spoke to the footman at the door.

"Thomas, fetch Mr. Kent's coat and hat from the dressing-room." And then
to Kent, in the tone she might have used in telling him of the latest
breeziness of the member from the Rio Blanco: "I remember now what it was
that I wanted to tell you. While you have been trying to find Mr. Ormsby,
the committee on judiciary has been reporting the long-lost House Bill
Twenty-nine. If you hurry you may be in time to see it passed--it will
doubtless go through without any tiresome debate. But you will hardly have
time to obstruct it by arousing public sentiment through the newspapers."

David Kent shook the light touch of her hand from his arm and set his
teeth hard upon a word hot from the furnace of righteous indignation. For
a moment he fully believed she was in league with the junto; that she had
been purposely holding him in talk while the very seconds were priceless.

She saw the scornful wrath in his eyes and turned it aside with a swift
denial.

"No, David; I didn't do that," she said, speaking to his inmost thought.
"If there had been anything you could do--the smallest shadow of a chance
for you--I should have sent you flying at the first word. But there
wasn't; it was all too well arranged--"

But he had snatched coat and hat from the waiting Thomas and was running
like a madman for the nearest cab-stand.

VII

THE SENTIMENTALISTS

Kent's time from Alameda Square to the capitol was the quickest a flogged
cab-horse could make, but he might have spared the horse and saved the
double fee. On the broad steps of the south portico he, uprushing three at
a bound, met the advance guard of the gallery contingent, down-coming. The
House had adjourned.

"One minute, Harnwicke!" he gasped, falling upon the first member of the
corporations' lobby he could identify in the throng. "What's been done?"

"They've taken a fall out of us," was the brusk reply. "House Bill
Twenty-nine was reported by the committee on judiciary and rushed through
after you left. Somebody engineered it to the paring of a fingernail: bare
quorum to act; members who might have filibustered weeded out, on one
pretext or another, to a man; pages all excused, and nobody here with the
privilege of the floor. It was as neat a piece of gag-work as I ever hope
to see if I live to be a hundred."

Kent faced about and joined the townward dispersal with his informant.

"Well, I suppose that settles it definitely; at l