Look!" exclaimed Ann Mullins, propping up the fainting woman beside
her, "he's goin'."

Marcella bent forward. She, rather than the wife, caught the last look
on his large dwarf's face, so white and dazed, the eyes blinking under
the gas.

Aldous touched her softly on the arm.

"Yes," she said quickly, "yes, we must get her out. Ann, can you lift
her?"

Aldous went to one side of the helpless woman: Ann Mullins held her on
the other. Marcella followed, pressing the little girl close against her
long black cloak. The gallery made way for them; every one looked and
whispered till they had passed. Below, at the foot of the stairs, they
found themselves in a passage crowded with people--lawyers, witnesses,
officials, mixed with the populace. Again a road was opened for Aldous
and his charges.

"This way, Mr. Raeburn," said a policeman, with alacrity. "Stand back,
please! Is your carriage there, sir?"

"Let Ann Mullins take her--put them into the cab--I want to speak to Mr.
Wharton," said Marcella in Aldous's ear.

"Get me a cab at once," he said to the policeman, "and tell my carriage
to wait."

"Miss Boyce!"

Marcella turned hastily and saw Wharton beside her. Aldous also saw
him, and the two men interchanged a few words.

"There is a private room close by," said Wharton, "I am to take you
there, and Mr. Raeburn will join us at once."

He led her along a corridor, and opened a door to the left. They entered
a small dingy room, looking through a begrimed window on a courtyard.
The gas was lit, and the table was strewn with papers.

"Never, never more beautiful!" flashed through Wharton's mind, "with
that knit, strenuous brow--that tragic scorn for a base world--that
royal gait--"

Aloud he said:

"I have done my best privately among the people I can get at, and I
thought, before I go up to town to-night--you know Parliament meets on
Monday?--I would show you what I had been able to do, and ask you to
take charge of a copy of the petition." He pointed to a long envelope
lying on the table. "I have drafted it myself--I think it puts all the
points we can possibly urge--but as to the names--"

He took out a folded sheet of paper from his breast pocket.

"It won't do," he said, looking down at it, and shaking his head. "As I
said to you, it is so far political merely. There is a very strong
Lib