Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

GLORIANA;

OR,

THE REVOLUTION OF 1900.

GLORIANA;
OR,
THE REVOLUTION OF 1900.

BY

LADY FLORENCE DIXIE,

AUTHOR OF “REDEEMED IN BLOOD,” “THE YOUNG CASTAWAYS,” “ACROSS PATAGONIA,” ETC.

LONDON:

HENRY AND COMPANY,

6, BOUVERIE STREET, E.C.

1890.

Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.

TO

ALL WOMEN

AND

SUCH HONOURABLE, UPRIGHT, AND COURAGEOUS

MEN

As, regardless of Custom and Prejudice, Narrow-mindedness and Long-established Wrong, will bravely assert and uphold the Laws of Justice, of Nature, and of Right; I dedicate the following pages, with the hope that a straightforward inspection of the evils afflicting Society, will lead to their demolition in the only way possible—namely, by giving to Women equal rights with Men. Not till then will Society be purified, wrongdoing punished, or Man start forward along that road which shall lead to Perfection.

PREFACE.

“Thus we were told in words Divine

That there were truths men could not bear

E’en from the lips of Christ to hear.

These have now slowly been unfurled,

But still to a reluctant world.

“Prophets will yet arise to teach

Truths which the school-men fail to reach,

Which priestly doctrine still would hide,

And worldly votaries deride,

And statesmen fain would set aside.”

I make no apology for this preface. It may be unusual but then the book it deals with is unusual. There is but one object in “Gloriana.” It is to speak of evils which do exist, to study facts which it is a crime to neglect, to sketch an artificial position—the creation of laws false to Nature—unparalleled for injustice and hardship.

Many critics, like the rest of humanity, are apt to be unfair. They take up a book, and when they find that it does not accord with their sentiments, they attempt to wreck it by ridicule and petty, spiteful criticism. They forget to ask themselves, “Why is this book written?” They altogether omit to go to the root of the Author’s purpose; and the result is, that false testimony is often borne against principles which, though drastic, are pure, which, though sharp as the surgeon’s knife, are yet humane; for it is genuine sympathy with humanity that arouses them.

There is no romance worth reading, which has not the solid foundation of truth to support it; there is no excuse for the existence of romance, unless it fixes thought on that truth which underlies it. Gloriana may be a romance, a dream; but in the first instance, it is inextricably interwoven with truth, in the second instance, dreams the work of the brain are species of thought, and thought is an attribute of God. Therefore is it God’s creation.

There may be some, who reading “Gloriana,” will feel shocked, and be apt to misjudge the author. There are others who will understand, appreciate, and sympathise. There are yet others, who hating truth, will receive it with gibes and sneers; there are many, who delighting in the evil which it fain would banish, will resent it as an unpardonable attempt against their liberties. An onslaught on public opinion is very like leading a Forlorn Hope. The leader knows full well that death lies in the breach, yet that leader knows also, that great results may spring from the death which is therefore readily sought and faced. “Gloriana” pleads woman’s cause, pleads for her freedom, for the just acknowledgment of her rights. It pleads that her equal humanity with man shall be recognised, and therefore that her claim to share what he has arrogated to himself, shall be considered. “Gloriana,” pleads that in woman’s degradation man shall no longer be debased, that in her elevation he shall be upraised and ennobled. The reader of its pages will observe the Author’s conviction, everywhere expressed, that Nature ordains the close companionship not division of the sexes, and that it is opposition to Nature which produces jealousy, intrigue, and unhealthy rivalry.

“Gloriana” is written with no antagonism to man. Just the contrary. The Author’s best and truest friends, with few exceptions, have been and are men. But the Author will never recognise man’s glory and welfare in woman’s degradation.

“And hark! a voice with accents clear

Is raised, which all are forced to hear.

’Tis woman’s voice, for ages hushed,

Pleading the cause of woman crushed;

Pleading the cause of purity,

Of freedom, honour, equity,

Of all the lost and the forlorn,

Of all for whom the Christ was born.”

If, therefore, the following story should help men to be generous and just, should awaken the sluggards amongst women to a sense of their Position, and should thus lead to a rapid Revolution it will not have been written in vain.

The Author.

CONTENTS.

MAREMNA’S DREAM.
INTRODUCTION TO
GLORIANA;
OR, A DREAM OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1900.

A rose-red sunset,

Mingling its radiance with the purple heath,

Flooding the silver lake with blushing light,

Dyeing the ocean grey a crimson hue,

Streaking the paling sky with rosy shafts;

Clinging to Nature with a ling’ring kiss,

Ere it shall vanish from a drowsy earth,

To rouse in new-deck’d cloak of shining gold

A waking world far o’er the ocean’s wave.

Maremna sleeps,

Close cushion’d in the heather’s warm embrace;

The rose-red sunset plays around her form—

A graceful, girlish figure, lithe and fair,

Small, slim, yet firmly knit with Nature’s power—

Unfetter’d Nature! which will not be bound

By Fashion’s prison rules and cultur’d laws.

Maremna sleeps.

One rosy cheek lies pillow’d on her hand,

And through her waving, wandering auburn curls

The zephyr cupids frolic merrily,

Tossing them to and fro upon her brow

In sportive play. It is a brow of thought,

Endow’d by God and Nature, though, alas!

Held in paralysis by selfish laws

Which strive to steal a fair inheritance,

And bid the woman bow the knee to man.

Maremna sleeps.

The white lids veil the large grey, lustrous eyes,

The auburn lashes sweep the sunlit cheeks,

Yet are they wet, and cling to the soft skin

Whereon the damp of tears is glazing fast.

Maremna’s sleep is not the sleep of rest,

For ever and anon the blood-red lips

Unclose, and strive to speak, but yet remain

Silent and speechless, tied by some dread force

Which intervenes, denying to the brain

That comfort which the power of speech doth bring.

Who is Maremna?—

A noble’s child, rear’d amidst Nature’s scenes,

Her earliest friends! They guided her first steps,

Speaking of God and His stupendous works

Long ere Religion’s dogma intervened.

Child of a chieftain o’er whose broad domains

She roamed, a happy, free, unfetter’d waif,

Loving the mountain crag and forest lone,

The straths and corries, rugged glens and haunts

Of the red deer and dove-like ptarmigan;

Loving the language of the torrent’s roar,

Or the rough river’s wild bespated rush;

Loving the dark pine woods, amidst whose glades

The timid roe hides from the gaze of man;

Loving the great grey ocean’s varying face,

Now calm, now rugged, rising into storm,

Anon so peaceful, so serene, and still,

When passion’s fury sinks beneath the wave.

Maremna sleeps

Amidst the scenes that rear’d her early years

Yet is Maremna now no more a child,

Nor guileless with the innocence of youth.

Hers it has been to roam God’s mighty world,

And learn the ways and woful deeds of men,

And, weary with her world-wide pilgrimage,

Maremna’s steps have sought her early haunts,

Hoping for rest where childhood once did play.

Rest for Maremna!

An idle thought; a foolish sentiment!

Unto the brain which God has bidden “Think”

No rest can come from Solitude’s retreat;

For solitude breeds thought, and shapes its course

And bids it live within the form of speech,

Or bids the mighty pen proclaim its life,

And write its words upon the scrolls of men.

Thus with Maremna.

Rest she has sought, but sought it all in vain.

What God decrees no mortal hand can stay.

“Think.” He ordains, and lo! the brain must think,

Nor close its eyes upon the mammoth truth.

Truth must prevail! Truth must be held aloft!

What matter if the cold world sneers or scoffs?

Sneering and scoffing is the work of man,

Truth, the almighty handiwork of God.

It may be dimm’d, it may be blurr’d from sight,

Yet must it triumph in the end, and win;

For is not truth a sun which cannot die,

Though unbelief may cloud it for a time?

Maremna sleeps;

Sleeps where in childhood oft she lay and dream’d,

Dream’d of fantastic worlds and fairy realms.

And now, in sleep, Maremna dreams again,

But dreams no more of elves and laughing sprites.

Hers, though a dream, is stern reality,

Mingled with visions of a future day;

Hers is a dream of hideous, living wrong,

Wrong which ’tis woman’s duty to proclaim

And man’s to right, and right right speedily,

Or crush the form of justice underfoot.

Maremna sleeps,

And in her sleep a vision fills her brain.

This is Maremna’s Dream.

GLORIANA;
OR,
THE REVOLUTION OF 1900.
BOOK I.

CHAPTER I.

“I am tired, mother.”

“Tired, child! And why?”

“Mother, I have been spouting to the wild sea waves.”

“And what have you been saying to them, Gloria?”

“Ah, mother! ever so much.”

Let us look at the speakers, a mother and child, the former as she stands leaning against a stone balustrade, which overlooks a small Italian garden, upon which the sun is shining brightly. Far out beyond is the gleaming sea, and on its sparkling, silvery sheen the woman’s eyes are absently fixed as she hearkens to the complaining prattle of the child by her side. She is a beautiful woman is Speranza de Lara, one upon whom Dame Nature has showered her favours freely. As the stranger, looking upon her for the first time, would deem her but a girl in years, and exclaim admiringly at her beauty, it would be difficult to convince him that her age is thirty-five, as in effect it is.

Speranza’s eyes are blue, with the turquoise shade lighting up their clear depths, and a fringe of silky auburn eyelashes confining them within bounds. Her magnificent hair is of a slightly lighter hue, and as the sun plays on the heavy coil that is twisted gracefully upon her noble head, the golden sparks dance merrily around it, like an aureole of gold.

And the child? We must look nearer still at her, for she not only is beautiful, but there is writ upon her face the glowing sign of genius. Like her mother, Gloriana, or, as we shall prefer to call her, Gloria, has blue eyes, but they are the blue of the sapphire, deep in contradistinction to the turquoise shade, which characterises those of Speranza. Auburn eyelashes, too, fringe the child’s wonderful eyes, but again these are many shades darker than the mother’s, while masses of auburn curls play negligently and unconfined, covering the girl’s back like a veil of old-gold. Such is Gloriana de Lara at the age of twelve.

“Won’t Gloria tell mother what that ‘ever so much’ was?”

She puts the question gently, does Speranza. She has never moved from the position in which we first found her, and her eyes are still dreamily searching the waste of blue waters beyond. But as she speaks the child puts her arm caressingly through that of the mother’s, and lays her golden head against that mother’s shoulder.

“Ah! yes, mother, of course I will tell you.”

“Then tell me, Gloria.”

“I was imagining the foam flakelets to be girls, mother, and I looked upon them as my audience. I told them, mother darling, of all the wrongs that girls and women have to suffer, and then I bade them rise as one to right these wrongs. I told them all I could think of to show them how to do so, and then I told them that I would be their leader, and lead them to victory or die. And the wavelets shouted, mother. I seemed to hear them cheer me on, I seemed to see them rising into storm, the wind uprose them, and their white foam rushed towards me, and I seemed to see in this sudden change the elements of a great revolution.”

“Like a dream, Gloria.”

“A living dream, mother; at least it was so to me. It brought a feeling to my heart, mother, which I know will never leave it more, until, until——”

The girl pauses, and the great tears rise to her eyes. Speranza raises herself suddenly, and, confronting the child, lays both hands upon her shoulders.

“Until what, child?”

“Until I’ve won, mother,” cries Gloria, as she raises her glorious eyes, in which the tears still tremble, to her mother’s face.

“Ah, Gloria! the odds are against you, my darling.”

“Don’t I know that, mother; don’t I know that well? But I am not afraid. I made a vow, mother, to-day, I made it to those waves; and something tells me that I shall keep that vow and win, though in doing so I may die.”

“Hush, Gloria, hush, child; don’t talk like that.”

“And don’t you want me to win, mother? After all you have suffered, after all you have taught me, would you have your child turn back from the path she has set herself to follow, because perhaps at that path’s end lies death?”

“Child, it is a cause I would gladly lay down my life for, but how can I bring myself to wish you to sacrifice yourself?”

“What is sacrifice in a great cause, mother? I fear no sacrifice, no pain, no consequence, so long as victory crowns me in the end.”

The mother’s arms are round her child’s neck now, her head is bending down and the bright gold of Speranza’s lovely hair is close beside the glossy, wandering dark gold curls of Gloria. In the heart of the former a new-born hope is rising, vague, undefinable, yet still there, and which fills it with a happiness she has not known for many and many a day.

“My child,” she exclaims softly, “can it be, that after all these years of weary, lonely suffering, I am awaking to find in you, you, the offspring of a forbidden love, the messenger that shall awake the world to woman’s wrongs, and make suffering such as I have endured no longer possible?”

“Yes, mother, I feel it,” answers Gloria earnestly; “and that is why I have made my plans to-day. Everything must have a beginning you know, mother, and therefore I must begin, and begin at once. You must help me, mother darling. I can do nothing without your co-operation.”

“Tell me your plans, Gloria, and mother will help you if she can.”

“My plans are many, but the first must have a premier consideration. Mother, I must go to school.”

“To school, child! I thought you always have begged me not to send you to school.”

“It must be to a boy’s school, mother. You must send me to Eton.”

“To Eton?”

“Yes, mother; don’t you understand?”

Here a retrospect is necessary to enable the reader to comprehend the above conversation.

Thirty-five years previously there had been born to a young widow in the Midland Counties of England a posthumous child and daughter, to whom the name of Speranza had been given. The widow, Mrs. de Lara by name, was left badly off. Her husband, who had been an officer in the British service, had sold out, and accepted an estate agency from a rich relative, upon whose property he lived in a tiny but snug cottage, which nestled amidst some pine and oak woods on the shores of as beautiful a lake as was to be seen all the country round. Captain and Mrs. de Lara were a very happy pair. Theirs had been a love match; and she never regretted the rich offers of marriage which she had rejected for the sake of the handsome, dashing but well-nigh penniless young officer. Her father, furious at what he considered a mésalliance, had cut her off with a shilling; and thus it was that the two had had a hard struggle to make ends meet on the little possessed by the captain. What mattered it? They were happy.

Grief, however, soon came to cloud that home of peace and contentment. An accidental discharge of his gun inflicted on Captain de Lara a mortal wound. He died in the arms of his heart-broken wife, who lived just long enough to give birth to the little Speranza, dying a fortnight later, and leaving, penniless and friendless, two little boys and the baby girl referred to. The captain’s rich relative adopted them. He was a kind-hearted man, and felt that he could not turn them adrift on the world, but his wife, a hard-hearted and scheming woman, resented the adoption bitterly, and led the children a sad and unhappy life. She had a son and daughter of her own, aged respectively five and six years, and upon these she lavished a false and mistaken affection, spoiling them in every possible way, and bringing them up to be anything but pleasant to those around them.

When old enough Speranza’s brothers were sent to school, and given to understand by their adopted father that they might choose their own professions. The eldest selected the army, the youngest the navy, and each made a start in his respective line of life. But Speranza, being a girl, had no chances thrown out to her. She was a very beautiful girl, strong, healthy, and clever; but of what use were any of these attributes to her?

“If I were only a boy,” she would bitterly moan to herself, “I could make my way in the world. I could work for my living, and be free instead of being what I am, the butt of my adopted mother.”

It is necessary to explain that Speranza’s adopted parents were the Earl and Countess of Westray, and that their two children were Bertrand Viscount Altai and Lady Lucy Maree. Dordington Court was the family seat, and it was here that Speranza spent the first sixteen years of her life.

There were great doings at Dordington Court when Lord Altai came of age. A large party was invited to take part in the week’s festivities, and duly assembled for the occasion. Many beautiful women were there, but none could compare in beauty with Speranza de Lara. She was only seventeen years of age at the time, but already the promise of exquisite loveliness could not but be apparent to every one. It captivated many, but none more so than young Altai himself.

He was not a good man was the young viscount. Injudicious indulgence as a child had laid the seeds of selfishness and indifference to the feelings of others. He had been so accustomed to have all he wanted, that such a word as “refusal” was hardly known to him. He had grown up in the belief that what Altai asked for must be granted as a matter of course. And now, in pursuit of his passions, he chose to think himself, or imagined himself, in love with Speranza, and had determined to make her his wife.

He chose his opportunity for asking her. It was the night of a great ball given at Dordington Court during the week’s festivities. Speranza had been dancing with him, and when the dance was over he led her away into one of the beautiful conservatories that opened from one of the reception-rooms, and was lighted up with softly subdued pink fairy lamps. He thought he had never seen her look more beautiful, and his passion hungered to make her his own more than ever.

He put the usual question, a question which—no reason has yet been given why—a man arrogates to himself alone to put. He never dreamed that she, the penniless Speranza de Lara, the adopted orphan of his father and mother, would refuse him. He took it as of course for granted that she would jump at his offer. Were there not girls—and plenty too—in the house who would have given their eyes for such a proposal? He put the question therefore confidently, nay, even negligently, and awaited the answer without a doubt in his mind as to what it would be.

He started. She was speaking in reply. Could he believe his ears, and was that answer No? And yet there was no mistaking it, for the voice, though low, was clear and very distinct. It decidedly said him Nay. Yes, Speranza had refused him. It was the first rebuff he had ever received in his life, the first denial that had ever been made to request of his. It staggered him, filled him with blind, almost ungovernable, fury. More than ever he coveted the girl who had rejected him, more than ever he determined to make her, what the law told him she should be if he married her, his own.

He left her suddenly, anger and rage at heart, and she, with a sad and weary restlessness upon her, wandered out into the clear moonlit night, and stood gazing over the beautiful lake at her feet, and at the tiny cottage at the far end where her father and mother had died, and where she had been born.

What was it that stood in Speranza’s eyes? Tears, large and clear as crystals, were falling from them, and sobs shook her graceful upright frame, as she stood with her hands clasped to her forehead in an agony of grief. Only seventeen, poor child, and yet so miserable! It was a cruel sight for any one to see. But no one saw it save the pale moon and twinkling stars that looked down calmly and sweetly on the sobbing girl.

A harsh voice sounded suddenly at her elbow, a rough grasp was laid upon her arm. With a cry in which loathing and horror were mixed Speranza turned round, only to confront the contemptuous, haughty woman, who had never said a kind or nice word to her in all her life.

“How dare you, girl, behave like this?” had cried the countess furiously. “How dare you so answer my darling boy, who has thus condescended to honour you with his love?”

In vain the miserable child had striven to explain to the infuriated woman that she did not care for Lord Altai. Such an explanation had only aggravated the countess’s anger, who, after many and various threats, had declared that unless Speranza consented to gratify her darling boy’s passion, she would induce the earl to deprive Speranza’s two brothers of their allowances, and therefore of their professions, which, in other words, meant ruin to them.

She was a clever woman was Lady Westray. She knew exactly where to strike to gain her end. The threat which she threw out about Speranza’s two brothers she knew pretty well would take effect; for did she not also know that out to them the poor child’s whole heart had gone? Rather than injure them, the girl determined to sacrifice herself.

A month later a great wedding took place. Envied of all who saw her, Speranza de Lara became Viscountess Altai, and the wife of the man whom she detested and loathed. Sold by the law which declares that however brutally a man may treat his wife, so that he does not strike her, she has no power to free herself from him; sold by the law which declares her to be that man’s slave, this woman, bright with the glory of a high intellect, perfect in Nature’s health and strength, was committed to the keeping of a man whom Fashion courted and patted on the back, whilst declaring him at the same time to be the veriest roué in London. He could go and do as he pleased; indulge in brutal excess, pander to every hideous passion of his heart, poison with his vile touch the beautiful creature whom he looked down upon as “only a woman”; but she, if she dared to overstep the line of propriety, and openly declare her love for another, she would be doomed to social ostracism, shunned and despised as a wanton, and out of the pale of decent society.

She did so dare! For six long years she bore with his brutal excess and depraved passions; for six long years she suffered the torture which only those who have so suffered can understand. Then she succumbed.

It was a dark November evening when she met her fate. The Altais were in Scotland, entertaining a party of friends for the covert shooting in Lord Westray’s splendid Wigtownshire preserves. The guests had all arrived but one, and he put in an appearance when the remainder of the party had gone upstairs to dress for dinner. Lady Altai had waited for him, as he was momentarily expected, and on his arrival he had been ushered into the drawing-room. His name was Harry Kintore, a captain in a smart marching regiment. As she entered the drawing-room he was standing with his back to the fire, and their eyes met. Right through her ran a thrill, she knew not why or wherefore, while he, transfixed by her beauty, could not remove his eyes. There have been such cases before of love at first sight. This was a case about which there could be no dispute; both felt it was so, both knew it to be beyond recall.

How she struggled against her fate none can tell. With her husband’s increased brutality the gentleness and devotion of young Kintore was all the more en evidence. And when at length he bade her fly with him beyond the reach of so much misery and cruelty, was it a wonder that she succumbed, and flew in the face of the law that bound her to the contrary?

She left him, that cruel brute, who had made her life a desert and a hell. She left him for one who to her was chivalrous and tender, loving and sympathetic. The world cried shame upon her, and spoke of Lord Altai as an injured man; the world ostracised her while it courted anew the fiend who had so grievously wronged her. And when, in the hunger of his baffled passion, this pampered roué followed the two who had fled from him, and with cold-blooded cruelty shot dead young Harry Kintore, the world declared it could not blame him, and that it served Lady Altai right.

CHAPTER II.

“Good-morning, my dear,” exclaims Lady Manderton, as she enters the cosy boudoir of her bosom friend and confidante, Mrs. de Lacy Trevor, as this latter, in a neat peignoir, lies stretched out, novel in hand, on an easy couch overlooking the fast-filling street of Piccadilly about eleven o’clock on the morning of the 5th June, 1890.

“Ciel! my dear, what brings you here, and dressed, too, at this unearthly hour?”

“Chute, Vivi, don’t talk so loud. A mere rencontre, that’s all. Arthur and I have arranged a little lark, and I told him to meet me here. I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

“He, he!” giggles Vivi; “but what have you done with Man?”

