f the elderly barrister seemed to detect a lacuna
in the reasoning; the speaker had skipped something and flown straight
to his peroration. He gave it now in tones firm but slower than before,
with a pause here and there, yet in the end summoning his forces to a
last flood of impassioned words. Then he sat down, not straight, but
falling just a little on one side and making a clutch at his neighbour's
shoulder; and while they cheered he sat quite still with closed eyes and
opened lips. "Has he fainted?" ran in a hushed whisper round the room;
Dick Benyon sprang from his chair, a waiter was hurried off for brandy,
and Lady Richard observed in her delicately scornful tones, "How
extremely theatrical!"

"Theatrical!" said May in a low indignant voice.

"You don't suppose he's really fainting, my dear, do you? Oh, I've seen
him do the same sort of thing once before!"

An impulse carried May's eyes towards Miss Quisante; the old lady was
smiling composedly and sniffing her bottle. Her demeanour was in strong
contrast to Mrs. Gellatly's almost tearful excitement.

"He couldn't, he couldn't!" May moaned in horror.

If the untrue suspicion entertained by Lady Richard and possibly shared
by Miss Quisante (the old lady's face was a riddle) spread at all to
anybody else, the fault lay entirely at the sufferer's own door. He knew
too well how real the attack had been; when the ladies mingled with the
men to take tea and coffee, he was still suffering from its after-effects.
But he treated the occurrence in so hopelessly wrong a way; he minced and
smirked over it; he would not own to a straightforward physical illness,
but preferred to hint at and even take credit for an exaggerated
sensibility, as though he enhanced his own eloquence by pointing to the
extraordinary exhaustion it produced. He must needs bring the frailty of
his body to the front, not as an apology, but as an added claim to
interest and a new title by which to win soft words, admiring looks, and
sympathetic pressings from pretty hands. Who could blame Lady Richard for
murmuring, "There, my dear, now you see!"? Who could wonder that Aunt
Maria looked cynically indifferent? Was it strange that a good many
people, without going to the length of declaring that the orator had
suffered nothing at all, yet were inclined to think that he knew better
than to waste, and quite well how to improve, the opportunity that a
trifling fatigue or a passing touch of faintness gave