“Oh! he’s safe enough, my dear. Gone off to his club. Thinks I’ve gone to get a gown tried on. He, he! What fools men are!”

“Think themselves deuced clever, nevertheless, Dodo,” laughs Vivi. “It’s not an hour since Trebby was raving at me, laying down the law at the way I go on with Captain Kilmarnock. Of course I pretended to be awfully cut up, rubbed my eyes, got up a few tears and sniffs, got rid of him with a kiss or two, packed him off to his club, and at twelve o’clock Kil and I are off to Maidenhead together.”

This announcement creates the greatest amusement between the two ladies, judging by the peals of laughter that follow it.

“By-the-bye, Dodo, where were you yesterday?” inquires Vivi Trevor, after the laughter has subsided.

“I, my dear? Why, I was with H.R.H.’s party for the 4th of June. You can’t think what a jolly day we had, Vivi. Some of the recitations were quite delightful, and there was a boy called Hector D’Estrange, who was simply too lovely for words. We all fell in love with him, I can tell you. I never saw such eyes in my life. Won’t he break some of our hearts some day!”

“Hector D’Estrange; but who is he?”

“That’s just what every one was asking, but no one seemed to know. It appears he has taken the school by storm. Does everything tiptop. Splendid batsman, bowler, oarsman, wonderful at racquets, undefeatable at books—in fact, my dear, beautiful as an Adonis, and clever past expression.”

“Oh, Dodo! I must see this Adonis. I love pretty boys.”

“And plucky ones, too,” laughs Vivi. “I was speaking to young Estcourt, who is his chum, and he told me that when Hector D’Estrange first came to Eton, a good many attempts were made to bully him, but he soon settled his tormentors, and gave one of them, a big overgrown monster, such a drubbing, that he never molested him more. What fun, Dodo, it would have been to see my Adonis punching the overgrown bully! I did laugh when Estcourt told me. I do so hate overgrown boys. Don’t you, Dodo?”

“Of course I do, Vivi. Detest them!”

There is a ring at the door bell. Vivi jumps up and looks out of the window.

“It’s Arthur!” is all she exclaims.

“Well, ta ta, Vivi! won’t bother you with him,” laughs Lady Manderton, as she stoops to kiss her friend. “See you to-night, I suppose, at Ferdey’s—eh? Love to Kil. Don’t let Trebby catch you, and a pleasant outing to you both;” saying which she is off out of the room, and running downstairs to meet her friend Sir Arthur Muster-Day, a smart young guardsman, whom it has pleased her for the time being to think that she likes better than any one else in the world.

They are off together, happy in each other’s company. Sir Arthur is not married, and he thinks it just the thing to be seen about as much as possible in the company of one of London’s newest belles. Lady Manderton doesn’t care a rap for her husband, and is considerably bored that her husband evinces a certain amount of affection for her; she only married him for his money and position, and did not at all bargain for the affection part of the affair.

As for Vivi, after her friend is gone, she jumps up and rings for her maid. That important individual having made her appearance, she and Vivi are soon engrossed with the all-paramount question of the moment—dress. Half-a-dozen gowns are pulled out, put on, pulled off and discarded, until at length one appears to please more than the others.

“How do you think I look in this, Marie?” she inquires a little anxiously. “Is it becoming?”

“Mais, madame, c’est tout-à-fait charmante,” replies the well-drilled maid with an expression of admiration.

Vivi is satisfied. The gown remains on her person, and in a short time she is dressed and ready for her day’s outing. Twelve o’clock strikes. A neat brougham dashes up to the door. In less time almost than it takes to tell it, Vivi has taken her seat in the carriage, and is being whirled through the busy streets of London, en route to Captain Kilmarnock’s rooms. There she will pick him up, and together they will proceed to Maidenhead, what to do God knows. We had better leave them.

A few minutes later, and there is another ring at the door, and the footman opens it to Mr. de Lacy Trevor. As he does so, the latter inquires—

“Is Mrs. Trevor in?”

“No, sir, just gone out,” answers the servant.

“Do you know where to, James?” again asks Mr. Trevor.

“I do not, sir, but perhaps Mademoiselle Marie will know.”

Marie is called, and arrives all smiles and bows. “Really, she thinks madame has gone out for a drive with her friend Lady Manderton, and to lunch with her afterwards. C’est tout.”

Mr. Trevor sighs.

“There will be no lunch wanted, James,” he observes quietly. “I shall lunch at the club.”

He wanders down the street in the direction of St. James’s. He wonders if Vivi has forgotten the promise she made him that morning to lunch at home, and go for a ride with him afterwards. He so rarely sees her now, and when he does it is seldom alone. She never seems to have any time to give to him, and yet he is not brutal to her, or neglectful, or wrapped up in some one else, as many other men are. He loves her so dearly, and would do anything to make her happy; but he can quite see how she shuns him, and how much happier she looks when in Captain Kilmarnock’s company. And then, with a shudder, he starts and stares eagerly across the street, for there she is—yes, actually there she is, in Captain Kilmarnock’s brougham, with the captain beside her, driving rapidly in the direction of Piccadilly.

Mr. Trevor has a strange lump in his throat as he ascends the steps of the Conservative and enters that roomy club.

“Waiter!” he calls out, and his voice is somewhat husky.

“Yes, sir.”

“Bring me a stiff brandy-and-soda, waiter, and mind it is stiff,” continues Mr. Trevor, as he throws himself wearily into a chair. The soda with its stiff complement of brandy arrives. It is mixed carefully by the waiter, and handed to the sad-hearted man. He drinks it eagerly. He has not a strong head, and knows that he cannot take much, but he feels that oblivion must in this instance be sought, if possible, no matter how, so long as it is attained.

The brandy, in a measure, has the desired effect. He feels it perforating through his body and mounting to his brain. Things don’t look quite so gloomy to him now, and the loneliness of his position is less acutely felt. Two men are talking to each other close by him. He knows one of them. It is Sir Ralph Vereton, and he holds in his hand a copy of the June number of the Free Review.

“It is a wonderful article for a boy to write, and an Eton boy, too,” he hears the baronet exclaiming. “Have you read it, Critchley?”

“Well, no, I can’t say that I have, but I will, old chap, when I get home. I’m afraid I haven’t time to just now.”

“What’s that, Vereton?” inquires Mr. Trevor, leaning forward in his chair, “anything particularly clever?”

“Hulloa, Trevor! you there? Didn’t see you, old man. What! you haven’t read an Eton boy’s ‘Essay on Woman’s Position’? Every one is talking about it. It’s deuced clever and original, whatever one may think of the opinions, and is clearly written by a lad who will make his mark in the world.”

“Let’s have a look at it, Vereton, if you don’t want it, there’s a good chap. I want something to read,” exclaims Mr. Trevor eagerly, reaching out his hand for the periodical, which the baronet passes to him good-naturedly. It is open at the page of honour, the first page in the book, and as Mr. Trevor scans the heading he reads it as follows: “Woman’s Position in this World. By Hector D’Estrange, an Eton boy.” He starts reading it, languidly at first, as if the remarks of a boy on such a subject cannot possibly be worth reading, but he is soon absorbed in the article, and never budges in his chair until he has read it through and through.

And there are some parts to which he turns again and again, as though he would burn their truths into his brain, and keep them there never to be forgotten. One in especial rivets his attention, so much so that he commits it to memory.

“When a girl is born,” it ran, “no especial difference is made in the care of her by doctor or nurse. Up to a certain age the treatment which she and her brother receive is exactly the same. Why, I ask, should there be ever any change in this treatment? Why should such a marked contrast be drawn later on between the sexes? Is it for the good of either that the girl should be both physically and mentally stunted, both in her intellect and body,—that she should be held back while the boy is pressed forward? Can it be argued with any show of reason that her capacity for study is less, and her power of observation naturally dwarfed in comparison with that of the boy? Certainly not. I confidently assert that where a girl has fair play, and is given equal opportunities with the boy, she not only equals him in mental capacity, but far outruns him in such; and I also confidently assert, that given the physical opportunities afforded to the boy, to develop and expand, and strengthen the body by what are called ‘manly exercises,’ the girl would prove herself every inch his equal in physical strength. There are those, I know, who will sneer at these opinions, but in the words of Lord Beaconsfield, I can only asseverate that ‘the time will come,’ when those who sneer will be forced to acknowledge the truth of this assertion.

“Well then, granting, for the sake of argument, that what I have stated is correct, why, I ask, should all that men look forward to and hold most dear, be denied to women? Why should the professions which men have arrogated to themselves be entirely monopolised by their sex, to the exclusion of women? I see no manner of reason why, if women received the same moral, mental, and physical training that men do, they should not be as fit—nay, infinitely more fit—to undertake the same duties and responsibilities as men. I do not see that we should be a wit less badly governed if we had a woman Prime Minister or a mixed Cabinet, or if women occupied seats in the Houses of Parliament or on the bench in the Courts of Justice.

“Of course woman’s fitness to undertake these duties depends entirely on the manner in which she is educated. If you stunt the intellect, tell her nothing, and refuse to exercise the physical powers which Nature has given her, you must expect little from such an unfortunate creature. Put man in the same position in which yon put woman, and he would be in a very short time just as mentally and physically stunted as she is.

“All very well to declare that it is a woman’s business to bear children, to bring them up, to attend to household matters, and to leave the rest to men. A high-spirited girl or woman will not, in every instance, accept this definition of her duties by man as correct. That such a definition is clearly man’s, it is not difficult to see, for woman would never have voluntarily condemned herself to a life of such inert and ambitionless duties as these. But so long as this definition of woman’s duty and position be observed and accepted by Society, so long will this latter be a prey to all the evils and horrors that afflict it, and which are a result of woman’s subjection and degradation.

“Think you, you who read these words, that hundreds of women now unhappily married would ever have contracted that terrible tie had they been aware of what they were doing, or had they had the smallest hope of advancement and prospects of success in life without? Certainly not. Marriage is contracted in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred by women desirous of making for themselves a home, and because in no other quarter can they adopt agreeable and pleasant professions and occupations like men. Were it possible, they would either not have married, or at least have waited until, with the knowledge of man which they should possess—but which, unfortunately, nowadays comes to them only with marriage—they could select for themselves, with their eyes open, a partner suited to them in every respect. As it is, what does one see? Women, especially in the higher grades of society, marry only to escape in many instances the prim restraints of home. Others marry for money and position, because they know that the portals, through which men may pass to try for these, are closed to them. The cruel laws by which men have shut women out from every hope of winning name and fame, are responsible for hundreds of wretched marriages, which have seared the world with their griefs. If, in the narrow sphere within which she moves, a woman errs, let not the man blame her, but rather look to the abolition of unnatural laws which have brought about her degradation.”

Mr. Trevor sits very still in his chair. A flood of thoughts have come to fill his brain. They keep him very busy and occupied. The revelations thrown upon woman’s position by the straightforward, truth-breathing article of Hector D’Estrange, have taken him by storm, and have completely revolutionised his ideas. He has hitherto been so accustomed to look upon and treat women with the self-satisfied, conscious feeling of superiority assumed by men, that such ideas as these before him are startlingly strange and extraordinary. His position with Vivi, and hers in regard to him, presents itself now to his mind in a totally different light to that in which he has hitherto been accustomed to regard it. He remembers how he first met her hardly a year ago, a beautiful, lively, healthy girl, whose scheming mother, knowing no better, had thrust her into the busy mart, willing to sell her to the highest bidder. He remembers how passionately he fell in love with this girl, how he never paused to ask himself if his love were returned. He recalls full well the bitter look that had crossed her face when he had asked her to be his wife, and the cold, matter-of-fact way in which she had accepted him. Then his thoughts fly back to his wedding day, and a shudder runs through Launcelot Trevor as he recalls the utter absence of love on her part towards him. And, remembering all this, he cannot but feel that Hector D’Estrange is right. If, in the narrow sphere within which poor Vivi had moved, she had, according to the notions of propriety laid down by Mrs. Grundy, erred, Launcelot Trevor feels that the blame must rest not so much with her, as with the cruel laws that had left that beautiful girl no other option but to sell herself for gold; for be it remembered, she had been educated up to no higher level, been imbued with no better aim. She had been taught that the only opening for a girl is to get herself well married, that while men could go forth into the world with a score of professions to choose from, she must for ever regard herself as shut out from that world of enterprise, daring, and fame, created, so says man, solely for himself.

He sits on in his chair, his thoughts still busy with the new problem that has presented itself so startlingly to his mind. The luncheon hour is far past, much of the afternoon has slipped away, still Launcelot Trevor remains where he had seated himself many hours before. Men keep coming in and out; friends and acquaintances nod to him as they pass. He scarcely heeds them, or pays attention to what they say. His mind is absorbed by the truths which he has faced for the first time.

Suddenly he starts; the clock is striking seven. He remembers that at eight o’clock he and Vivi are engaged to dine out. He jumps up, bids the hall-porter hail a hansom, and in a few minutes is being driven towards Piccadilly.

“Has Mrs. Trevor returned yet?” he again inquires of the servant who opens the door to him.

“Yes, sir, she is in the drawing-room with Captain Kilmarnock.”

He walks slowly upstairs. All is very silent in the room mentioned. He stands on the threshold, hardly daring to open the door. He can hear a rustling inside, and, yes, unmistakably the sound of a kiss. He coughs audibly as he lays his hand on the door’s handle. He can hear a scuffling of feet, and on entering perceives Vivi sitting bolt upright on the sofa, and Captain Kilmarnock apparently warming his hands over the fireplace. Unfortunately there is no fire!

She looks at him as he comes in, and for a moment their eyes meet. A bright flush rises to Vivi’s cheeks. She expects to see him furious, as he had been that morning, and is surprised, nay, even awed by the sad expression on his face.

“Vivi,” he says very quietly, “I think we ought to be dressing for dinner. Good-evening to you, Kilmarnock. Are you to be at Ferdey’s to-night?”

“No, Trevor,” stammers the captain, visibly uncomfortable. “I have another engagement.”

“Oh, well, shall see you again, I suppose, soon? Good-night, old chap. Must go and dress. Vivi dear, don’t be late.”

He goes out as he speaks, and closes the door behind him. Hector D’Estrange’s words are still next his heart.

“Poor Vivi,” he mutters to himself. “It is not her fault. Poor Vivi.”

He is hardly out of the room, when she looks up at Captain Kilmarnock. The scared expression is still in her face.

“Kil,” she whispers, “that was a near squeak. You had better be off, old man. Didn’t hear the front door bell ring, did you?”

“No,” he answers in a rather sulky tone. “Hang him! He’s always where he’s not wanted. But you are right. I’d better be off. To-morrow at three. Don’t forget.”

“All right,” she answers, with a smile.

CHAPTER III.

Always busy and astir, the little town of Melton Mowbray presents a more than usually busy aspect on the morning of the 15th April, 1894. It is early yet, nevertheless the streets ring with the sound of trotting and cantering hacks, as well as the more sober paces of the strings of horses returning from exercise to their respective stables.

People are coming and going at a rapid rate. They nearly all seem to know each other, judging by the little nods, and “good-mornings,” and suchlike familiar greetings with which friends meet, and in which these afore-mentioned personages indulge, as they hurry by each other.

A party of horsemen and horsewomen are just riding out of the stables belonging to The Limes. They are laughing and talking merrily. We have seen two of the women before, and their names are Mrs. de Lacy Trevor and Lady Manderton. Close in attendance upon them are two smart good-looking men, whom we must introduce to the reader as Lord Charles Dartrey and the Earl of Westray. The former appears to be entirely taken up with the first-named lady, the latter—already introduced to the reader in a former chapter as Lord Altai—with the last-named one.

There is yet another pair in that cheery group that we must particularly notice. They are a man and woman, both young, both good-looking, and both unmistakably at home in the saddle. If one can judge from appearances, the woman must be about twenty-two years of age, the man perhaps five or six years her senior. Both are mounted on grey horses, and both look every inch what they are, splendid equestrians. The woman is well known in Society’s world, as also in the tiny hunting world of Melton. She is Lady Flora Desmond, and the man is handsome Captain “Jack” Delamere.

They trot through the streets at a merry pace, down past the Harborough Hotel, over the railway, away on by Wicklow Lodge, towards Burton Lazarus. It is a beautiful morning, and the sun is shining brightly on the flats that lie below. Dalby Hall, nestling amidst its woods on the far hillside, stands out distinct and clear, with the same bright sun gleaming on its gables and windows.

“What a glorious morning, Jack!” exclaims Lady Flora enthusiastically. “Why, it’s like summer, is it not?”

The others are a little on ahead, and these two have fallen in the rear. Jack looks at the speaker with a smile.

“It is a grand day, Florrie, and it suits you, too. I never saw you looking better in my life.”

She flushes up. Florrie Desmond does not care about compliments,—she values them at their worth,—but she and Jack are fast friends, and she is not quite averse to them from him. She answers, however.

“Shut up, you goose, and don’t talk nonsense.”

She is a clever woman is Flora Desmond, cleverer far than some people take her to be. Her bringing up has not been exactly like other women’s, and she has always kicked against the restraints and restrictions put upon her sex. She is the daughter of the Marquis and Marchioness of Douglasdale, and an orphan, having lost her father at an early age. Lady Douglasdale was, in her day, a very beautiful woman, a persona grata at Court, where her husband exercised the duties of Comptroller of the Household, and was a favourite with his sovereign; but after the marquis’s death she took greatly to travelling, and thus it was that Flora Ruglen, in conjunction with her twin brother Archie, saw most of the great world of Europe before she was ten years of age.

Travelling expands the mind, and brightens the senses. It had this effect upon the girl, forming much of her character before its time. At that early age she exhibited peculiar characteristics. No one could get her to settle down to study under a governess; she loathed the sight of school books, and led her unfortunate preceptors a sad life; yet, in strange contradiction to so much wilfulness and apparent indolence, she was seldom without the companionship of a book in her play hours, and when not otherwise engaged with her brother, would invariably be found poring over these books, thirstily seeking knowledge, or committing to paper, in powerful language for one so young, the impressions of her youthful brain.

She had dreams had Flora Ruglen—dreams of a bright future, an adventurous career. The time had not arrived when the road which she and her twin brother had been pursuing, would branch off in different directions, his leading forth to opportunities of power, fame, and glory, hers along a lane, narrow and cramped, and with nothing to seek at the end, save that against which her bright independent spirit rebelled and revolted. But it came at last, when the companion of her happy childhood’s days was taken from her, when Archie was sent to school, and she was left alone. It came upon her with a suddenness which she found difficult to realise, and the blow was terrible. To describe what she suffered would be well-nigh impossible. Only those who by experience have learnt it, could be brought to understand the horror of her position. But Flora Ruglen, having faced it, brought all the courage of her nature to support it, though from that moment she became utterly changed. She had no one in whom to confide; neither her mother nor any one else would have understood her. With girls of her own age she had nothing in common, and they looked on her with awe as a proud, stuck-up being. None could guess at the warm heart that beat beneath Flora Ruglen’s apparently cold and reserved demeanour—except one, and that one was a boy of about her own age.

She had made his acquaintance during the holidays, when Archie, home from school, had invited his “best pal” to spend them at Ruglen Manor, the beautiful dower property of Lady Douglasdale. It was with young Lord Estcourt that Archie Douglasdale had struck up so keen a friendship. The lads had been “new boys” at Eton together, and in the first strangeness of introduction to that boy’s world had been thrown into each other’s company a good deal, being in the same house, and, as in Flora’s case, much of the same age.

When Estcourt came to Ruglen Manor Flora Ruglen was about seventeen years of age. She was interested in her brother’s friend, inasmuch as he had lately lost his mother, and was an orphan. It did not take long for a firm friendship to spring up between the boy and girl. Nigel Estcourt was an only child, had never known what it was to have brothers and sisters, and was ready to look upon Flora in that light gladly enough. He and she were a great deal in each other’s company, and for the first time in her life she unloosed the cords of her heart, and told him of the trouble that had descended upon her life.

He sympathised with her did young Nigel. How could he help it, being, as he was, the friend of Hector D’Estrange? That extraordinary boy had risen to be head of the school. None could equal him at Eton, and his name had gone forth beyond the portals of the college as the coming man of his day. The article in the Free Review, which had first brought his name into prominence in the year 1890, had created a good deal of discussion in many circles. Of course it had been vigorously attacked. What great stroke aimed at Justice and Freedom but has ever been so opposed, hounded down, and decried? But truth is like a bright sun which no mortal power can dim. It may be clouded for a time, but it must shine forth and ultimately prevail.

He had left Eton, gone to Oxford, and had there taken high honours. He no sooner made his appearance in the world of fashion, politics, and letters, than he was received and courted everywhere. Never before had a youth risen so rapidly in the scale of success. He was undoubtedly the idol of his day, and in 1894 only twenty-one. It was extraordinary. Hector D’Estrange would marvel often at it himself. He had gone out into the world in what was mere childhood, prepared to combat with the many difficulties which he knew must beset his path. He was over modest was this boy. He had not sufficiently estimated his great and surpassing genius, but it had shone forth, been recognised and approved of, because he was a man.

To return to Flora Ruglen. At the age of eighteen she lost her mother, and the guardianship of the girl devolved on her aunt, a giddy, worldly woman, the late marquis’s sister, and Countess of Dunderfield. No two women could have been more diametrically opposite then these two, no two characters more unlike. Briefly, and to cut the matter short, Lady Dunderfield insisted on taking Flora into Society, and set herself to bring about a match between the high-souled, high-spirited girl, and the Duke of Dovetail, a rich old monstrosity, whose rent-roll was nigh on a million, and whose body was afflicted by almost every disease under the sun.

Had the girl been in a position to map out her own line of life, what a different tale might now be told! She was not. The law denied her the right to choose her future; it curtailed her line of action within certain bounds. What could she do? The odds were against her, and she sought refuge through the first outlet that presented itself.

This outlet was in the shape of a young baronet, a youth of twenty-one. He thought himself very much in love with Lady Flora Ruglen. He proposed, and she accepted him. Lady Dunderfield forbade Sir Reginald Desmond the house. The young people took French leave of her, fled to Scotland, and were married, and Lady Dunderfield, green with disappointment and rage, had to accept the fact. This is how Flora Ruglen became Lady Flora Desmond. Had she erred in the step she took? Perhaps so. What other alternative had she? Had the law permitted her to go out into the world and adopt the profession of her choice, there is little doubt that ere this Flora Ruglen would have made a great name for good.

He pretends to be offended at her remark does Jack Delamere, and pulls his horse a little away from her own. She notices the movement, and laughs lightly, as she urges her animal alongside him, and taps him gently on the shoulder with her whip.

“Look there, Jack!” she exclaims at the same time; “we are not the first on the course after all. Look at those two riding over the fence alongside the brook. Who are they, I wonder? The woman can ride, it is easy enough to see that.”

They are just turning to the left through the gate leading to the Steeplechase Course on the Burton Flats, and as Jack Delamere’s eyes follow the direction indicated by Flora Desmond, he at once perceives two mounted figures, galloping up the course in the direction of the grand stand. One is a man, the other a woman.

As Flora Desmond has declared, the woman can ride. She sits her horse straight as a dart. He is pulling a bit, but she has him well in hand, and he is not likely to get away with her.

“Hector D’Estrange, by all that’s holy! and with a woman, too,” laughs Jack Delamere. “Look, Florrie! Is the world coming to an end, or am I dreaming?”

“That you are certainly not,” she answers quickly; “there is no mistake about it. But who is she?”

They have joined the others now, and find them equally exercised over the female apparition.

It may be explained that this is the morning of the Melton Hunt Steeplechases, and that this party has ridden over early to the course to go round the fences, and inspect them severally. They had bargained on being the first in the field, but now perceive that they have been forestalled by Hector D’Estrange and his companion.

“Let’s go and have a look,” suggests Lord Westray. He is an admirer of women, and it is easy to perceive, even at the distance which separates the party from the stranger, that she is a fine one.

They all gallop down to the stand, riding along in a row towards Hector and his friend. He sees them coming, and says something to her, and Flora notices that she brings her horse closer to his side. Mrs. Trevor and Lady Manderton are all eyes and stare as they pass the two. Hector has raised his hat politely, and wished them a good-morning. His face is flushed with the exercise of riding, his rich auburn hair shines out like gold in the sunlight, his glorious eyes, dark in their sapphire-blue, look particularly winning and beautiful. But it is with his companion that the eyes of the others are busy. They are all struck by her extreme loveliness, and are loud in wonder as to who she is. Only Lord Westray is silent; white as a sheet, too. It is years since he set eyes on Lady Altai, and now he sees again, after a long lapse of time, the woman whom he so grievously wronged more than twenty-two years before—his divorced wife, Speranza de Lara.

“Come on,” he exclaims, just a shade roughly to Lady Manderton. He has of late been, by the way, making up to her. She has got tired of Sir Arthur Muster-Day, and has shelved him for the “wicked earl,” by which name Lord Westray is known in Society circles. Mrs. Trevor, too, though she still sticks to Kil, and makes him believe that she is as devoted to him as ever, has managed to hook on to herself several other devoted swains, to all of whom in turn she expresses a mint of devotion, while really feeling not the slightest affection for any of them. She has played her part well, however, for they each severally believe themselves to be “the favoured man” in her good graces.

They gallop forward in the wake of Lord Westray, and Flora Desmond and Jack Delamere are once more alone.

“What a lovely woman!” she bursts out, as soon as they have passed Hector D’Estrange and Speranza. “Jack, did you ever see such eyes? I never saw lovelier, unless perhaps Hector D’Estrange’s. What a handsome pair the two make!”

“Well, yes, Florrie, she is certainly a lovely woman. Cunning dog, young Hector, to have kept her out of sight so long. Now we can understand why he is so cold to women. Of course that’s where his heart is, without doubt,” answers Jack Delamere, with a smile.

“The Melton Hunt Steeplechases of 1894 are over. The meeting will long be remembered by the unparalleled success of Mr. Hector D’Estrange, who, riding in the six races printed on the card for competition, came in first, the winner of every one of them. This success is all the more remarkable, inasmuch as four of the winners were non-favourites, so that the wins must be ascribed to the splendid horsemanship of their jockey. The feat is unparalleled, the nearest approach to it being when Captain ‘Doggie’ Smith in 1880 carried off all the races on the card except one, being defeated in a match which closed the day’s proceedings between Lord Hastings’ Memory, and Lord James Douglas’ The General. In this match ‘Doggie’ Smith rode Lord Hastings’ mare, and Lord James Douglas his own horse, The General.”

Such is the announcement chronicled in a well-known weekly sporting paper a few days after the Melton Hunt Steeplechases of 1894, scoring yet another triumph on the path of thoroughness for Hector D’Estrange.

CHAPTER IV.

“So you will not?”

“A thousand times, no!”

They are standing facing each other are the speakers—one a beautiful, tall, graceful woman, with masses of rich gold hair coiled upon her noble head, and eyes whose light is like the turquoise gem, the other a middle-sized, handsome, good-looking man, whose dark eyes gleam with fury and disappointed passion.

We have seen them both before, this man and woman, seen them on more than one occasion; for it is not difficult to recognise in that evil-featured man the person of Lord Westray, or in that beautiful woman that of Speranza de Lara.

He has come here for no good purpose has the “wicked earl.” Ever since, on the Burton Flats, he had fallen across the lovely woman whose life he had made a desert, Lord Westray had been a prey to a consuming passion to regain that which he had lost. Twice in her life Speranza had defied him, and on each occasion he had had his revenge. The first was when, as a girl of seventeen, she had refused him, and he, through the instrumentality of his cruel mother, who had played on her love for her brothers, had forced her to become his wife. The second was when, in defiance of man’s laws, she had fled from his vile brutality and hateful presence, with the first and last love of her young life, poor Harry Kintore; and he, following up those two to the sunny land where they had sought a refuge, and where they asked for no other boon but to be allowed to live with and for each other, had shot down in her very presence the man to save whom she would have given a thousand lives of her own.

And now he is here, oblivious of all his past brutality, to insult her with yet another proposal, one more hideous than any he has ever made before. Consumed with passion for this woman, who had defied him, he has actually come to propose that she shall forget the past and re-marry him!

Forget the past! Is it likely? Will the memory of her suffering childhood ever pass away? Will the recollection of her wedding day fade from her mind? Will the six years of torture as his wedded wife disappear like a dream? Above all, can she ever forget her first meeting with Harry Kintore, the heart’s awakening that came with it, or the terrible moment when, struck down at her feet, his dear eyes looked their love for the last time? Impossible.

He grinds his teeth with rage does Lord Westray as her clear, sad voice distinctly gives him his answer. He is racking his brain for a means of overcoming her, and forcing her once more to obey his will. The fact that she defies him, hates him, loathes him, has refused him, only arouses in him more madly than ever the desire to become possessed of her once again. Lord Westray possesses, in a heightened degree, in an aggravated form, the characteristic peculiar to all men, of desiring that which is either hard to get, or which denies itself to them, and which, if once obtained, fades in value in their eyes. It is Speranza’s resistance to his wishes that fires him with the fury of a wild animal to regain her.

“You shall repent this!” he mutters angrily. “Speranza, you should know better than to defy me. Have I not been a match for you twice? and, by God! if you do not do as I ask now I will be again.”

She shudders with horror as she hears his cold-blooded words, triumphing at his past deeds of brutality and crime. She pulls herself together, however. She is alone with him, and must keep him at bay. Speranza is no coward.

“I do not fear you,” she answers haughtily; “you cannot do me more evil than you have already. I am beyond the reach of your vengeance now. Nothing you can do can harm me.”

“I don’t know so much about that,” he replies savagely. “How about Hector D’Estrange?”

She starts, and the rich blood flushes to her face as she eyes him with evident terror. Can it be that he knows, that he will unveil the secret before—but no, it is impossible; she has it safe enough.

He notes the start, the crimson blush, and the look of terror, and he congratulates himself on having, by a chance shot, hit on the right point to cow her.

“You’re a fine person to play the prude and the proper,” he says, with a sneer. “They used to tell me that you were inconsolable over that ass Kintore, but the beauty of Hector D’Estrange appears to have effected a sudden cure. I congratulate you on your new conquest. You have aimed high. He is the rising man of his day, and you have thrown your net well to catch the golden fish. Are you not ashamed of yourself, however, woman,—you who are over the forties, to take up with a boy of twenty-one?”

She flushes again. Then he does not know? Thank God for that! How young she looks as she stands there in her unfading beauty, with a look in her blue eyes of contemptuous loathing. She will let him believe what he likes, so that he does not know the truth; that is all she desires to hide from him.

In pursuance of this desire she answers:

“Hector D’Estrange and I are friends. I am not ashamed to own it. Neither he nor I require your advice, however, as to how our friendship is to be conducted. And now I bid you leave me. I order you from my house, which I inhabit not by your charity.”

“No, but by the charity of Harry Kintore, you wanton!” he answers with an oath. “You knew pretty well what you were about when you got the fool to settle all his estates and money on you, which you now lavish on Hector D’Estrange, but——”

“Peace, devil! fiend in human shape!” she cries furiously, as she clenches her hands, and brings the right one down with a crash on the table beside her. He notices a flash on one of the fingers. All the others are ringless but this one, and on it sparkles two splendid diamonds and sapphires set deep in their broad thick band of gold. He knows this ring of old. He saw it long ago, when she held the dying head of Harry Kintore in her hands, and he knows that it was the young man’s gift to her. That she should wear it, now that she has taken up with Hector D’Estrange, mystifies him.

He is about to reply, when the door of the room they are in opens, and Lord Westray finds himself face to face with Hector. He is a head and shoulders taller than the earl is this young man, and as he advances into the room the latter’s face falls slightly, and his fingers move nervously by his side. Like all bullies, Lord Westray is a coward, and doesn’t half fancy his position.

But there is no angry look in Hector D’Estrange’s eyes; only from their sapphire depths looks out a cold, calm expression of contempt.

“Lord Westray,” he remarks, in a voice impressive because of its very quietness, “for what reason have we the honour of your presence here? Allow me to inform you that this honour is not desired by Mrs. de Lara. Your brougham is at the door. I must request you to seek it.”

He says no more, but stands with the handle of the door in his hand, waiting for the earl to obey. This latter looks at him fiercely, the eyes of the two meet. Those of the bully and depraved coward cannot face the calm, disdainful look of Hector D’Estrange; they fall before it, and in another moment the earl is gone.

They listen to the wheels of the departing brougham as it rattles through the streets in the direction of South Kensington. As its echoes die away the young man turns to Speranza.

“Mother,” he exclaims, “has he been here to insult you? Ah, mother! God only knows the strain I put upon myself, or I would have shot him down where he stood, the brute, the fiend! I nearly lost control of myself, but I heard your last words, and understood what you were striving to hide from him. Thank God I did, or in a hasty moment I might have laid bare our secret.”

“And I, too, say thank God, Gloria. At one moment I fancied he was in possession of it, but I quickly found out that he was on another tack. Horrible as the idea was, it was better to let him foster it, than to give him a chance of learning the truth. Ah, Gloria dearest! if once the secret is in his hands, we need look for no mercy in that quarter.”

“I know it, mother,” answers Gloria, in other words Hector D’Estrange; for the reader must have had no difficulty in recognising in this latter, the beautiful girl who had made her vow to the wild sea waves, ten years previously on the sunny shores of the Adriatic, and who now, as Hector D’Estrange, is working out the accomplishment of that vow.

And she has worked well has Gloria de Lara, patiently and perseveringly, never losing an opportunity, never casting a chance aside. Her beauty and her genius have gone straight to the hearts of men, and she uses these gifts given her by God, not for vain glory and fleeting popularity, but in pursuit of justice and in furtherance of the one great aim of her life.

“Let us change the subject, my darling,” exclaims Speranza, with a shudder; “let us drive from our minds the thought of one so horrible and contemptible. Tell me, my precious child,” she continues, laying her hand on Gloria’s shoulder, and kissing her gently on the forehead, “how have you got on with the clubs to-day?”

“Excellently, mother. I came to tell you all about them, or I should not have been here until to-morrow,” answers Gloria, as she seats herself on a low stool at her mother’s feet.

It is the middle of May, the sun is shining brightly, and the sparrows are hopping and chirping merrily about in the square outside. The early green on the trees is as yet unclouded by the dust of London’s busy season, and all is fair, and soft, and young to look upon.

The large fortune and noble estates left to Speranza de Lara by young Harry Kintore have been well and wisely wielded by the woman, in whose heart the memory of her darling still shines as brightly as on the day he died. She has never misspent a farthing of the vast wealth that he confided to her care. It has been used in carrying out philanthropic works, alleviating suffering, and helping on the accomplishment of their child’s design, his child and hers.

They are busy over a new one just now. With her mother’s money at her command, Gloria, under the name of Hector D’Estrange, is establishing throughout London, and in the different large towns of Great Britain and Ireland, institutions where women and girls can meet each other, and for a mere nominal fee learn to ride, to shoot with gun and rifle, to swim, to run, and to indulge in the invigorating influences of gymnastics and other exercises, calculated to strengthen and improve the physique of those taking part therein. Classes, too, technical and otherwise, for the education of girls and women on an equality with boys and men, as well as free libraries, form part of these institutions, each of which, as it is founded, becomes crowded to overflowing.

In connection with these institutions Gloria has lately set on foot clubs, the members of which she is forming into volunteer companies, who are drilled by the hand of discipline into smartness and efficiency. The movement has been enthusiastically taken up by the women of Great Britain and Ireland, thousands of whom have been enrolled in these volunteer forces. Of course Hector D’Estrange has his enemies. The jealous and the narrow-minded; the old fogies who would have a great wrong continue for ever, rather than fly in the face of prejudice to right it; the women who love their degradation and hug their chains; the men who think the world must be coming to an end if women are to be acknowledged as their equals, have all fought tooth and nail against the splendid idea and the practical conception of Hector D’Estrange. Ridicule, abuse, calumny, false testimony, have been hurled against his giant work. They have each and all failed to disturb or harm it, for its foundation is built on the rock of justice, of right, and of nature.

“Well, mother,” continues the girl, “we have had a great consultation to-day. All the details for a big review have been discussed. We shall want two good years more to get everything efficiently arranged, when I calculate that Hector D’Estrange will be able to bring into the field quite 100,000 well-drilled troops. But I am in no hurry yet; there is still much to be done. And now I have some more news to give you, mother. I have been invited to stand by the Douglasdale division of Dumfriesshire for Parliament, and to contest the seat when Mr. Reform resigns. I saw Archie Douglasdale to-day; he has promised to give me all his support. And what do you think, mother? Why, his sister, Lady Flora Desmond, has joined our new club. It is to be called the Desmond Lodge, and I have put her in command of it.”

“She will be a great help to you, Gloria,” answers Speranza. “From all you have told me of her, she is the right sort in the right place.”

“She is indeed, mother. Although I have many a good and true lieutenant thoroughly in touch with my ideas in our volunteer force, there is not one that can come up to Lady Flora. She will be a mountain of help to me, and I know I can trust her. I could trust her even with our secret.”

“Oh! never divulge that, Gloria.”

“Not I, mother! It was only an allegory, to give you an idea of my high opinion of her. But, till the right time comes, our secret will be with me as silent as the grave.”

They talk on, busy with their plans, hopeful of the future, and what it is to bring, do these two women. The afternoon flits by, the chirp of the sparrows grows dull, the sun is sinking aslant the roofs of the opposite houses, the evening is creeping on apace. Gloria de Lara rises from her seat, and throws her arms around Speranza’s neck.

“I must go now, mother,” she says gently. “I wish I could stay, but I have an engagement. Good-night, my precious mother. Kiss Gloria before she goes.”

“God bless you, my child,” answers the mother, as she presses the girl to her heart; “God bless you, and keep you prospering in your work, my valiant young Hector D’Estrange.”

And the girl passes out from her mother’s presence into the silent square. She is echoing Speranza’s prayer, and is pulling herself together, for out of that mother’s presence she has her part to play. She is no longer Gloria de Lara, but popular, successful Hector D’Estrange.

There is yet another scene at which we must glance before this chapter closes. Let us enter Lord Westray’s house in Grosvenor Square. He is in the drawing-room pacing up and down, his face dark with anger and passion. A footman enters, bearing on a massive silver salver a tiny scented bijou note. He hands the missive respectfully to his lordship, who takes it impatiently.

“The bearer is to wait for an answer, my lord.”

“Answer be d——d!” begins Lord Westray; but suddenly recollecting himself, he continues, “Very well, Walter, come up when I ring.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The servant retires. His face is very grave, but it relaxes into a leer as he closes the door.

“’Spec’s the old un’s rather tired of her by now. Gives her another week before they sez good-morning to each other,” he soliloquises to himself as he goes downstairs. As he does so, Lord Westray opens the note. It is from Lady Manderton, and runs as follows:—

“Dearest old Potsie,—Have got a ripping little supper on to-night. Man’s away, and we will have some fun. Have asked several kindred spirits. Shall look for you at ten.

“Your ever-devoted ‘Dodo.’”

“I can’t go,” he mutters. “Hang the woman, I’m sick of her! She was all very well a little while ago, but nothing will satisfy me but Speranza now. I will have her or nobody; and if I don’t have her, I will have what’s next best, revenge.”

He writes a note hastily. It is to excuse himself. He has an awful headache, and cannot come.

Lady Manderton gets the note a quarter of an hour later, and bites her lip as she reads it. “Never mind,” she says quietly, “he sha’n’t have another chance. My next man is Spicer. He’s rich, he’s good-looking, he’s awfully in love, and he’ll be very useful. He’ll do.”

She sits down and writes another note. It is addressed to the Hon. Amias Spicer, Grenadier Guards. She sends him the same sort of invitation which she sent to Lord Westray.

It is not long before an answer comes back. Amias Spicer is in the seventh heaven. He will be sure to come.

And at ten o’clock he comes punctually. Poor young fool!

CHAPTER V.

Montragee House is decked out at its brightest. The noble owner, Evelyn, Duke of Ravensdale, is giving a ball this night, to which all the pearl of London society has been bidden. Flocks of royalties have been also invited, and nearly all have signified their intention of being present. It is a wonderful sight as one drives up to the entrance gates of the great mansion, which is ablaze with light. Every window is neatly framed in soft green moss, from out of which fairy lamps peep and sparkle like thousands of glow-worms. Festoons of roses twine around the porch pillars of the great front door, and the scene that greets the eye on entry almost baffles description. Floating throughout the corridors and vestibules come the soft sounds of dreamy music, the atmosphere is redolent with the sweet scent of rare and lovely flowers, the place is a wilderness of beautiful sights, as up and down the broad flights of the magnificent staircase well-known men and women come and go.

A burst of martial music ever and anon heralds the approach of royalty. As each successive arrival takes place, the brilliant crowd sways to and fro to catch a sight of the gods which it adores. Above, the sound of lively strains announces that dancing has begun, and every one hurries to take part in the pleasure of the light fantastic toe.

The dance music has suddenly ceased. Every one has turned to ascertain the cause. The noble host is observed to be making for the centre of the magnificent suite of rooms where every one is enjoying his or herself. He carries in his hand a telegram, and with the other hand slightly raised, appears to be enjoining silence. Very striking to look at is Evelyn, Duke of Ravensdale. His age may be between twenty-five and twenty-six. He is very tall and broad-shouldered, his hair, dark as the raven’s wing, close curls about his forehead, which is high, and white, and intellectual. His eyes are also very dark, with a soft, dreamy look in them, his mouth firm set and well made, is sheltered by a long silken moustache.

Silence has sunk on all around. One might hear a pin drop so intense has it become. Every one is on a tiptoe of expectation. The sight of that telegram has set every heart beating.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” calls out the duke, raising it on high, “I have good news for you all. This is a telegram from my dear friend, Hector D’Estrange. He has beaten his opponent by 2,330 votes, and is now member for the Douglasdale division of Dumfriesshire.”

What a shout goes up! Men and women cheer again and again. It is felt that the pinnacle of fame on which that young man rests has gone up higher in the scale of merited success. Even his enemies cannot help feeling glad, for Hector D’Estrange is a name to conjure by.

“He’ll be Prime Minister before another year or two are gone,” exclaims Sir Randolph Fisticuffs, just a little jealously to a lady by his side. She looks at him earnestly as she replies,

“God bless the day when he is! We shall get justice then.”

“Oh!” he answers pettishly, “that’s just it. He has set all you women discontented with your lot; he has lit a fire which won’t be readily extinguished. Mark my words, he’ll burn his fingers over it yet, if he don’t take care.”

“Not he,” she answers stoutly; “Hector D’Estrange knows what he is about. He has won the devoted, undying love of hundreds, nay, thousands and tens of thousands of women, for his brave, chivalrous exposure of their wrongs, and defence of their rights.”

Sir Randolph Fisticuffs laughs.

“You ought to join the Woman’s Volunteer Corps,” he observes sarcastically.

“Ought I?” She opens her grey eyes wide. “As it happens, I joined it a year ago.”

“The devil you did!” he exclaims in a surprised tone. “So you are a Hector D’Estrangeite, eh?”

“I am,” she answers proudly.

The music has recommenced; a dreamy waltz is sounding through the room; every one has begun dancing again. Only the dowagers are at rest. Not a man appears unoccupied. Yes, one is, though. It is the young Duke of Ravensdale himself.

He is leaning against a bank of moss and roses apparently watching the busy throng. There is a far-away look in his eyes, however, which tells that his thoughts have flown beyond the giddy pastime of the hour. He is thinking of his friend’s latest triumph, and what will be the outcome of it all. For Evelyn Ravensdale’s heart has gone out to Hector D’Estrange, and he loves him with that devoted, admiring love which some men have been known to inspire in others.

“Just look at the duke,” whispers Lady Tabbycat to her friend Mrs. Moreton Savage; “one would think there wasn’t a pretty girl in the room, or a heart aching for him, by the way he stands there doing nothing and saying nothing. I can’t think what makes him so shy and reserved. He was all fire just now when he was telling us of Hector D’Estrange’s triumph; and now just look at him, my dear.”

Mrs. Moreton Savage does look at him, but she is just as far from making him out as her friend Lady Tabbycat is. Mrs. Moreton Savage is a dame whose mind has never soared beyond the fitting on of a dress, the making of matches, and the desirability of knowing all the best people in society. She has worked assiduously with those aims in view, and has the satisfaction of knowing that she has been more or less successful. Such a thought as the condition of society, and the people in the past, present, and future, has never entered her brain. She is quite content that things should go on exactly as they are, that there should be immense riches on one side, intense misery and poverty on the other. Such problems as the relation of man and woman in this world, and the terrible evils arising out of the false position of the sexes, has never troubled her. She has no wish to see mankind perfected, or to place Society on a higher level and basis than it is. There is just this difference, therefore, between herself and the man whom she and Lady Tabbycat are discussing, and that is that he does. Often and often have the young duke and Hector D’Estrange discussed these problems together in their early morning rides or cosy after-dinner chats. It is Hector D’Estrange who has converted him to his present way of thinking. He had come into his property a sufficiently self-conceited, spoilt young man; with the world at his feet, men and women angling for his favours, as many will do to the highborn and the rich. He had never paused to wonder what he should do with his money, and position, and power. He was preparing himself to enjoy life in the only way which up till then he had viewed as possible, when a fateful chance threw him in the path of Hector D’Estrange.

Men wondered at the change in the young Duke of Ravensdale. It was such a sudden one; they could not make it out; it mystified them altogether. Some put it down to love, and wondered who was the lucky one.

He has roused himself from his dreams with a shake and a start, and is standing upright now. A boy is passing close by him, a boy with pretty curling brown hair and large hazel eyes, a boy in whose face laughter and happiness are shining brightly, a boy whose life so far has been sunshine perpetual, without the storm and the hurricane. It would hardly be possible to find two brothers more extremely unlike than Evelyn, Duke of Ravensdale, and his younger and only brother, Lord Bernard Fontenoy. No one looking at the two standing together would take them to be related, certainly not so closely as they are.

“Bernie,” calls the duke, as the boy passes along, and in an instant this latter is at his side.

“Yes, Evie,” he asks inquiringly, looking up into his brother’s face. “Anything you want me to do?”

“Yes, dear,” answers the duke. “I want you to take my place for an hour or two. I have business that calls me away. Now, do you think, Bernie, that I can trust your giddy head to see to everything in my absence?”

“Giddy head!” pouts the boy, pretending to look seriously offended. “If you did well-nigh eight months’ hard study out of twelve, you would like to enjoy yourself in the few hours snatched from toil and mental struggle.”

“Poor boy! you look hard-worked and suffering,” laughs the duke, as he eyes the bright, healthy, handsome face of the youthful complainant; “but seriously, Bernie, can I trust you to overlook everything for me?”

“Of course you can, Evie,” replies Bernard, with a look of importance. “I promise you I will see to everything tiptop. I suppose if you’re away I shall have to take in the Princess to supper, sha’n’t I? Do you think Her Royal Highness will put up with a jackanapes like me?”

“I think so, Bernie. Anyhow, you must do your best. Go and make my excuses to the Prince. A sudden business calls me away; I will be back as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, my boy, do your best to take my place. I am sure I can trust you.”

He lays his hand gently on the boy’s shoulder as he turns to go. Bernie Fontenoy idolises his brother, but he feels at this moment as if there is nothing in the wide world he would not do for him, if it were in his power.

Evie Ravensdale passes quickly down the beautiful grand staircase towards the front door. Pompous servants are hurrying to and fro. A big portly butler, with a magnificent white waistcoat and ponderously heavy gold chain, is giving his orders in a voice the importance of which can only be measured by the value he puts upon himself. As he sees the duke descending, however, he moderates his tone, and is all obsequiousness in a moment.

“Repton, give me my cloak and hat, please,” commands the duke in a quiet, civil voice, and the magnificent functionary hastens to obey. He is wondering all the time, however, what it can be that takes his Grace out at such a time.

“A hansom, Repton, please.”

Repton turns to a crimson-plushed, knee-breeched, white-silk-stockinged subordinate.

“Call a hansom, John,” he says loftily. It would be quite impossible for himself, the great Mr. Repton, to perform such a menial office; no one could expect it of him. The whistle rings through Whitehall. Rumbling wheels answer the summons. In a few minutes a hansom dashes up. The great Mr. Repton holds open the front door; Evie Ravensdale passes out. One of the crimson-plushed, knee-breeched menials unfolds the cab doors, and stands with his hands over the wheels while his master springs in; then he closes them to.

“Where to, your Grace?” he inquires respectfully.

And Evie Ravensdale, looking up at his brilliantly lighted luxurious mansion above him, answers somewhat absently, “Whitechapel.”

The fit is on him to see and contrast the misery of some of London’s quarters with the wealth and the luxury which he has just quitted. Hector D’Estrange’s telegram has brought it to his mind. He remembers his last conversation with that dearly beloved friend, and how it had turned on that very point. The splendour of his own mansion, the brilliancy that he saw around him a few minutes since is about to be changed for cold, dark, ill-lighted streets, narrow alleys, and filthy courts. He wants to see it all for himself.

The hansom rattles through the streets. It goes at a good pace, but it seems a long time getting to its destination. At length it pulls up.

“What part of Whitechapel, sir?” inquires the cabman, looking through the aperture in the roof of his vehicle.

“You may put me down here, cabby,” answers the young duke, handing him half-a-sovereign; “and if you like to wait for me, I may be about an hour gone. I’ll pay you well, if you will.”

“You’re a genelman, I can sees that pretty plainly,” answers the cabman glibly, as he touches his hat, and pockets the half-sovereign. “I’ll wait, sir; no fear.”

Evelyn Ravensdale wanders through the gloomy, ill-lighted streets. Midnight has chimed out from Big Ben; it is getting on towards one o’clock, and he does not meet many people. A policeman or two saunter along their beats, and turn their lights upon him as he passes. Sometimes a man and woman flit past him, or a solitary man by himself. He passes a dark, gloomy-looking archway into which the light from a flickering gas-lamp just penetrates. He can see a boy and girl with white, pinched faces asleep in an old barrel in one corner, a shivering, skinny dog curled up at their feet. The sight is terrible to him. He steps into the archway, and touches the boy on the shoulder. With a frightened cry the lad starts up and eyes him beseechingly.

“Ah, bobby! Don’t turn us out to-night,” he says pleadingly. “Maggie’s so poorly and sick, she can hardly stand up. See, she’s asleep now. Don’t wake her, please, bobby, don’t.”

He starts suddenly, and pulls his forelock as he perceives that it is not a policeman he is talking to. “Beg pardon, sir,” he says, “thought it was a bobby.”

“Have you no better place than this to sleep in, my poor lad?” inquires the duke pityingly, his hand still on the boy’s shoulder.

“Ah, sir! this is a gran’ place. We don’t allays gets the likes o’ this. Poor Maggie, she was so pleased when we found this ’ere barrel. See, sir, how she do sleep.”

“Is Maggie your sister?” asks the young duke, with a half-sob.

“No, sir, she’s my gal. Maggie and me, we’ves been together a long time now, we has.”

“And what do you do for a living, boy?” continues Evelyn Ravensdale gently.

“Anything, sir, we can get to do. It’s not allays we can get a job, and then we have to go hungry like.”

“My God!” bursts from the young man’s lips, but he says no more. The next moment he has pressed a couple of sovereigns into the poor lad’s hand, and is gone.

He wanders on through the same street. He takes no note of the name of it. His thoughts are far too busy for that. He is approaching another street, less lonely and better lighted than the one he is in. There are more people about, and he sees several women loitering up and down near the corner. Instinctively he crosses the street so as to avoid them. Two of them are making off after two men that have just passed by, the third is left alone. She spies the young duke at once, and runs across the street to cut him off. He sees he cannot avoid her, and pulls himself together. In another moment she is by his side, with one hand on his arm.

“Won’t you come home with me, dear?” she says softly. “Won’t you——”

“Peace, woman!” he almost shouts, as he flings off her hand from his arm. She starts back with a low cry, and he sees a face, young still, with traces of great beauty, but careworn and haggard with suffering. His heart is filled with a great pity; he feels that such sights as these are unendurable to him. He feels that he cannot face them.

“Poor thing, poor thing,” he says gently; “forgive me if I was rough to you. This is no place for you, my child. You look a mere child; are you not one?”

“I am eighteen,” she stammers.

“Eighteen, and so fallen!” he exclaims in a horrified tone. “Ah, child! get away out of this.”

“And starve?” she ejaculates bitterly. “Easy for you to talk; you are not starving.”

“Starving!” He utters that word with a peculiar intonation. It tells her what pity there is in his heart for her.

“Oh, sir!” she exclaims, “I would not be here if I were not driven to it. I don’t want to be here. I hate it; I hate it! It is my hard, hard fate, that I am here.”

“Have you no father, no mother to care for you?” he asks sadly.

“No, sir, not to care for me,” she answers, with a sob. “Father’s in gaol. Mother walks the streets like me, to make her bread. She told me I’d better do so too, unless I wanted to starve. That’s how it is, sir.”

He covers his face with one hand, and groans aloud. His thoughts have rushed back to the luxury he has but lately quitted; he compares it with the misery he has just witnessed. Once more his hand is in his pocket.

“If I give you this, my child,” he says, drawing out a five-pound note, “will you promise me to go home at once, and leave these streets of infamy and wrong; and if I give you my card, and promise to place you in a way of earning an honest livelihood, will you call at my house to-morrow for a letter which I will leave to be given to you? Will you try and get your mother, too, to come with you?”

She bursts into tears. “Ah, sir! may God in heaven bless you. Yes, yes, I will promise; indeed I will. Gladly, too gladly.”

He holds out to her the card and the bank-note. As she takes them she bends over his hand and kisses it passionately. He draws it gently away.

“Remember your promise,” he says quietly.

“I will,” she answers, between her sobs. “Oh God! I would die for you, sir.”

He watches her as she turns away and disappears in the gloom. Heavy tears are in his eyes.

“I must go home now,” he whispers to himself. “I cannot see more.”

CHAPTER VI.

“Ten to one bar one, ten to one bar one, ten to one bar one.” The ring is roaring itself hoarse over these words; the hubbub is deafening; it reverberates all around; it echoes and re-echoes through the hot June air.

It is Derby Day. The waving downs of Epsom are alive with people; they swarm over every cranny and nook of the wide-stretching space on either side of the straight run-in; they surge to and fro like a sea of dark, moving matter; they contribute to the busy air of life, that has established its reign on all around. It is a great day. Always crowded, Epsom is more than usually so. Old habitués of the place declare, that never in their memories—and some of them have pretty old ones—can they recollect such a swarming throng.

But the reason for all this crowd is an excellent one. Have not the people come to see the great horse win?

He is in the paddock now, and is being stripped, for the saddling bell has rung. He is the centre of a pushing, hustling throng, all eager to catch a glimpse of the unbeaten hero of the day; for have not his triumphs been such as a horse and its owner might well be proud of, carrying, as he does, the laurels of the Dewhurst Plate, the Middle Park Plate, and the Two Thousand Guineas upon him?

What a grand-looking horse he is! How his rich, ruddy chestnut coat glistens in the sun like armour of burnished gold! Such a quiet beast, too, neither snatching, nor stamping, nor doing aught that a restive or vicious racehorse would.

“He can’t be beat!” exclaims a young man who has been standing silently watching the stripping process. “I’ll be a man or a mouse, Florrie; I’ll stand every penny I’ve got on him or lose all, hanged if I won’t!”

“Don’t be a fool, Reggie,” answers the lady addressed. She is close beside him, and has laid her hand on his arm. It is Flora Desmond.

“Fool or no fool,” he answers quickly, “I mean to have this dash. I tell you he can’t be beat. It’s only a question of pluck laying the odds. Hanged if I won’t stand every penny of the £100,000 which I have got on him. They are taking twenty to one now.”

“Suppose he is beaten,” she says quietly?

“Then I shall be a beggar,” he answers, with a laugh; “but I’m not afraid. By God! I’ll stand my chance.”

He turns as he speaks, and tries to get through the crowd. What can she do? She has little or no influence with him, and if she had, this is no place in which to reason and argue with him. She feels downcast and sad; for although she, like every one else, has little doubt in her mind that Corrie Glen will win, there is just the chance, ever so slight, that he might not. And if he does not, “well, what then?”

“Ruin!” she soliloquises half aloud, as she puts the question to herself, and answers it in that one word. There is a bitter smile on Flora Desmond’s face, for she knows what ruin would mean.

“Are you looking Corrie Glen over, Lady Flora?” inquires a voice at her elbow. She has no need to turn round to discover the speaker, for she knows the voice full well. It is that of Hector D’Estrange.

He has heard the conversation between Sir Reginald Desmond and his wife, and as the former elbows his way through the crowd, he has pushed forward and sidled into his place by her side.

“Yes, Mr. D’Estrange, I am,” she answers just a shade wearily. “Like every one else, I am looking at the crack. I suppose he can’t be beat? By-the-bye,” she adds hastily, “you’ve a horse in this race, haven’t you?”

“I have a mare,” he replies significantly; “and whom do you think is going to ride her, qualified for a jockey’s license, and everything on purpose?”

“Who?” she inquires absently.

“Why, Bernie Fontenoy. The boy’s a splendid rider, and mark my words, Lady Flora, if he doesn’t win, it will be a near thing between my Black Queen and Corrie Glen.”

She starts. She has never known Hector D’Estrange to err yet, and her husband’s rash act recurs more forcibly to her mind. “May I see Black Queen?” she inquires hastily.

“Certainly,” he answers; “come with me.”

They push through the crowd, still surging round the chestnut horse, and make their way across the paddock to a quiet spot, where very few people are observable. A coal-black mare has just been stripped, and her jockey is standing close beside her. His colours are tinselled-gold.

“That is Black Queen,” observes Hector D’Estrange quietly. “You are a good judge of a horse, Lady Flora; what do you think of her?”

She does not reply, but walks up to within a few paces of the mare, and looks her over keenly. She sees before her an animal which, to her eyes, used though she is to good-looking horses, is a perfect picture. The mare is coal-black; there is not a white hair on her; she is faultlessly shaped all over.

“I think that I never saw a greater beauty in all my life!” exclaims Flora Desmond, and there is a true ring of admiration in her tone. As she speaks the Duke of Ravensdale comes up.

“So you’re going to win the Derby, Bernie, are you?” he inquires jokingly, as he raises his hat to Flora Desmond, and holds out his hand to her. “Nice youngster that,” he continues, addressing her. “Gave me no peace till I gave him leave to ride, which I never should have done, had it not been at Hector’s request; and now I do believe that he thinks he is going to win!”

“I shall have a good try, Evie,” the boy replies in a mettled voice. “I can’t do more than ride my very best, can I, Mr. D’Estrange?”

“No indeed, my boy, that you cannot,” answers this latter kindly. “Do your best; no one can ask for more.”

There is a light in Bernie’s eye, a flush on his cheek. Flora notes them both. Full well she knows what they mean.

“Mr. D’Estrange,” she says hurriedly, moving a few paces aside, “may I speak to you for one moment?”

He follows her with a grave, inquiring look.

“I know you never bet,” she continues quickly, “but do you know what they are laying against Black Queen?”

“A hundred to one,” he answers carelessly.

“Then will you do me a great favour?” she says in a sad, pleading voice. “Though you never bet, and I hate it, will you lay me out a £1,000 in the ring, so that if Black Queen wins I shall win £100,000? I wouldn’t ask this of you, only you seem so confident in your mare, and, and——”

“I understand,” he answers quietly; “I’ll do it for you, Lady Flora. The race lies between Corrie Glen and my mare, and I quite understand why you want to back the latter. I couldn’t help hearing what Sir Reginald said over there. It’s on his account, is it not?”

“It is,” she answers bitterly. “As you heard him, you will quite understand.”

“Leave it to me,” he continues in a kind voice. “I’ll just give Bernie his last instructions, and then I’ll hurry across and do your commission. Will you come over to the stand with Ravensdale?”

“I will,” she answers, with a grateful look in her eyes.

And now Bernie has got his last orders, and the beautiful mare, with its handsome jockey, is moving slowly across the paddock to the course. The tinselled-gold on the boy’s jacket gleams and sparkles in the sun, and many an admiring eye rests on the two as they pass out.

He has come out last, and is at the tail end of the long file of horses parading past the stand. Every one is so keen on singling out the favourite, that Black Queen at first is not much noticed. Yet the sparkling gold on the jacket is bound to attract the eye, and the fact that Lord Bernard Fontenoy, brother of the Duke of Ravensdale, is riding the coal-black mare, awakens interest in the dark steed.

“Why, it’s little Lord Bernie riding, I do declare!” giggles Mrs. de Lacy Trevor to Lord Charles Dartrey, who is leaning over her chair pointing out the horses and jockeys on the card in her lap. “What a duck he looks! Oh, I wish Dodo was here!”

“Can’t think what D’Estrange means by putting the boy up. He can’t win; and it will only break his heart,” ejaculates Lord Charles superciliously.

“How old is Lord Bernie?” queries Mrs. Trevor in an interested voice. “Oh, I do wish the darling would win!”

“That’s impossible,” says Lord Charles loftily, “nothing can beat Corrie Glen.”

They are cantering down to the post now, the favourite with great raking strides covering his ground comfortably, and playing kindly with his snaffle, as his jockey leans forward and eases him a bit. Bernie has not started the Black Queen yet; he is leaning down talking to his brother. All eyes are upon him, however, as they see him squeeze the duke’s hand, which is laid on the boy’s knee. Suddenly, however, he dresses himself upright.

“I must go now, Evie dear,” he says, and there is a tremor in his voice. “Oh, pray that I may win!”

Then he sets the mare into a canter, and follows in the wake of the others.

“My word! that mare moves well,” exclaimed Sir Horsey de Freyne nervously; “don’t half like the look of her. Think I must have something on her for luck. Belongs to that deuced lucky fellow D’Estrange, too. Shouldn’t be surprised to see the gold jacket flashing in first.”

“Bosh!” answers Sir Reginald Desmond, who is standing next to him. “My dear old fellow, it’s only throwing your money away. Corrie Glen can’t be beat.”

But Sir Horsey de Freyne is not convinced, and goes off to see what he can get laid him against the mare.

“S’pose you’ve backed the favourite, old chap?” inquires another shining light at Sir Reggie’s elbow.

“Yes,” answers this latter shortly.

“Had a plunge, eh?” persists the golden youth, who doesn’t know a horse from a cow.

“Have got £100,000 on him,” is Sir Reggie’s curt reply. He is looking through his glasses, and his face is rather white.

“Oh! I say,” blurts out the youth, as he edges off to tell all those who will listen to him; “I say, you know, Desmond’s laid out £100,000 on the favourite.”

There is a murmur in the stands; it runs through them all like an electric shock. “They’re off!” is the hoarse cry that resounds suddenly from hundreds of throats. To an excellent start, Lord Marcovitch Bolster has despatched the lot, and as they all stare through their glasses, they can perceive that Hamptonian has taken up the running, closely followed by Masterman Ready, Holyoakes, and Kesteven. Lying fifth is the favourite, and two lengths behind him gleams a flashing spot of gold. A strange horse is overhauling the lot, Hamptonian drops back, and the stranger creeping to the front makes the pace terrific. But fast as he goes he cannot shake off the chestnut, who apparently without effort is going easily enough, and keeping his place as fifth in the crowd. Now the spot of gold seems nearer up; it passes Corrie Glen, and falls into fourth place, Kesteven retiring to the rear. They are racing down the incline. Masterman Ready begins to tire, and the spot of flashing gold closes up to Holyoakes. These two come along neck and neck, Corrie Glen just behind them, the strange horse still in the van. Tattenham Corner is reached. They round it in the order named, and enter the straight; but here the stranger is in difficulties, and Holyoakes and Black Queen, on which sits the spot of gold rigid almost as marble, begin to close upon him. A little more than a quarter of a mile from home they reach him, and he flings up the sponge, retiring to the rear. There are only three horses left in the race now, Holyoakes, Black Queen, and Corrie Glen. This latter is drawing up to the first two named, with great raking strides he is alongside them, and quickly the three are abreast. A distant roar sounds in Bernie’s ears, there is a film over his eyes, his heart feels as if it must stop beating, but he sits very still, and does not attempt to urge his horse any faster. Suddenly he sees a flash on his left. The jockey who is riding Holyoakes has his whip out, and Bernie knows he has nothing any longer to fear from him. He glances to the right; the great chestnut is flashing along; there is no whip needed there.

“Oh God! let me win,” bursts from the boy’s pale lips, as he tightens his rein ever so little, and touches the mare gently with the spur. He is surprised at the effect. He thought she had been going fast before, but she is going faster now. She is quite a length ahead of Corrie Glen, and the jockey of this latter is visibly surprised. He has begun to ride the horse at last, and his whip is actually out.

“Corrie Glen wins! Corrie Glen wins!” comes the wild shout from the stands, as the noble chestnut, with a supreme effort, closes with the Black Queen. They are hardly fifty yards from the winning post; the roar is terrific. Bernie hears it, but he can see nothing now. He makes, however, a final effort, and calls on the mare once more; he has never used his whip.

“Corrie Glen wins! Corrie Glen wins!” The words pierce to his brain. He has done his best, he cannot do more; he knows this well; yet would to God he could win!

“Corrie Glen wins!” Ah! they don’t know the Black Queen. She has answered the boy’s last call; she has made one more magnificent effort; and, shooting ahead of the favourite, passes the post a winner by a neck!

What a yell goes up from the ring! Blank deadly consternation is in the faces of the backers. In the stands there is very little cheering. Hardly a soul in all that vast crowd has backed the “dark” black mare.

And Sir Reginald Desmond is still standing where we left him. He is deadly pale; his arms are folded on his chest; there is despair in his eyes.

“Had a bad race, old chap? I fear we all have,” says a voice at his elbow. He laughs, and turns towards the speaker. This latter starts as he notices the ghastly, haggard look on the young baronet’s face.

“Yes—well, yes, haven’t had a good one,” answers Sir Reggie coolly, taking out his cigarette-case and leisurely selecting a cigarette therefrom. “Have a cigarette, Fernley?”

“No thanks, Desmond, am just going to have lunch. Wonderful race young Bernie Fontenoy rode there. Won’t the brat be proud?”

“Oh! ah! yes, won’t he?” answers Sir Reggie absently. His thoughts have wandered again. He is looking ahead into the black future. Now that it is too late, he is cursing himself for a fool and an idiot. Oh! why did he not take Flora’s advice?

The stand in which he is, is nearly empty. Every one is making off to get lunch; in a few minutes it is entirely deserted. He sits on alone in it. The cigarette he had lit so ostentatiously not long since has gone out, but it is still clenched between his teeth.

The future will rise to his mind. How can such as he face it? He has never been brought up to do anything; he is ill-read, ill-taught, and ignorant. He has never given his mind to anything but amusing himself; and now if he pays the ring what is justly owing to it he will be a beggar, with nothing to live on and nothing to look forward to but misery, and, in his eyes, disgrace.

Poor Sir Reginald! He feels his position acutely, it is burning itself into his brain. He feels that it is past endurance, that he cannot face it.

“I’ll go home,” he says wearily to himself. “I can’t face Flora after this; it’s all too dreadful.”

He rises wearily and goes out. The back of the stand is more or less crowded by the hangers-on and scum of every race-course. How he hates and loathes the sight of them now; how their rough, coarse, pleasure-seeking faces bring up to his mind, with haunting horror, the great loss which he has sustained! He is staying near the race-course, and has not far to go, so he hurries through the crowd and makes straight for The Laurels, which is the name of the place. He reaches it, and tries the front door. It is locked; of course no one is expected back yet. He knows of a side-entrance though through the smoking-room. Ten to one the careful servants have forgotten it. He walks round and tries it. Yes, true enough, they have. Very quietly Sir Reginald slips in. In another moment he is upstairs and in his bedroom.

He turns the key in the door, and goes over to the writing table. His face is still deadly pale, and he walks like one who has had too much to drink. He sits at the table and scrawls a few hurried lines. They are as follows:—

“Flora dear, forgive me. I’ve been a brute and an idiot. Would to God I had taken your advice! But it’s too late now. You’ll pay the ring for me, dear. Let them know it was my last wish. If I lived we should be beggars, and I can’t condemn you and the ‘little one’ to that. But at my death you’ll get all that money that is to come to you and the child. Good-bye, dear old girl. You’ve been good and kind to me. This is about all Reggie can do to show you he is grateful. Good-bye. Forgive.”

She has been looking for him a long time, and so has Hector D’Estrange, but there is no sign of Sir Reginald Desmond anywhere. At last she can stand it no longer.

“I must go back to The Laurels,” she says; “perhaps he is there.”

Estcourt, who is standing by her, offers to accompany her, and thither they proceed in silence. Of course when they reach the house no one has seen him. The servants assure her ladyship that Sir Reginald has not returned; they must have seen him if he had. They forget to add that the greater number of them have been perched on the high wall surrounding The Laurels, during the greater part of the day, watching the races.

“I’ll just run up to the bedroom and have a look,” says Flora to Estcourt. “I won’t be a minute.”

He waits below, but almost directly hears his name called,—

“Estcourt, come here.”

He races up the stairs. He finds her standing outside the door of a bedroom.

“I can’t get in,” she says hurriedly. “I’ve called, but there is no reply. Oh, Estcourt! do you think he is in there?”

He makes no reply, but runs downstairs. In a few minutes he is back with a hatchet. Curious servants are following him.

“Stand back,” he says to Flora. She obeys, and the young man brings the hatchet with tremendous force against the lock. Three, four, five strokes, and he has broken it to shivers. Then he opens the door.

Sir Reginald Desmond is seated at his writing table. His left hand is beneath his chest, his head is resting on the table above it, his right is outstretched and hanging over the side. Just below it on the floor lies a revolver, and drip, drip, drip, dripping on to the chair on which he sits, is a stream of running blood. Who shall judge him as he lays there silent, and fast stiffening? for—

“He is dead, and blame and praise fall on his ear alike, now hushed in death.”

Those may do so who can. I cannot.

CHAPTER VII.

“Were you in the Commons last night? Did you go to hear Hector D’Estrange?”

“Rather; I think all the world was there, or trying to be there. I don’t think I have ever seen such a crowd before.”

“What a wonderful speaker he is, to be sure!”

“Yes. With the exception of Gladstone, I don’t suppose there ever was one like him, or ever will be again. Talk of orators of bygone days! Pooh! they never came up to him.”

“Well, the women have got the Suffrage in full at last, thanks to him. The next thing is to see what use they’ll make of it.”

“Better, perhaps, than we men have.”

The speakers are two men, the Honourable Tredegar Molyneux, M.P., and Colonel des Vœux of the Blues. Nearly four years have passed since the events related in the last chapter. The world has been slowly marching forward, and many things have happened between that time and this. In the political world, and in Parliament, like everywhere else, Hector D’Estrange has made a stir. His eloquence and debating power are the wonder of all who hear him, and his practical, sympathetic knowledge of the social questions of the day has made him the idol of the masses. He has just succeeded in carrying his Woman’s Suffrage Bill by a large majority, thereby conferring on women, married or unmarried, in this respect, identical rights with men. And now to-day in the monster Hall of Liberty, which he has founded, and which has been erected by the lavish subscriptions of the women of Great Britain, Ireland, and the world at large, he is to preside at the ceremony of its opening. It is a monster building. Talk of Olympia, of the Albert Hall—why, they are dwarfs beside it!

In shape it is circular, and towers aloft towards heaven, its great dome pinnacle crowned by a cap of glass, which report declares to consist of a million panes. Around this glass a gilded crown is twined, and holding it there—one in a kneeling attitude, the other upright, with one hand high upraised towards heaven—are two gilded women’s forms. They are the Statues of Liberty.

The interior of this vast structure is wonderful to look upon. The floor or centre is raised, and constructed so as to move on a pivot slowly round. It consists of an immense ring, the middle of which presents the appearance of a giant circus. On the right, or side facing the great entrance, is a monster swimming bath, and exactly opposite, or on the other side of the circus, is a huge platform. Suspended in mid air, a very network of trapezes and other gymnastic appliances hang, while stretched tightly beneath them is a monster net. Around the arena, with a low palisade separating it from the same, is a broad circular horse-ride, and raised slightly above this, running all round in a similar manner, a roomy promenade. Then come tier above tier, tier above tier of seats, amidst which here and there boxes are placed promiscuously, while dotted about all over these countless and seemingly never-ending stories, are cosy platforms enthroned in a wealth of green, where abundance of refreshments are obtainable.

The seats come to an end at last, and are replaced by six broad balconies running entirely round the building, and built one above the other; opening on to these balconies are what appear to the spectator in the arena as thousands of pigeon-holes. In reality they are doors, communicating each one with a tiny but compact room, in which stands a bed, two chairs, a washhand-stand, a small dressing table, and a writing table. It is stated that in all, opening off from these balconies, are ten thousand rooms. These rooms have been included in the building to accommodate women students from all parts of the world, who may wish to take part in the physical drill or educational advantages afforded by this great central institute for the training of womankind. Attached to the Hall of Liberty are large lecture-rooms, studying-rooms, and reading-rooms, and in connection with these a monster library. Outside the building are the stables, one of the wonders of London, the grooms being entirely composed of girls and women; and clustering round the mother structure like a miniature town, are the pretty cottages and dwellings of the immense staff of instructors, teachers, and lecturers connected with the institution. It is a wonderful structure, and its erection is a triumph, the magnitude of which can hardly be measured, for Hector D’Estrange. It was he who conceived it, it was he who submitted it to the approval of his countrymen, and it was he who commanded the expenditure of the voluminous subscriptions, which in answer to his appeal poured in from all quarters of the globe. No less marvellous was the rapidity with which it arose, thousands of workmen having been employed in its construction.

It is finished now; it towers to heaven like a mighty giant from some unknown world. The gilded Statues of Liberty flash back the sun’s rays, and stand out to view for miles and miles around. All London is flocking to the ceremony of its opening, for is not the genius that conceived and placed it there to be the principal functionary of the day?

All is orderly in the streets; the vast crowd is held and kept in check by the military and the police. A good-humoured, happy crowd, it seems to be, with here and there occasionally a little rough horse-play. But no harm is done. The people are on their best behaviour, for Hector D’Estrange, the idol of that people, has appealed to them to preserve order.

The vast building is rapidly filling. Since the great doors have been thrown open, it has been one successive influx of people. There is no disorder, for there is a separate passage for the holders of each class of ticket, and along these the incomers are marshalled by the liveried servants of the establishment. It is a wonderful sight to see the people swarming to their places, and all the while through the building trembles dreamy music, which thrills the senses, and makes them all aglow with gentle and tender feeling. At last it is full. There is not an inch of standing room in all that vast space set aside for spectators; every seat is appropriated. Not a vacant one to be seen, and it is computed that there are 50,000.

Every class is there; from the prince and peer, to the labouring man and peasant, all have come, attracted by the all-powerful genius who is to address that monster meeting this day. Imbued with the same feeling, impelled by the same curiosity, attracted by the same sentiment, that crowd of mixed denominations and sexes awaits his coming in breathless expectation.

And it has not long to wait. The clock is striking eleven, when a distant roar is heard, and the strains of martial music come floating from afar. In the great Hall of Liberty a sudden hush has fallen; the dreamy music has ceased abruptly, and a supreme silence reigns.

Again that roar! It is like the booming of a thousand cannons. It is steady now and unceasing; it rushes forward along the dense walls of spectators that throng the streets on either side of the way up which Hector D’Estrange has to pass.

A whisper runs through the vast hall, a whisper of suppressed excitement and expectation. “He is coming; he is coming!” is on every one’s lips, as with eyes aglow and hearts thrilling with eagerness, the people bend forward in their seats to watch for him.

The crowds outside the building have begun to cheer. The martial music is very distinct now. The plaudits are every moment becoming more intense, until they break into a deep and prolonged roar. As they do so, the great folding doors of the Hall of Liberty are thrown open, and the people rise in a body to their feet.

He is entering now. Preceded by the band of the White Regiment of the Women’s Volunteer Companies, playing a march triumphant, he passes through the giant portals. His head is bared, and he is mounted on a milk-white horse, which he sits with grace and ease. As he does so the sun shines down on his dark auburn hair, lighting it up with the tints of old-gold that play amidst the curls which nestle on his high, white brow, while the sapphire light in his glorious eyes shoots forth with a gleam of triumph as he surveys the magnificent scene.

He is dressed in the White Guard Regiment uniform of the Women’s Volunteer Companies, of which he is Commander-in-Chief; but the regiment itself is his own especial one. It was the first which he established four and a half years ago, when he first took the matter in hand. The idea has prospered since then, and the women enrolled in all the companies of the Volunteer force number 200,000.

It is a fitting uniform for the occasion, one which he has done well to don; for the first business of to-day’s ceremonial will be the march past of the “picked” of the companies of these 200,000.

He has ridden round the broad, spacious horse-ride followed by one or two especial friends, conspicuous amongst whom is the Duke of Ravensdale. The cheering is deafening; it never ceases for a moment. It swells and swells again, like the mighty midocean waves, that bear onwards in their wild career to break on the lone sea-shore.

And now he has dismounted, and, with his friends, has taken his place on the evergreen flower-decked platform. Even as he does so his dark sapphire eyes are raised aloft, and sweep with their dreamy gaze the thousands that throng that vast Hall of Liberty, as if seeking amidst the multitude one especial form. It is even so; and as they roam the sea of faces, all turned to his, they are suddenly brought to a standstill. The anxious, searching look within them dies away, giving place to one of calm contentment and repose, for Speranza is there.

The mother’s eyes are fixed upon her child. Through the filmy distance of space cannot Gloria perceive this well? For a moment, one brief moment, the hero of the hour is Gloriana de Lara, in the next, he is Hector D’Estrange. The audience is still cheering,—it seems as though it will never cease,—but he has raised his hand, and like magic a great silence falls.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he begins, and the clear, exquisite voice thrills through the huge building, “I shall have a few words to say to you before I declare the Hall of Liberty open, but first we will witness the march past of the representatives of all the companies of the Women’s Volunteer force of which I have the honour to be Commander-in-Chief.”

A flourish of trumpets and loud cheering greets this announcement. Once more the great entrance doors unfold, the band of the White Regiment strikes up a march, as through the portals, ten abreast, and mounted on grey horses, that regiment advances at a trot.

And at their head is one whom we have seen before. Very handsome she looks in her uniform of pure white cloth, with the gold facings glittering on her breast, and her sword in its silver sheath dangling sparkling at her side. Flora Desmond is not greatly changed since we saw her last, in appearance certainly, but over her life has come a wondrous transformation. She is Hector D’Estrange’s right hand, and in aiding him to carry out his noble aims is thoroughly in her element.

The white troopers advance at a trot rapid enough, but as each line passes the platform on which Hector D’Estrange is standing they break into a canter, increased to a gallop, whirling round the broad-spaced horse-ride in magnificent order. Looking along the serried line of horses’ heads hardly a hair’s breadth in difference can be distinguished, so compact is the position which is maintained throughout the ranks.

The march strains cease, and give way to a flourish of trumpets. Simultaneously the galloping steeds are reined on to their haunches, remaining motionless as statues. Thus they stand until the voice of Flora Desmond is heard giving the order to retreat, when they fall into position, and retire at the trot, she riding round to join her chief on the platform.

And in this wise, headed by their respective bands and officers, representative companies of Hector D’Estrange’s two hundred regiments march or gallop past him. The ceremony occupies some two hours, but they roll by all too quickly for the spectators, who, spell-bound by what they see, watch the revolving scenes with the keenest interest.

The last one closes appropriately. Crashing and rumbling through the wide-opened entrance dash the artillery. They come on at a rapid pace, and wheeling round into the vast arena form up into splendid line. The work of detaching the horses and unlimbering the guns is that of a moment. In the next, a tremendous roar rings forth from the mouths of a score of cannon which have been rapidly charged and fired.

Ere the echoes have died away the horses are again attached, the guns as rapidly limbered up, and one by one the gun-carriages dash from the scene, the great doors closing upon them.

Then cheer after cheer rings through the densely packed building as Hector D’Estrange advances to the front of the platform to speak. But he is raising his hand once more, as though appealing to be heard, and again a great silence falls.

“We are here to-day,” the bright, clear ringing voice declares, “to open a building the magnitude of which cannot be measured by any other in the world. The Hall of Liberty stands here to day as a living witness to the desire of woman to be heard. It was six years ago that I first saw it in my dreams. It is reality now, and will endure through all time, as a memorial of the first great effort made by woman to shake off the chains of slavery, that ever since our knowledge of man began, have held her a prisoner in the gilded gaols of inactivity and helplessness. I stand here to-day prepared to deny that woman is the inferior of man, either in mental capacity or physical strength, provided always that she be given equal advantages with him. I go further still, and declare that in the former respect she is his superior. You deny it? Then give her the chance, and I have no fear but that she will prove that I have not lied. You have to-day seen passed in review 10,000 representatives of the 200,000 volunteers that in a little more than four years have been enrolled and drilled into the splendid efficiency witnessed on this memorable occasion. Will you pretend or seek to tell yourselves that in warfare they would be unavailing? I laugh such an idea to scorn. One of our most heart-stirring writers—I allude to Whyte-Melville—has left it declared in his writings, ‘that if a legion of Amazons could be rendered amenable to discipline they would conquer the world.’ He was right. The physical courage, of which men vaunt so much, is as nothing when compared with that greater and more magnificent virtue, ‘moral courage,’ which women have shown that they possess in so eminent a degree over men; and hence physical courage would come as an agreeable and welcome visitor where hitherto it has been forcibly denied admission.

“Men and women who hear me to-day, I beseech you ponder the truth of what I have told you in your hearts. You boast of a civilisation unparalleled in the world’s history. Yet is it so? Side by side with wealth, appalling in its magnitude, stalks poverty, misery, and wrong, more appalling still. I aver that this poverty, misery, and wrong is, in a great measure, due to the false and unnatural position awarded to woman; nor will justice, reparation, and perfection be attained until she takes her place in all things as the equal of man.

“And now, my friends, I will detain you no longer. In this great Hall of Liberty woman will find much which has long been denied her. It is but a drop in the ocean of that which is her right, yet is it a noble beginning of that which must inevitably come. I declare this Hall of Liberty to be open.”

That is all. He says no more, but with a stately inclination to the vast audience turns back to where his friends stand. His horse is led forward by a youthful orderly in the uniform of the White Regiment, and as he mounts it the band strikes up once more. Bareheaded as he entered, he rides slowly from the scene of his triumph, and passing again through the portals of the Hall of Liberty comes out into the densely, wall-lined street, amidst the roar of the thousands that are there to greet. Such is the welcome of the people to Hector D’Estrange.

CHAPTER VIII.

Lord Westray sits alone in his sanctum in Grosvenor Square. There is an anxious expression on his face, for he has been expecting some one who has not turned up. He has already consulted his watch about half-a-dozen times, and he consults it again. Then he gets up and rings the bell.

He can hear it tinkling downstairs from where he sits. “A smart servant,” he thinks to himself, “would have answered it quickly.” Yet he would think this no longer, if he could only hear “his smart servant’s” remark anent that bell.

“James,” calls out that worthy, who is seated in the room on an easy armchair in front of the fireplace, with his feet against the chimney-piece, “what bell’s that?”

“My lord’s, sir,” is the laconic reply from the lackey outside.

“Oh! ah! tha-a-anks. Let him ring again.”

The bell does peal again, this time furiously, and Stuggins, with a face of disgust, pulls his feet down from the chimney-piece.

“My word! what a hard time of it we have’s,” he ejaculates to himself, as he rises slowly from his seat to go upstairs.

On reaching Lord Westray’s sanctum, however, his face is composed and affable.

“This is the second time I’ve rung,” exclaims Lord Westray angrily. “Surely, Stuggins, there is some one in the house to answer the bell.”

“I was in my room, my lord, and did not hear it,” responds Stuggins in a conciliatory voice.

“Has no one called yet, Stuggins?”

“No one, my lord.”

“Well, he’ll be here at any moment now. Mind he is shown up without any delay.”

“Certainly, my lord.”

And the sleek, over-fed domestic goes off smiling.

Ten minutes later, and there is a ring at the doorbell. Lord Westray starts and listens.

“It’s he!” he ejaculates briefly.

And in a few minutes the “he” is politely waved in by Stuggins.

“Mr. Trackem, my lord.”

“All right, Stuggins, shut the door. Not at home if any one else calls.”

“Very good, my lord.”

The door is shut, and Lord Westray rises and shakes the new-comer by the hand.

“Glad to see you, Mr. Trackem,” he observes heartily. “Began to fear you were not coming. A little late, eh?”

“A little, my lord, but I was usefully employed.”

“Made out where she is, Mr. Trackem?”

“Yes,” responds this latter solemnly.

Lord Westray rubs his hands delightedly.

“Where?” he asks eagerly.

“Near Windsor, my lord. I found it out by shadowing Mr. D’Estrange.”

“Capital!” exclaims Lord Westray, with a laugh. “And does she still go under the name of Mrs. de Lara?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Now, Mr. Trackem, what are your plans?”

Mr. Trackem puts on a mysterious look, walks quickly to the door of the sanctum, and opens it suddenly. “What do you want?” he inquires sharply of some one without.

“If you please, sir, I was just coming in to see if his lordship had rung,” answers Stuggins stolidly, who had never quitted the outside of the door since we last saw him, and who had been listening intently all the time.

“Lord Westray did not ring,” answers Mr. Trackem, coldly, “and you are not required.”

“Oh! very good, sir,” and Stuggins retires defeated, and much put about.

Mr. Trackem watches the butler’s retreating form till it is out of sight, then he closes the door softly, and returns to his original place near Lord Westray.

“These are my plans, my lord. I propose to take down two of my men by rail. Two will be ample, as more might attract attention and be in the way. I shall send a brougham and smart pair of trotters the day before. I have ascertained by observation that Mrs. de Lara invariably goes for a walk in the evening by herself, that her servants do not sit up for her, as she writes in her study late at night, and I have further ascertained that she is frequently in the habit of leaving the house before any one is up, and coming up to town. This is a most valuable point, as her absence will attract no attention. But to be safe I have possessed myself of some of her writing paper and a sample of her writing, and a note will be duly left, apprising her maid of her departure, and intention to remain in London for a few days.”

“By Jove, Mr. Trackem, you are a smart one! I don’t see how your plan can fail,” exclaims the wicked earl with a laugh.

“I never fail, my lord, in any of these little businesses,” answers Mr. Trackem, with a suave smile.

“But ain’t you afraid of the police finding you out?” inquires Lord Westray, just a little nervously.

Mr. Trackem laughs outright. “Police!” he ejaculates contemptuously. “What’s the good of them? Think they know a lot, know nothing. Why, my lord, the police are useless in matters of this sort; and as for detectives, why, it’s easy to green them up the wrong way. I don’t fear them. I’m a match for every noodle detective in and around Scotland Yard, I am,” and Mr. Trackem gives a self-satisfied laugh.

“Well, Mr. Trackem, when is it to be?” inquires the earl anxiously, after a short lull in the conversation.

“It’s to be the day after to-morrow,” answers Mr. Trackem. “To-morrow my men go down. I shall follow, and just give them a squint at the place, and then they’ll be all prepared for the next day. Never fear, my lord; by Wednesday she shall be in your power.”

“In my power!” The words come triumphantly, though mutteringly, through the ground teeth of the man whom Speranza de Lara had called, and justly so, “a fiend in human shape.” Yes, she had spurned him, loathed him, defied him, forbidden him her presence. Through these long years he had striven to regain her in vain, and now—ah, now!—he would be amply and surely revenged.

“Well, I am sure, Mr. Trackem, I cannot thank you sufficiently for the excellent way in which you have laid your plans in order to carry out my commission,” he says warmly. “And now to business. I am to give you £50 down now, and the remaining £150 when the transaction is finally accomplished. Is not that so?”

“It is, my lord,” answers the vile creature blandly.

Lord Westray pulls out a drawer in his writing table, and taking out a cheque book is not long in writing off an order for £50 to the credit of self. This he hands to his visitor, who accepts it deferentially, and commits it to a greasy pocket-book, after which he takes up his hat and stick, preparatory to leaving.

“Won’t you take something?” inquires the earl with his hand on the bell. “A glass of sherry, brandy-and-soda, or what?”

“No thank you, my lord, nothing,” answers Mr. Trackem. “Must keep a clear head in my business. Thanks all the same.”

They shake hands, these two scheming monsters, both intent on a base and ruffianly deed, yet one of them is regarded as a gentleman, is received and welcomed by society, is high in the graces of the Government of the day, and accounted a clever man and useful statesman. Clothed in these mantles of virtue, he is free to do as he pleases. Wickedness will not bar Society’s doors against him, or lose him his high preferments. Is he not a man, one of the dominant and self-styled superior race? Therefore, is he not free to do as he pleases?

The day has come,—a hot July one. Down upon the dusty country roads the sun has burnt fiercely all day long. The cattle and beasts of the field have eagerly sought for shade and refuge from the torturing flies that ever haunt their presence, but evening has fallen at last, and with it relief has come.

It is cool and pleasant along the banks of the old Thames. The silver streak glides sluggishly along, with the moon’s pale light playing softly upon it. The stars twinkle merrily forth to endure their brief sweet reign; Nature looks ghostlike in her mantle of sleep.

A fairy cottage, half hidden in walnut trees and clinging ivy, peeps forth upon that scene. The smooth lawns around it gleam white as the driven snow beneath the moon’s soft gleams. Tall dark trees rise up behind in ebony framework, making an efficient background, while through the still air trembles and quivers the nightingale’s exquisite song.

It would seem, at a first glance, as if all were asleep in that cottage; but no, there is yet a light left in one of the rooms on the ground-floor. Suddenly a pair of window-doors in it are flung open, and a tall, graceful woman steps out through them. Her head is uncovered, the moon gleams down upon the thick masses of pale gold hair that cover it, and shines in her glittering eyes of turquoise-blue. It is Speranza de Lara.

“What a glorious night!” she soliloquises to herself. “I suppose my darling is speaking now. She said it would be about ten o’clock. Oh, Harry! my precious long-lost love, would that you could see our child now!”

She has pressed the ring with its glittering brilliants to her lips,—the only ring she wears. The stones flash and sparkle in the moon’s light like gems of living fire, beautiful, pure, and shining as the love that is next her heart. Much more than a score of years have passed away since Harry Kintore died in her arms, but if she lived through countless scores of years that love would burn just the same. She wanders along the gravel carriage drive, her thoughts busy with the past. Anon they fleet forward to the future, and then a light of triumph dances in her eyes. But it is with the past that she is chiefly occupied this night, for it is the 14th of July, the anniversary of the day on which her darling died.

She has passed along the shady avenue, and entered a tiny straggling path, shut in by tall dark trees. It is a glade upon which the gardener has not been allowed to bestow his fostering care. He has been forbidden this spot by his mistress, who loves to leave it in possession of the primrose and violet, the wild anemone or dark blue hyacinth that Nature has scattered so plentifully around. It is Speranza’s safe retreat, away from the outside world, the spot where she best loves to roam.

All is quiet; not a sound disturbs the tenor of her thoughts as she walks quietly along. Suddenly, however, her eye is arrested by a gleam of light in front of her. The next moment two dark forms spring forward in her path, and she sees that they are men.

Speranza is no coward. We already know that well. Screaming is without her ken, she has no knowledge of it. Of fear, she only knows the name. If it is a thrill that permeates the body from head to foot, and sends the blood rushing through the system with irresistible impetus, then Speranza knows what that strange, mysterious sensation called fear is. But then it only makes her feel defiant. She has no thought of fleeing. Her impulse is to stand and face the danger, whatever it may be.

“Who are you?” she asks in a quiet, measured voice; “and what do you want here?”

“You,” is the laconic answer, as the speaker seizes her by the arm, and deftly getting behind her, endeavours to draw her two elbows together. The pain is excruciating, but Speranza’s blood is up. She is no weakly woman, helpless with life-long inactivity and want of muscle power. She is strong and flexible as wire, and makes her assailant feel this too, as with a wrench she frees herself, and springs backward behind him, facing them both once more. With a foul oath the man who had first attacked her bares a short, ugly-looking knife, and his companion does so as well.

“No use resisting!” exclaims this latter. “If you do you’ll get a taste of these. Better come quietly.”

She does not even answer them. Her lovely head is thrown back, her blue eyes shoot defiance, even while in them trembles the look of despair. Her hands hang clenched by her side, but she never quails for a second.

They rush at her, their knives poised threateningly. She seizes the blades with both her hands, and holds them with the grim clutch of a last great effort. With a brutal laugh they jerk them backwards, and the sharp, keen edges cut clean into her tightly closed palms. Out pours the rich, dark blood from the cruel, gaping wounds, as with a low cry, the first that has escaped her, she lets go her hold. Then, with the ferocity of tigers, they spring upon, and force her to the ground. In another moment the gag is on her mouth, tight straps are round her arms and ankles, and she is a prisoner at their feet.

“Come on quick, now!” exclaims one of the men. “My, Bill! she be a strong, plucky one, and no mistake! If it ’adn’t been for that there root we shouldn’t have mastered her so easily—no, nor we should.”

The root referred to is the jagged, stumpy end of a fallen tree. Against this Speranza’s head had struck in falling, rendering her senseless. No wonder they tied her so easily.

They lift her between them, and carry her across the copsewood towards a low hedge, outside which lies the road. Over this they hoist her, and then lay her down on the pathway, one of them giving a long, low whistle.

There is an answering whistle down the road, a rumbling and stamping as of carriage wheels and horses’ feet. Two lights gleam through the darkness, like the eyes of some terrible monster, and the next moment a carriage dashes up.

“Got her?” inquires a thin, spare man, jumping out.

“Right as a trivet, sir,” they answer.

“Well, put her in! Look sharp; no time to lose. I thought I heard footsteps as I came along,” and Mr. Trackem, for it is he, holds open the door.

They obey his orders without more ado, and then he jumps in.

“Now then! look alive, men! One on the box, one in with her and me.”

It is done. The men are “sharp uns.” They know their master, and he knows his men. The next moment the carriage is bowling along towards Windsor, en route for London.

Who will track them, who discover them? Not the detectives of Scotland Yard!

CHAPTER IX.

There has been a late sitting in the House of Commons. A protracted debate on the crowded condition of the filthy alleys and slums in that most wonderful city of the world, London, has kept members fully occupied. But twelve o’clock, midnight, has struck, and the Commons are dispersing. It has been a great night for Hector D’Estrange. He has spoken for an hour and a half to a spell-bound audience; for does it not know full well that the subject of that night’s discussion is one in which he is no novice, it having been undertaken on his own motion?

He has spoken for an hour and a half, and has told them many things. Has he not a right to do so? None like him have dived into those terrible slums, have visited night after night, as he has done, those abodes of crime, of vice, of wickedness, and of misery. He knows them well, and has depicted them as they are, to the wondering representatives of a nation, in language of which he alone is master.

He has seen much, and knows much of the horrors which he has depicted so vividly, yet not even he knows some of the depths of infamy that exist in that cesspool of Modern Babylon. He has yet another experience to incur.

“Dear old Hector, that was a grand speech of yours!” exclaims the Duke of Ravensdale, who, having been an attentive listener during the debate, has run down to join his friend as the latter leaves the Commons. “Come across to Montragee House, and let us have a little supper. Wish you would stay there the night, old man!”

“I can’t, Evie,” replies Hector. “I have to go down to Windsor by an early train, and must go home and order my things to be packed up; but I’ll come across for half an hour or so and have a mouthful, as I went without my dinner.”

They walk along, linked arm-in-arm, towards Whitehall, and as they do so Big Ben chimes out the hour of half-past twelve.

“How time flies, to be sure!” remarks the young duke thoughtfully. “Funny thing time is—eh, Hector?”

“It is,” answers this latter gravely; “a something without being, shape, or substance, and yet a thing that has been, is, and yet shall be.”

“What a happy chap you ought to be, Hector! I don’t suppose there’s an hour in your life which you can look back upon as having wasted or misspent, save in doing good and trying to help others,” exclaims his friend in an almost envious tone. “Would to God I could say the same of myself!”

“Hush, Evie! don’t try and make me vain; and don’t run yourself down before me. I won’t allow it. God knows you are earnest enough in your desire to do good, and, dear Evie, you have succeeded. I don’t suppose there’s another in your position who has done so much. I never had such a good true friend as you in all my undertakings, except one, and of course I except her.”

“Her!” exclaims his friend in a somewhat surprised voice. “Whom, Hector?”

“My mother,” he answers quietly. “She has been my right hand through life. I could not have got on without her.”

“Your mother, Hector!” says the duke in a low voice. “Have you a mother alive?”

“Yes, Evie, and one of the best that ever lived. I will introduce her to you some day. She knows you well by hearsay, for I have often spoken of you to her. But a favour, dear old Evie; don’t ever mention her to any one; promise me.”

“Of course not, Hector. You know the simplest wish of yours is law to me. Well, here we are; we’ll finish our chat inside over some soup and oysters, and anything else you like to have.”

The duke’s hand is on the bell, but he pulls it very softly.

“Won’t do to peal it,” he remarks. “The sound would awaken Bernie, he’s such a light sleeper; and always will get up to welcome me if he awakes, dear little chap.”

“Let’s see, how old is he now?” queries Hector D’Estrange; “well nigh sixteen, is he not? He’s a dear lad, and I like him especially on account of his love for you. He does love you, Evie.”

“Yes,” answers the duke softly, “and I love him. Bernie is all I have got to love, unless it be you, Hector.”

He does not see the bright flush that rises to Hector D’Estrange’s beautiful face, or the passionate look in the sapphire eyes. It might have startled him if he had. But the great massive doors are unclosing now, and he enters, followed by his friend.

“Supper in my study, Repton, please,” he exclaims. “Is Lord Bernard asleep?”

“Fast, your Grace,” answers that individual confidentially. “His lordship wanted to sit up for your Grace, but when I gave him your Grace’s message he went straight to bed.”

“That’s right,” says the duke heartily. “Bernie’s a good lad. God bless him!”

The two have moved on into the duke’s study, and Repton has hurried off to command his Grace’s supper to be served immediately. He has pompous manners, has Repton, a high opinion of himself, and certain notions of his own importance and dignity, but he is a good servant nevertheless, and a faithful one. He is not of the Stuggins’ class. He would as soon dream of keeping his Grace waiting for his supper as of jumping over the moon.

The consequence is, that in the twinkling of an eye supper is served in the study. And the two friends, as they sit discussing it, wander off on some favourite theme, so that the time passes quicker than they think. Suddenly they are startled by hearing a bell peal. The duke springs to his feet.

“Good heavens! What can that be?” he exclaims nervously. “Is it Bernie’s bell; is the boy ill, I wonder? I must go and see. It’s past two o’clock.”

“It’s the front door bell, I think,” says Hector D’Estrange. “Hark, Evie! there are voices in the entrance hall. Open the door and listen.”

The duke does so. A woman’s voice is plainly distinguishable, appealing to Repton.

“For God’s sake,” he hears her saying, “let me see the duke. I must see him. It is a matter of life and death. If you tell him it is for Mr. D’Estrange he will see me, I know.”

“I have no orders from his Grace to admit you,” answers Repton pompously, “and certainly cannot disturb his Grace at this hour. You must write or call again to-morrow morning, and all I can do is to report your wish to his Grace.”

He bangs the door to as he speaks, but the next moment steps sound behind him, and Hector D’Estrange has seized the handle and pulled it open. His face is very white, and there is terror in his eyes.

“Rita!” he calls out, “is that you, Rita? My God! what brings you here?”

“Mr. D’Estrange!” she bursts out with a low, glad cry. “Oh, are you here? Thank God! thank God!”

She has rushed forward and seized him by the hand, and the duke, who has followed close behind him, recognises in the youthful, fair-featured girl the sad, haggard, careworn, starving creature whom but a few years back he had rescued from prostitution and degradation. Yet in what a terrible condition she seems. Her dress is torn and mudstained, her shoes likewise, her fair, soft hair dishevelled and hanging about her face and down her back, while her expression is that of one scared by a terrible fear.

“Come quick, come quick!” she cries imploringly, “before it is too late. Oh, Mr. D’Estrange! they have waylaid her, and carried her off. I saw her bound, with her poor cut bleeding hands, and could not help her; but I know where she is, and can guide you to the place, if you will only come.”

“Rita,” exclaims Hector D’Estrange, in a voice the very calmness of which fills her with awe, “come into the duke’s study for a minute, and explain yourself. Follow me.”

He leads the way with Evie Ravensdale following, and she close behind the duke. As for Repton, he is rigid with astonishment.

The three enter the study, and the door is closed. “Now, Rita,” queries Hector excitedly, “explain.”

“I will,” she cries again. “It is your mother. She was out in her favourite walk this evening about ten, and I was coming home rather late from Windsor. I saw her attacked by two men in the spinny, bound hand and foot, after having been knocked senseless. A carriage drove up, and they put her into it. My first impulse was to rush to help her and shout for assistance, but in a moment I reflected how useless that would be. I determined to hang on to the carriage behind, and see where they took her to. It was a terrible drive, but God helped me, and I succeeded, though I’m about done. I saw the house they took her into. I know the spot well; I can take you there straight now. But come, please come, or it will be too late.”

There is a look of fury and hatred so intense in Hector D’Estrange’s eyes, that the duke can hardly recognise him as the sweet, gentle-featured friend whom he loves so dearly.

“Evie,” he says in a strained, unnatural voice, “I can explain nothing now. It is impossible. But you can trust me, Evie. My mother, my precious mother, is in terrible danger. Will you help me to save her?”

The duke’s reply is laconic, but Hector knows its meaning. They are simple words, “I will.”

“Then come,” he exclaims feverishly; “lead on, Rita, brave, plucky Rita! I’ll never forget what you have done to-day.”

She does not reply, for they are hurrying out of the room. They are in the hall now, and both Hector and Evie Ravensdale have seized their hats. But the next moment the duke has slipped a loaded revolver into his pocket, and handed another to his friend.

“Take this,” is all he says. “You may want it.”

There is a four-wheeler at the door. They all three get in quickly. As Rita does so she gives the order, “Whitechapel. Quick,” she adds, “and you shall be paid well!”

The cab-horse trots swiftly along. The hope of a substantial fare has given the cabby wings. No well-bred brougham horse could go quicker. He flies along does that old cab-horse.

On the outskirts of Whitechapel Rita calls a halt. “We must get out here,” she observes. “Mr. D’Estrange, please give the cabman a sovereign, and tell him to wait.”

He obeys her. He can trust her, can Hector D’Estrange. Ever since the day when, at Evie Ravensdale’s request, he had appointed her as his own and his mother’s secretary, Rita Vernon has served him with a fidelity and painstaking exactitude of which he knows no parallel. She leads the way through dark, uninviting streets. She knows the locality well. She learnt it years ago, before Evie Ravensdale came there to save her from a doom far more terrible than death. She had declared then that she would willingly die for him. The same feeling animates her now. For Evie Ravensdale Rita Vernon would deem it a happiness to die.

They have passed through courts and filthy alleys, through streets well and ill-lighted. Very few people are about. Only a policeman or two on their beats pass them as they move along. Now they are turning into a sort of crescent or half square, with houses superior to those of the localities they have traversed. As they do so Rita turns to the two men following her, and pointing to a house at the further end, exclaims, “There!”

There are no lights in the windows; the place is silent and dark.

“How shall we get in?” asks the duke.

There is a bitter smile on Rita’s face as she replies.

“I will show you, but remember you must play your part. I shall pretend I am bringing you here, and that there’s another woman coming. I’ll order a room, and once in there I know how to find her.”

She says no more, but passes swiftly along the pavement, they close at her heels. On reaching the house she pulls the bell softly.

The door is opened cautiously, and a woman’s face peers out.

“What’s wanted?” she inquires suspiciously.

“I’ve brought these gentlemen here,” answers Rita. “We want a room. Your best if it’s empty.”

“Can’t have you to-night,” replies the woman. “The whole house is took.”

She is about to shut the door when Rita springs into the opening. The next moment she has the woman by the throat. “Quick!” she cries in a low voice. “Gag her, tie her hands and feet!”

No need to speak further. Both Hector D’Estrange and Evie Ravensdale have obeyed. Three handkerchiefs suffice to gag the woman, tie her ankles together, and her wrists behind her. Then they look at Rita.

“Put her in here!” exclaims this latter, opening a door on the right. “It’s dark. Never mind; I know the place; she’s safe there.”

They lift her in, and lay her on the floor. Rita closes the door, and locks it. A dim light is burning in the hall, but no one is stirring; only in the distance they think they catch a sound of voices.

“Come on,” she says excitedly. “I am sure I can find them. They’ll be in the best room. Follow me.”

She goes up the stairs quietly, her companions as noiselessly following. On reaching the landing she turns down a passage to the right, and comes to a halt opposite a door.

“Listen,” she says in a low tone. “You two should know that voice.”

But she has no time to say more. Pale with fury, with murder in his eyes, Hector D’Estrange has burst open the door. A flood of light almost blinds him as he enters, but through it all he sees the mother that he loves.

Speranza de Lara is stretched on a sofa. Her ankles are still tightly secured, her wrists likewise. Around her, like a cloak of gold, falls her lovely hair. There is a mad, wild look in her eyes terrible to behold, but her lips are mute and speechless, for she is gagged. And beside her stands that monster, that petted roué of Society, that “fiend in human shape,”—the Earl of Westray.

There is a loud cry as a shot rings through the silent house.

END OF BOOK I.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

It is the year 1900. Men are hoping that it will be a peaceful one, after the factious bickerings of 1898–99. While the National party and the Progressists have been snarling over contentious bones, they have omitted to notice in the bye-elections unmistakable signs of public weariness and disgust with squabbles so profitless.

The National party, into which the Unionists have been merged, and the Progressists—a party arisen on the ashes of the Liberals—have failed to take warning by these signs. Woman’s Suffrage, established as law by the action of Hector D’Estrange, has materially altered the aspect of the old state of things, and brought about a thorough and healthy change of thought in many places. The women have given their aid enthusiastically to Hector D’Estrange, and worked heartily in support of the youthful reformer. Almost every bye-election has returned a D’Estrangeite candidate.

Now at length the General Election is over, and the Parliament returned is a curious one. Including the Irish, Scotch, and Welsh Home Rulers, the D’Estrangeite members are in a majority, the Nationals coming next, and the Progressists last.

And yet the majority referred to is a somewhat precarious and unworkable one, for if the two latter parties choose to combine, they can wreck the new Government completely. No one knows this better than Hector D’Estrange, who, having been invited by his sovereign to form a Cabinet, has succeeded in doing so, and occupies the proud position of Prime Minister at the age of twenty-eight.

Only sixteen years since Gloria de Lara made her vow to the wild sea waves,—and now?

Has the prayer that accompanied that vow been answered?

Not yet.

“Is it not tempting defeat, my child, to introduce the bill at so early a date?”

“Mother dear, it is my only opportunity. The position I hold is, I know, quite untenable for any length of time. The Government may be defeated at any moment, and then my chance is gone. Though I have not the slightest hope of carrying the bill, I shall yet gain a tremendous point by its introduction. I shall be defeated on it without a doubt, but it will be before the country, and I can appeal to the country upon it.”

“Ever right, my child.”

The speakers are Speranza and Gloria de Lara. The former is now fifty years of age, but years sit lightly on her shoulders. The new century beholds her as lovely and youthful-looking as ever; time has not played havoc with that fair face.

And the pale golden hair is golden still. No sign of whitening age is discernible in the thick tresses. It seems as though fair youth will never quit her side, for Speranza is unchanged.

Unchanged in all save one thing. Since that terrible day, upon which the last chapter closed so abruptly, there has dwelt in Speranza’s lovely eyes a hunted, haunting look of fear. She has never quite recovered from the shock of that most awful trial, and none dare mention to her the name of Lord Westray.

He has never been heard of since that day. His disappearance at the time caused the greatest excitement. Men declared that he must have been foully murdered, and his body secreted by the murderer or murderers. Of course the blame was thrown on the Irish, with whom Lord Westray was no favourite. Not long before his disappearance he had been appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, an appointment that had given the greatest dissatisfaction to the Irish. There was nothing beyond surmise, however, to account for his fate.

They are sitting in Speranza de Lara’s private room in Montragee House, which has been her home ever since the terrible day above referred to. Apartments in the huge building have been set aside for her use, for it is the delight of Evie Ravensdale to lavish upon the mother of his dearest friend on earth all the affection and love of a son. And his love is returned indeed, for Speranza’s heart has gone out to him with all the love of a mother, a love only surpassed by that which she feels for her child.

The great day has come at last, when Hector D’Estrange is to introduce to Parliament his bill for the absolute and entire enfranchisement of the women of his country. The bill, it is whispered, is not a mere stepping-stone to future power for the sex, but a free and unfettered charter of liberty, a distinct emancipation from past slavery, a final and decisive declaration that women are not man’s inferiors, but have as clear and inalienable a right as he to share the government of their country, and to adopt the professions hitherto arrogated by men solely to themselves. Hector D’Estrange’s colleagues have been made aware of the bill’s contents, and have loyally and nobly elected to stand or fall upon it. They have all been selected for their singularly wide and sympathetic views, and are not likely to forsake their chief in the moment of trial. So also can he depend upon all the D’Estrangeite members, without a fear that there will be a single seceder from their ranks; but he knows that the defeat which he expects will come from the united forces of the Progressists and Nationals, who for a time have buried their feuds and disputes, in the desire to defeat the revolutionary schemes of Hector D’Estrange.

There is a knock at the door, and, in response to Hector’s invitation to enter, it opens, and a young man comes in. It is Lord Bernard Fontenoy, very much grown since we saw him last. He is eighteen now, but looks older, and is the Duke of Ravensdale’s Secretary, the duke being Minister for Foreign Affairs.

“A telegram, Mr. D’Estrange,” he observes. “Will there be any answer?”

Hector takes the missive and opens it. It is from Flora Desmond, and runs as follows:—

“The ten regiments have marched in from Oxford, and are quartered in the Hall of Liberty. Twenty-seven miles completed in eight and a half hours; not a single private fell out of the ranks. Will be down to see you in an hour or so.”

“No, Bernie; no answer, thanks. Is Evie in yet?” queries the recipient.

“I’ll go and see,” answers the youth, vanishing as he speaks.

“Dear mother, I must leave you now, but will see you again before I go to the House. Estcourt and Douglasdale will be here directly, and the latter is to escort you to-night,” observes Hector D’Estrange, rising and kissing Speranza.

The mother throws her arms around her child. The anxious look in her eyes is intensified.

“My darling, may all go well with you to-night. It is foolish, I know, but there is a foreboding of evil next my heart which I cannot shake off, try as I may. Ah, Gloria! if aught should happen to you, my precious child, what would your mother do?”

“Why, mother, what ails you, dearest? Evil happen to Gloria? What fancy is this? Of course I expect defeat; but that will not be evil; merely the beginning of a great end.

“I do not allude to that, dear one, but to something quite different. Gloria, I had a terrible dream last night. I saw him close to me, the being that I loathe. He had you down, and stood above you with a naked sword raised threateningly. I rushed to save you, but ere I could avert his arm he had pointed it straight down at you, and pierced you to the heart.”

“Tush, mother, a mere dream, that’s all. You must not dwell upon it. Dear mother, put it from your mind.”

“Would to God that I could, Gloria! But it haunts me like a spectre, and will not pass away. However, my child, I must not damp your spirits with my fancies. Go now to your duties, from which I must not keep you, and mother will do her best to drive the dream away.”

“That’s right, motherling. Do, for Gloria’s sake.”

He kisses her tenderly and goes out, for he hears Evie Ravensdale’s step approaching. The two friends and colleagues meet just outside the door.

“Let’s go to your room, Evie,” he says gently, “and let us have a chat before I go to work. Chats with you are a luxury now. We don’t find much time for them, do we? By-the-bye, I have just had a telegram from Flora Desmond: the regiments have reached the Hall of Liberty. She reports the last march of twenty-seven miles in eight and a half hours, with not one single fall out from the ranks. Yet they would have us believe that women are weak, feeble creatures, unable to endure fatigue. There is the lie direct.”

They pass on into the duke’s study, a room full of pleasant memories for Hector D’Estrange. Many a happy hour has he spent here with the truest and best friend of his life, the one man whom he loves above all things, and, with the exception of Speranza, the only being to whom he is passionately attached. A big oil painting hangs above the fireplace. Two figures are represented on the canvas. One is a tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed man, with long silken moustache and aristocratic mien, the other of shorter and slighter build, with a face of exquisite beauty. The features are those of a very young man, the eyes are sapphire-blue, the glossy, close curling hair of a deep old-gold colour. It is easy to recognise the former as Evelyn, Duke of Ravensdale, the latter as Hector D’Estrange. The picture has been executed by the duke’s order, and represents the two friends first meeting—ever memorable for both.

They sit on alone together, these kindred spirits, happy in the communion of each other’s thoughts. They are seeking to scan the future and what it will bring, diving into the days that have yet to come. With Evie Ravensdale, it is a firm belief in the ultimate success of Hector D’Estrange’s scheme, a supreme and absolute confidence in his young chief’s ascendant star.

“I wonder who will be the first woman Prime Minister,” he observes dreamily. He is looking into the glowing coals, and does not notice the flush that rises to Hector D’Estrange’s cheeks.

“Ah, yes, who indeed?” echoes the latter quietly.

“Sometimes I think, Hector, that I can see her. Certainly I have seen her in my dreams,” continues the young duke softly.

“Can you describe her, Evie?” asks his friend.

“Ask me to paint your face, Hector, and then you have her in living life. Yes, my woman Prime Minister is an exact counterpart of Hector D’Estrange. Ah, Hector! if you were only a woman how madly I should love you; for love you as I do now, it can never be the same love as it would be if you were a woman.”

It is fortunate that the shaded and softly subdued lamps in Evie Ravensdale’s study are low, or certainly the look in Hector D’Estrange’s face would have betrayed the secret of Gloria de Lara. As it is, he only laughs softly.

“So I am your woman’s ideal, am I, Evie?” he asks in a would-be bantering tone.

“Yes, Hector, you are. Your face is too lovely for a man’s. You ought to have been a woman. And yet if you had been, the glory of Hector D’Estrange would be an untold tale. There is, alas! no woman living, I fear, who would have been able to beat down the laws that held her enchained as you have done. How the women worship you, Hector, and rightly.”

The front door bell is pealing. In a few minutes the study door is opened, and Lady Flora Desmond is announced.

She comes in easy and graceful, her White Guard’s uniform fitting to perfection her supple and agile form. People have grown accustomed to Hector D’Estrange’s women volunteers. The uniforms no longer strike them as strange and unfeminine, for custom is the surest cure with offended Mrs. Grundy.

“What a dense crowd there is, to be sure!” she exclaims, after first greetings have been exchanged. “I had hard work to get my guards through it. But they are in order now, and a clear way is kept right up to Westminster, so you will have no difficulty in getting your carriage along, Mr. D’Estrange.”

“Is it so late?” he inquires in a surprised tone. “Evie and I have been talking away, and did not notice how the time was slipping. Pray wait here. I shall not be many minutes dressing. I must wear my White Guard’s uniform to-night, you know.”

“Very well, Mr. D’Estrange. I will wait for you here,” she replies. There is a ring in Flora Desmond’s voice which tells how happy she is. She has never dreamed of seeing such a day as this.

He is standing on the steps of Montragee House, clad in his White Guard’s uniform. A long line of the White Regiment keep the road clear to Westminster. The crowd is dense all round. Nothing but a sea of faces can be seen, and the cheers of the people have grown into a hoarse, continuous roar. Thousands and thousands of women are amongst that crowd, women, with hearts full of love and devotion for their hero; women who would account it a happiness to die for him at any hour; women who are strong in their gratitude for what he has done, and is trying to do for them. He has entered the carriage that stands in waiting in front of the ducal mansion, and with Evie Ravensdale has taken his seat therein. As it drives rapidly towards Westminster the mighty volume of cheering is again and again renewed, a few hisses being here and there noticeable.

How describe the scene within the House of Commons? To attempt to do so would be but to court failure. The precincts are thronged until there is no standing room. There is eager expectation on every face.

The roar of the crowd outside has penetrated the vast building, and tells those within that he is approaching. A thrill runs through that assembly of princes, peers, commoners, and ladies who are there to await his coming, and then the silence of intense expectation falls on all around.

He is entering now, and walks slowly forward to take his seat. He is received with a burst of enthusiasm by his own colleagues and party, and is watched with interest by every woman who looks down upon him from the spacious galleries that at his instance have been erected for ladies, in place of the wild beast cage originally considered by men as good enough for the inferior sex. And now he has taken his seat while awaiting the usual formalities, and the eyes of the House are upon him. It would be a trying position for an old Parliamentary hand, one used to many years of debate. Is it not just a shade so for Gloria de Lara, as she sits there under the name of Hector D’Estrange preparing to do battle for her sex?

But she has risen now. The silence of death has fallen once more on the House, for the clear, beautiful voice is speaking at last, and this is what it says.

CHAPTER II.

“Mr. Speaker, I make no apology to you, sir, or to honourable gentlemen for the bill which I am about to introduce to the House. It is a bill embodying a simple act of justice to woman, a tardy though complete offer by man to repair the wrong which he has done her in the past. Now the bill is simple enough, and contains no ambiguous clauses. It states in terse, clear language what it is that we propose to bestow on woman, the rights to which she is entitled, and the manner in which we suggest that they should take effect.

“We have rightly, though tardily, bestowed the suffrage upon her. That was an act which should have been performed years ago, but one which has been delayed by much of that unwieldy and unworkable machinery that clogs and hampers the operations of the Westminster Parliament. I refer to the numerous local affairs of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, which, as you know, I have frequently expressed as my opinion, might be more profitably, efficiently, and quickly disposed of in the separate countries named, leaving the time that is consumed here in attending to them free for the consideration of great Imperial and National social questions, which are, alas! and dangerously so, being pressed into the background.

“The bestowal of the suffrage on woman is a practical acknowledgment by man that woman has a right to be considered as a being who can reason, and who can study humanity in its various phases, and act on her own responsibility. It is not for me here to seek for the causes which have hitherto led man to believe to the contrary. His belief, in a great measure, has been due to woman’s weak acceptance of his arbitrary laws; for I do not suppose it will be pretended by any one that the laws laid down for the sacrifice of woman’s freedom were the creation of a woman’s brain. But this weak acceptance of these arbitrary laws cannot fairly be ascribed entirely to the fault of woman. ‘Slavery in no form is natural;’ it is an artificial creation of man’s; and woman’s slavery cannot be taken as an exception to this maxim. She has, in point of fact, been subjected to bondage, a bondage which has, in a manner, become second nature to her, and which custom has taught her to regard as a part of the inevitable.

“But if honourable gentlemen will believe me, Nature is stronger than custom, and more powerful than law. Nature is a force that cannot be repressed finally and absolutely. It is like an overwhelming torrent against which you may erect monster dykes, which you may dam up for a time, but all the while the waters are rising, and will find their level in the end. Through countless years woman has been repressed. Every human force and ingenuity of man have been employed to establish her subjection. From religion downwards it has been the cry ‘Women, submit to men!’ a cry which I may safely say was never originated by herself.

“Now Nature has established a law which is inviolable. It has laid down the distinction between the sexes, but here Nature stops. Nature gives strength and beauty to man, and Nature gives strength and beauty to woman. In this latter instance man flies in the face of Nature, and declares that she must be artificially restrained. Woman must not be allowed to grow up strong like man, because if she did, the fact would establish her equality with him, and this cannot be tolerated. So the boy and man are allowed freedom of body, and are trained up to become muscular and strong, while the woman, by artificial, not natural laws, is bidden to remain inactive and passive, and in consequence weak and undeveloped. Mentally it is the same. Nature has unmistakably given to woman a greater amount of brain power. This is at once perceivable in childhood. For instance, on the stage, girls are always employed in preference to boys, for they are considered brighter and sharper in intellect and brain power. Yet man deliberately sets himself to stunt that early evidence of mental capacity, by laying down the law that woman’s education shall be on a lower level than that of man’s; that natural truths, which all women should early learn, should be hidden from her; and that while men may be taught everything, women must only acquire a narrow and imperfect knowledge both of life and of Nature’s laws.

“I maintain to honourable gentlemen that this procedure is arbitrary and cruel, and false to Nature. I characterise it by the strong word of Infamous. It has been the means of sending to their graves unknown, unknelled, and unnamed, thousands of women whose high intellects have been wasted, and whose powers for good have been paralysed and undeveloped. To the subjection and degradation of woman I ascribe the sufferings and crimes of humanity, nor will Society be ever truly raised, or ennobled, or perfected until woman’s freedom has been granted, and she takes her rightful place as the equal of man. Viewing this great social problem in this light, we have deemed it our duty to present to Parliament a bill, establishing as law, firstly, the mixed education of the sexes, that is to say, bringing into force the principle of mixed schools and colleges, in which girls and boys, young men and young women, can be educated together; secondly, the extension of the rights of primogeniture to the female sex, so that while primogeniture remains associated with the law of entail, the eldest born, not the eldest son, shall succeed the owner of property and titles; also that all the professions and positions in life, official or otherwise, shall be thrown open as equally to women as to men; and thirdly, that women shall become eligible as Members of Parliament, and peeresses in their own right eligible to sit in the Upper House as well as to undertake State duties. Such is the drastic, the sweeping measure by which we desire to wipe off for ever and repair, though tardily, a great wrong. Honourable gentlemen will perceive that we take no half-way course. We are not inclined to accept the doctrine of ‘by degrees,’ believing that this would only prolong the evil and injustice which daily arise from the delay in emancipating the female sex; and I will now as briefly as possible set forth to honourable gentlemen the arguments in favour of the three clauses contained in this bill.

“With regard to the first one, namely, the advisability of educating girls and boys, young women and young men, together, it is necessary to point out that the system of separating the sexes throughout their educational career has arisen chiefly from the totally different forms of education meted out to each. We hold that these different forms are pernicious and morally unhealthy, calculated to evilly influence the sensual instincts of the male sex, and to instil into the other sex a totally wrong and mischievous idea of the right and wrong side of Nature. We are convinced that this system has been productive of an immense amount of immorality and consequent suffering and degradation in the past, and that the system of elevating Nature into a mystery is the greatest conceivable incitement to sensuality and immorality. We hold that there should be no mystery or secrecy anent the laws of God. We hold that in creating mystery we condemn God’s law—namely, Nature, to be what it is not—indecent; and we hold that the system of separating the sexes, of telling all to the one and enshrouding everything in silence and mystery to the other, has had the evil effect of producing immorality, so wide and far-spreading as to be frightful in its hideousness and magnitude; while it has been productive of millions of miserable marriages, of disease, and of evil immeasurable and appalling.

“Nature tells us truths which we cannot condemn as falsehoods, however much we may avert our eyes from their light. Nature tells us that it is natural for the male and female sex to be together. If we bring up the young to face this truth, if we bring up the young to accept as natural and rational the laws of pure and unaffected Nature, they will accept it as it is. But if we clothe it in boys’ and men’s eyes in fanciful garments, and leave girls and women in ignorance of its truths, we must expect the terrible and horrible results which have followed such unnatural teaching through centuries of time.

“We therefore emphatically in this clause record our protest against the system of teaching the young to regard Nature in a false light, in other words, to judge of God’s laws as impure. We believe such a system of education to be, as we have said, an incentive to the male sex to do wrong, while totally unfitting the female sex to do right. The beginning of all immorality on woman’s side has sprung from ignorance, and from the system of mystery and the tendency to declare indecent that which cannot be so, being God’s law. In regard to the physical condition of the sexes, we hold that where equal opportunities are afforded to both of strengthening, developing, and improving the body, little material difference will be found in the two. There are many strong men in this world, and there are many strong women, as there are weakly men and weakly women. I have never heard it yet argued, that because a man is not strong in body he is therefore unfitted to take part in the affairs of State. Yet woman’s weakness is one of the reasons adduced for excluding her therefrom. We believe that in a big public school, say, for instance, at Eton, if girls and boys were admitted together, that girls would very soon prove that neither physically nor mentally were they inferior to boys, nor should such a pernicious doctrine be ever inculcated into the boy’s brain. He should not be brought up as he is now, to look down on his sisters as inferior to him, nor should those sisters be told that he is their superior in strength and mental capacity. It is a doctrine the perniciousness of which is far-reaching, and a distinct infringement of the natural.

“This leads us to the consideration of the second clause, the adoption by women of those professions hitherto arrogated to themselves solely by men. We are of opinion that, granted a similar education as men, women are in every way as fitted to occupy those professions. I may be allowed here perhaps, to refer with pride to that magnificent body of women over 200,000 strong who are now enrolled in the regiments of the Women’s Volunteer forces, of which I am proud to call myself a member, and whose uniform I am fittingly wearing on this occasion. We have before us a splendid evidence of woman’s power to combine and come under discipline. These regiments are kept up to their full force, and are all due to individual effort and womanly sacrifice. There is no State aid in the question, and yet the efficiency of each regiment is perfect. Disbanded and scattered, they can be summoned to their ranks at a few days’ notice, without fear that they will fail. I point to this as a brilliant example of what women can accomplish in so short a time, by self-sacrifice and simple determination. The same argument of their efficiency to enter the army applies to the navy, and to any other profession hitherto occupied solely by man.

“But, believing as I do, that with the admission of women into the conduct of affairs of State, wars, and all their attendant horrors, would quickly become a thing of the past, I dwell shortly on the second clause, passing on to the third, which, in conjunction with the first, I regard as the most important part to be examined.

“It is now eleven years since County Councils were established. At the very first elections women were chosen as representatives, but on an appeal to the law they were ousted from their seats. We have wisely remedied that state of things, and no one thinks it odd or extraordinary now, to see women sitting in these County Councils as members. On the contrary, it is tacitly acknowledged that their presence is, and has been, productive of much good. Well, will honourable gentlemen tell me in what great particulars these County Councils differ from Parliament?

“Both are debating assemblies, and both are conducted on almost similar lines. What is there preposterous and appalling in the suggestion that women should become Members of Parliament, and when, by genius or talents, they can attain to such, assume Cabinet rank, and claim the right to carry on the affairs of their country? It is merely custom that now debars them, a custom established by the selfishness and arrogance of man, and accepted by woman in the same manner as slaves in the past, from long custom, accepted the lash from their taskmasters. The taskmasters had established the right to flog their slaves; they had dammed up the slowly rising waters of rebellion, but these rose to their level at last, and overflowed, and slavery is no more. The analogy holds good in the case of woman, whose greater slavery is not yet entirely overcome. That it will finally be, is as certain as that the hours of Time never go back. You may fight against it, you may pile the dykes higher, you may go on damming the rising waters as you will, but the time must inevitably come, when those dykes and dams will crumble away beneath the overwhelming flood, which your own efforts will have entirely accumulated and brought to its tremendous and irresistible strength. We may be met with many arguments in condemnation of this bill. One will be that it will obstruct the rite of marriage. We deny this. We grant you that it may diminish the number of marriages, but we contend that this will be a blessing rather than a curse. Thousands of miserable unions are yearly effected in consequence of woman’s unnatural and one-sided position in Society. In all these cases she does not marry because, with a knowledge of the subject, with every profession thrown open to her and chance to get on equal to men, she is satisfied that she prefers married life. No. In the cases referred to, she marries for money, or for position, or to escape the restraints of home, or because she has no chance of making her way in the world, and the result is that these marriages are miserable failures, and the offspring of such either diseased in body or in mind, or condemned to grow up to a life of misery, and, in thousands of cases, immorality and crime.

“There is a problem creeping gradually forward upon us, a problem that will have to be solved in time, and that is the steady increase of population. If it advances at its present rate, the hour will come when this earth will not be able to contain it. What then? We may possibly by that time have arranged, with the aid of science, for conveyances which shall carry our superfluous population to other realms of light, but it is equally possible that if this be so, those realms may not consent to receive the emigrants. What then? I believe that with the emancipation of women we shall solve this problem now. Fewer children will be born, and those that are born will be of a higher and better physique than the present order of men. The ghastly abortions, which in many parts pass muster nowadays, owing to the unnatural physical conditions of Society, as men, women, and children, will make room for a nobler and higher order of beings, who will come to look upon the production of mankind in a diseased or degraded state, as a wickedness and unpardonable crime, against which all men and women should fight and strive. The emancipation of women will, I am convinced, lead up to the creation of the great and the beautiful, to higher morals and nobler aims.

“Yet, as we are now, what is the sad reality? In this huge, over-crowded city alone, the greatest the world has ever known, amidst rich and poor alike, teems immorality awful and appalling in its magnitude. Deeds are committed of which even some of the most vicious have no idea. Thousands are born in our midst who should never see the light of day. Born in disease, these miserable victims of vice and immorality grow up to beget to others like horrors, and in the teeming millions of this vast city alone exist misery and sin too terrible to contemplate.

“We submit, therefore, to honourable gentlemen that the first step towards the regeneration and upraising of mankind is the emancipation of woman, and with her emancipation the careful training of the sexes together. Convinced that the time has come, when it would be dangerous to delay this emancipation, we have made it the plank on which the Government of the day intend to stand or fall. We would further, perhaps, overstep the bounds of custom, and ask that the fate of the measure be decided to-night by a vote taken on it immediately. If the vote be adverse, the Government will at once resign, and appeal to the country on the clauses of the bill. They are clauses which I think, to-night, it would be but waste of time to discuss. They can be discussed before the country if the bill be rejected. Yet, ere I sit down, I would beg of honourable gentlemen to consider the few words which I have had the honour, and, I thank God, the opportunity to make to them. I would appeal to them to put aside party feeling, and vote for the common good as their consciences dictate. I solemnly warn them, however, that they cannot put back the hand of time, and that the hour must be reached at last when the cause of woman will triumph; for, as I have already remarked, Nature is like the rising waters of a great flood, which the hand and ingenuity of man may restrain for a time, but which must find a level at last and overflow. The course of Nature is unconquerable; no art of man can defeat it, wrought as it is by the hand of God.”

He has sat down. He has been heard throughout in death-like silence, but now the Ministerialists and D’Estrangeites are cheering him again and again. Yet chill as ice are the Nationals and Progressists. They cannot rise to the height of generosity to which he has appealed. In this moment of uncertainty for many, Hector D’Estrange knows that the bill is doomed.

The House has divided. It has recorded its vote. The numbers for and against the emancipation of women have been announced. The author of the bill was no false prophet when he predicted defeat. By a majority of 120 it has been rejected.

Then the rafters ring with the wild cheering of the victorious Opposition, of that strange medley of parties, that hating each other cordially, yet hate still more the high-souled, far-reaching, justice-loving principles of Hector D’Estrange. Again and again the cheering is renewed, drowning in its volume the counter-cheers of the D’Estrangeites, wild, almost ungovernable in its elation, full of bitter meaning, echoing with sneering emphasis the triumph of selfishness over right.

He sits very quietly through it all, hardly seeming to notice this outburst of the victors. He does not grudge them their momentary triumph; his thoughts do not dwell upon the defeat which he has just sustained. They are far away, out beyond the portals of the present, clasping the warm hands of the future, reading the bright letters that twine their golden circlet round its brow, as they flash their meaning forth in the one word “Victory!”

Be of good cheer, brave heart, for victory is at hand!

The House has adjourned; it is five minutes past twelve. As the Prime Minister passes out he is joined by Evie Ravensdale, who at once links his arm within that of his friend and colleague. Although the duke’s carriage is in waiting, these two purposely refrain from entering it, so as to avoid the crowd and the inevitable demonstration which would follow recognition thereby. In this manner they escape detection by the populace.

Not entirely, however. Sharp eyes have recognised Hector D’Estrange. He has not gone many steps when a hand is laid on his shoulder.

“Mr. D’Estrange,” he hears a voice saying, “I arrest you in the name of the law.”

“On what charge?” he inquires in a quick, startled voice.

“On the charge, sir, of murdering Lord Westray,” is the reply.

In a moment his quick brain has taken in the situation, and he knows that resistance is useless.

“Very well,” he answers quietly, “I will go with you. Evie,” he adds, in a calm, composed voice “please go at once to my poor mother.”

CHAPTER III.

“Say, prisoner at the bar, are you or are you not guilty of the murder of Lord Westray?”

“Not guilty.”

The answer comes in a clear and distinct voice, a voice in which there is neither faltering nor evasion. It is a voice singularly rich and melodious, a voice which one would think could not readily lie.

A hum runs through the crowded court, an indescribable buzz and movement of excitement, but there is joy and relief on many a face, where hitherto doubt and perplexity had reigned.

The court is crowded to suffocation. All the well-known faces of the day are present. The rush to obtain admittance has been unprecedented, and the excitement and popular feeling in regard to the case is unparalleled in the annals of the law courts.

He stands there very quietly, but erect as a dart. His arms are folded on his chest, and his whole carriage is one of easy dignity. None, looking at the beautiful face, with its clear, radiant complexion, magnificent eyes, and high, pale, thoughtful brow, around which the old-gold curls lovingly cluster, could bring themselves to believe that that man is a murderer.

Yet, as we have seen, of crime so terrible Hector D’Estrange stands accused. Since that fearful night when, with murder in his eyes, he had burst into that room of ill fame, and found his beloved mother in the power and at the mercy of the man who had blighted her early life, and who had pursued her with such relentless vengeance, neither Hector D’Estrange nor society at large had seen Lord Westray. As we may remember, the former in that moment of horror and fury had been tried to the highest pitch. A shot had rung out through the silent house, followed by a loud cry, and that was all.

He stands accused not merely of murder, but of having secreted the body of his victim with intent to avoid detection. At the coroner’s inquest evidence had been forthcoming to show how, acting upon various anonymous communications received, the heir-at-law of the deceased had placed the matter in the hands of the police, who thereupon had discovered the body and clothes of Lord Westray buried deep in the ground at Mrs. de Lara’s residence near Windsor. Evidence had likewise been forthcoming to prove, that Hector D’Estrange was the last person seen in the company of Lord Westray, and the clothes of the murdered nobleman had been fully identified by his valet and others as those in which he was last seen alive. The body was, of course, past recognition. Two years in the earth would necessarily render it so; yet on the skeleton little finger of one hand a plain gold ring had been found, as also around the skeleton’s neck a gold chain and locket, the latter containing a faded portrait of the late Countess of Westray, the earl’s mother. It had been proved that Lord Westray always wore this ring, chain, and locket, and his valet had sworn that he was wearing them the very day on which he disappeared. Public opinion was perplexed. Even those who would glory in Hector D’Estrange’s innocence found it difficult to believe him so. Everything appeared so clear against him, so unanswerably conclusive, that men and women shook their heads and sighed when hopes of his acquittal were expressed. But the day of trial had come at last, and Hector D’Estrange was there to confront his accusers.

In face of the terrible charge preferred against their chief, the members of the Ministry have unconditionally resigned, and a provisional Government, pending an appeal to the country, has been hastily constructed from the National party. The Government of the day is therefore known to be rabidly antagonistic to the late revolutionary Prime Minister, who now stands accused of murder. The counsel retained for the prosecution by the Crown is the Attorney-General, aided and assisted by two Q.C.’s, but Hector D’Estrange has retained no one to aid him. He defends himself.

And now with a flourish and many theatrical attitudes, Sir Anthony Stickleback begins the case for the prosecution. Sir Anthony is fond of rhetoric, and he airs it to the court, fully to his own satisfaction. He has many long-winded phrases to get through before he closes with the main point, which may be briefly told in his closing summary of the statements contained in his opening address.

“I shall therefore, my lord, call witnesses who will speak to the evident intimacy which has existed between Mr. D’Estrange and Mrs. de Lara through so many years. These witnesses will be able to show moreover, that on several occasions Mrs. de Lara received visits from her late husband, Lord Westray, during Mr. D’Estrange’s absence; that she was frequently in the habit of mysteriously disappearing from her residence near Windsor on visits to London, and that on one of these occasions—the occasion, in fact, when Mr. D’Estrange followed her—she actually left a note for her maid, acquainting her with her departure. I shall show how Mr. D’Estrange, having surprised her in the company of Lord Westray, deliberately fired his revolver at that nobleman. The last thing seen of this latter unfortunate gentleman was in the company of Mr. D’Estrange, who had announced his intention of taking him to his home in Grosvenor Square. It is needless to say that from that day forward Lord Westray has never been seen in living life, though, in consequence of several anonymous communications received, private inquiry was set on foot by those who have been determined to bring the murderer to justice, and which has resulted in the discovery of the body and the clothes which Lord Westray was wearing when last seen, buried deep in the earth, in the private grounds near Windsor belonging to Mrs. de Lara. I will now, my lord, proceed to call the witnesses for the prosecution.”

And one by one the witnesses are brought forward to swear away the life of Hector D’Estrange.

Charles Weston deposes that he was for many years Mrs. de Lara’s butler, and that he frequently admitted Lord Westray to her house, but always in the absence of Mr. D’Estrange. Only on one occasion did Mr. D’Estrange come in while Lord Westray was in the house, and he recalls high words passing between the two, followed by the hasty departure of Lord Westray, whose brougham was awaiting him at Mrs. de Lara’s door. This was when she resided in London. After this Lord Westray always came on foot, and he, Weston, had strict orders to keep a sharp look out for Mr. D’Estrange, so as to give the two full warning. He remembers perfectly well bringing Mrs. de Lara a note from Lord Westray the very day on which she disappeared from her Windsor residence, and the same on which Lord Westray was murdered, and he also remembers a note being left that night by Mrs. de Lara for her maid.

Cross-examined by Hector D’Estrange. “Are you not a discharged servant of Mrs. de Lara’s, Weston?”

“No, sir,” answers this person with cool effrontery. “I gave notice myself.”

“You will swear, Weston, that Mrs. de Lara did not dismiss you for drunkenness and gross impertinence?”

“Certainly, sir. Mrs. de Lara told me I had had too much to drink, and I told her I would leave. I gave a month’s notice.”

“Thank you, Weston, I have no more to ask you.” Hector D’Estrange’s voice has a peculiar ring of unutterable contempt in it. The wretch winces as he receives the order to “stand down.”

Victoire Hester is next called. She deposes to being Mrs. de Lara’s late maid. She corroborates Charles Weston’s evidence. Asked if she remembers the writing paper used by Mrs. de Lara and Hector D’Estrange, “Perfectly,” is her reply.

“Can she select a specimen from amidst the packet of letters handed her?”

“Certainly,” she replies again.

In a few minutes she has picked out three letters all written in the same hand and on a similar stamp of paper.

“This,” she declares, “is the paper used by Mrs. de Lara and Mr. D’Estrange all the time that I have been in Mrs. de Lara’s service.”

Asked again if she recognises the handwriting on the letter, she unhesitatingly declares it to resemble Lord Westray’s. Asked if she received a note from Mrs. de Lara, acquainting her with her sudden departure for London the night of the murder, she answers, “Yes!”

Cross-examined by Hector D’Estrange.

“Victoire Hester, are you not engaged to Charles Weston, and were you not dismissed by Mrs. de Lara?”

“No, sir,” she unblushingly replies. “I gave notice same as Charles did, because Mrs. de Lara behaved so improperly to me.”

“Victoire Hester, you say that Mrs. de Lara left a note for you on the night of the supposed murder of Lord Westray, informing you she had gone to London?”

“Yes,” is the reply.

“But was she not in the habit of frequently going up to town in the same way without leaving notes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then how is it she should trouble to do what she had never done before, Victoire Hester?”

The maid is visibly flurried.

“I don’t know, sir,” she stammers.

“Thank you, Victoire.” The cold, calm, contemptuous voice comes again, and the maid in turn steps down.

Alfred Hawkins corroborates Charles Weston’s evidence, as to driving Lord Westray to Mrs. de Lara’s South Kensington residence on one occasion. He states that he was groom to the late lord, and is still so to his successor.

“I call for Mr. Trackem,” enunciates Sir Anthony Stickleback in an important voice, “since the accused does not wish to ask Alfred Hawkins any questions.”

Mr. Trackem enters the witness box. He is extremely well dressed, and has an air of importance about him. Like Sir Anthony, he has evidently a good opinion of himself.

“Mr. Trackem, you own a certain house in Verdegrease Crescent, do you not?” inquires Sir Anthony blandly.

“I do, sir,” answers Mr. Trackem.

“Have you or have you not admitted Mrs. de Lara to the house?”

“Frequently, sir,” answers that individual.

“Presumably for what purpose?”

“On each occasion, sir, to meet Lord Westray.”

“Do you, Mr. Trackem, know anything of Rita Vernon?” asks Sir Anthony.

“Certainly, sir. She used frequently to visit my house.”

“Will you name the last two occasions you have seen her, Mr. Trackem?”

“Well, sir, the first was on the night of the 20th of June, 1894, and the last on the night of Lord Westray’s murder,” answers Mr. Trackem.

“Was she with any one on those two occasions?”

“Yes, sir, each time with the same person.”

“And that person, Mr. Trackem, was?”

“The Duke of Ravensdale,” answers the scoundrel quickly.

A movement of intense surprise pervades the court.

“Will you describe to his lordship and the jury all you know about the terrible occurrence of which Lord Westray was the victim, Mr. Trackem?” commands Sir Anthony Stickleback, folding his arms.

“I will do my best, sir. On the afternoon of the day on which Lord Westray disappeared, I received a note from Mrs. de Lara, sent especially by Rita Vernon. In this note she instructed me to retain my house free for the night, and to admit no one but Lord Westray. I acted as requested, and she and his lordship arrived about half-past one. I retired to bed, there being no one in the house but two men-servants and a woman. The men, like myself, had retired to rest. Suddenly I was startled by hearing a shot, followed by a loud cry. I jumped out of bed, slipped into my trousers, and called my two men. We proceeded to the room in which were Lord Westray and Mrs. de Lara. On entering, we found it in possession of Mr. D’Estrange, the Duke of Ravensdale, and Rita Vernon. The two latter were beside Mrs. de Lara, who was lying on a sofa. Lord Westray was stretched out on the floor, blood issuing from a wound in the throat, and above him stood Mr. D’Estrange, with a discharged revolver in his hand.

“I at once rushed up to him, and accused him of attempting to murder Lord Westray. He replied that he was sorry for what he had done, but that he did it in a moment of passion. He declared that he did not think he had seriously hurt the earl, and that he would take him to his home if I would procure a cab. At the same time he begged the Duke of Ravensdale and Rita Vernon to take charge of Mrs. de Lara. I was getting seriously alarmed at the turn affairs had taken, and upon Lord Westray expressing a wish to get home, I acceded to Mr. D’Estrange’s request. Two cabs were procured. In one of them Mr. D’Estrange and Lord Westray took their departure, in the other Mrs. de Lara; the duke, and Rita Vernon. I saw them off from the door, and then re-entered the house. As I did so, I heard a groaning in a room on the right. I procured a light and opened the door, the key of which was turned in the lock. To my surprise I found my woman servant laid out on the ground, bound hand and foot with handkerchiefs, while a third gagged her mouth. I produce these handkerchiefs now. One has a ducal coronet on it, the other H. D’Estrange worked on it, and the third the name of Rita Vernon. Next day I received a letter, apparently in Lord Westray’s writing, begging me to keep strict silence on all that had occurred. He declared that if it leaked out his reputation would be lost, and he informed me that he intended disappearing for a couple of years, at the end of which he would return. He enclosed me some money, and promised to continue the donation quarterly, on condition of my silence. I received six donations in all, and three letters. At last the donations ceased, and I began to grow suspicious.”

“What first made you suspicious?”

“Well, sir, I noticed one day that the paper on which these letters were written was exactly similar to the quality used by Mrs. de Lara in her note to me on the afternoon of the day when the murder was committed, and I also thought Lord Westray’s continued absence after the time specified was suspicious. Finally, I went and made a clean breast of it to the present earl, who I found in receipt of various anonymous communications declaring the murder, and indicating where the body and clothes were concealed. He employed me to find out all I could. I set to work, sir, communicated with the police, and investigations were set on foot, with the result as we all know it.”

“Ah! you combine the work of a private detective with your other business, do you, Mr. Trackem?” inquires the Attorney-General graciously.

“I do, sir.”

Cross-examined by Hector D’Estrange.

“Have you the letter which you allege Mrs. de Lara wrote you?”

“The counsel for the prosecution has it, sir,” answers Mr. Trackem.

“Is it not a little strange you should have preserved that letter all these years, in view of the fact that you thought Lord Westray alive, and is it not a little strange that your communication to the new Lord Westray should have been almost simultaneous with the receipt by him of anonymous information?” pursues the accused.

It is Mr. Trackem’s turn to look confused, but he quickly pulls himself together as he answers, “No, I do not think so.”

Other witnesses are called to corroborate Mr. Trackem’s statement in some particulars, and to testify to the discovery of Lord Westray’s body and clothes, the latter being produced in court, this production causing much excitement.

Walter Long is next called. He identifies the chain, locket, and ring found on the skeleton as belonging to his late master, and he also identifies the clothes. He swears positively that Lord Westray was wearing all these things the day he disappeared.

“These, my lord,” declares Sir Anthony, “are the witnesses for the prosecution.”

And with this statement the Court adjourns for luncheon.

On reassembling, Hector D’Estrange opens the case for the defence.

“I shall not,” he observes quietly, “detain the Court at any length with my opening statement. I have been charged with undue intimacy with Mrs. de Lara. The charge is stupid and disgusting, and when I inform your lordship and the gentlemen of the jury that Mrs. de Lara is my mother, this will at once be evident, and show the groundlessness of the charge. I deny the statement that Lord Westray was a frequent and admitted visitor at my mother’s house, though he made many endeavours to be one. Only once he obtained ingress, and was ordered out both by Mrs. de Lara and myself. He has been the curse of my mother’s life. The sufferings of Lady Altai must be green in the memory of many, while the fate that befell my father at his hands is matter of history. I shall call Mrs. de Lara, who will deny having written either to Mr. Trackem or to her maid. She will explain how these so-called mysterious visits to London were solely to see her child. She will describe to you how it was her custom to walk out at night in her grounds at Windsor, and how on the evening of the day on which I am accused of murdering Lord Westray, she was set upon by two men, gagged, bound hand and foot, transferred to a carriage, and taken in it to London, where, at the house of Mr. Trackem, she was handed over to the mercy of Lord Westray, from whom God in His mercy enabled me to rescue her in time. This evidence will be corroborated by Rita Vernon, who will explain all she was eyewitness to. She will tell you how she clung to the back of the brougham which contained Mrs. de Lara all the way to London, and having taken note of the house—which, alas! she knew too well—hurried to Montragee House to apprise the Duke of Ravensdale, whom she knew to be my dear friend, of the terrible occurrence. There she happily found both him and myself, and we at once proceeded to my mother’s rescue. Effecting an entrance into the house, we gagged and bound the woman who let us in, and then, guided by Rita Vernon, stole noiselessly upstairs to what Rita styled the best room. On reaching the door she halted, and bade me listen to a voice, which I recognised as that of Lord Westray’s. Mad with fury, I dashed open the door—what to find? Why my mother, gagged and bound, a prisoner in the hands of the scoundrel who had wrecked and ruined her life. My lord, would not the sight have driven you mad? I drew my revolver, and shot him where he stood. He uttered a cry and fell. Quickly the duke and I cut the thongs that bound my mother. Her hands were cramped and saturated with blood, across both palms extending a ghastly gash. We carried her tenderly downstairs, procured a cab, and in Rita Vernon’s and the Duke of Ravensdale’s kind care she was transferred to Montragee House. I then went back to the room where Lord Westray was lying, where I found him alone with Mr. Trackem. I offered to call the police and state what had occurred. Lord Westray was seated on the sofa, and begged me not to do so. He declared the wound was nothing, and requested me to leave him, and on no account to disclose what had occurred. For my mother’s sake, and yet on another account, I agreed. Next day I called upon Mr. Trackem, who informed me of the letter he had received from Lord Westray, the contents of which he has communicated in his evidence to-day. I regret, however, to have to say that the greater part of the remainder of his evidence has been falsely given, why, I am at a loss to understand, as beyond the encounter in the house in Verdegrease Crescent, I had no quarrel with him whatsoever. I propose now to call my witnesses.”

Mrs. de Lara is called. Her appearance in court excites the greatest interest. For though few have seen the beautiful Lady Altai of former days, the story of her marriage, her flight with Harry Kintore, and the tragic sequel in which Lord Westray figured so prominently, is well known in Society. So this is Speranza de Lara, mother of Hector D’Estrange?

“No wonder he is handsome, with such a mother as that!” gasps Mrs. de Lacy Trevor. “Dodo dear, it’s the same lovely woman we met him riding with on the Burton Course long ago, at Melton, don’t you remember? The mystery’s cleared at last.”

She stops abruptly and stares at her friend, for Lady Manderton is scarcely heeding her, and there are large tears in her fine, handsome eyes.

“Why, what is the matter, Dodo?”

“Nothing, Vivi, nothing! There, don’t attract attention,” she answers hastily.

She is thinking though, how wasted has been her life. She has heard Hector D’Estrange’s statement, and believes it implicitly. She is thinking that others may not, though. If Hector D’Estrange is condemned, well, Dodo Manderton feels that she would die to save him.

CHAPTER IV.

“Mrs. de Lara,” queries Hector D’Estrange, in a voice in which respect and tenderness are mingled, “you have heard the statement for the prosecution in which you and I are accused of undue intimacy? You have heard my reply, in which I declare you to be my mother? Which statement is correct?”

“Yours,” she replies in a firm, clear voice. “I am your mother.”

“And my father?” he again asks.

“Was Captain Harry Kintore.”

“Both Weston and Victoire state that they gave you a month’s notice. Is this a fact?”

“It is not,” she replies firmly; “it was I who gave it to them. To Weston for being drunk and impertinent, to Victoire for the latter fault.”

“It is stated by Weston that you were in the habit of receiving frequent visits from Lord Westray? Is this so?”

“It is not,” she answers quickly; “the statement is a wicked falsehood. Only once he obtained admittance, when he came to insult me with the proposal that I should re-marry him and forget the past. You came in when he was there, and requested him to leave the house.”

“Did he do so?”

“At once,” she replies.

“Since then have you been annoyed by his presence, or in any other way?”

“By his presence, no, until the night on which he is alleged to have been murdered, but by letters, yes.”

“You have kept or destroyed those letters?”

“Every one is destroyed!” she replies almost fiercely; “most of them unopened.”

“Can you remember the date when Rita Vernon first came to you, and who sent her?”

“Yes, well,” answers Speranza. “It was the 21st of June, 1894. She brought a letter from you, written at the instance of the Duke of Ravensdale. I at once made her my secretary and general amanuensis.”

“Has she served you faithfully?”

“None more so,” she replies.

“Mrs. de Lara, you have heard Mr. Trackem’s statement, that you sent her with a note to him on the day of the supposed murder. Is this true, or false?”

“False!” she replies sternly.

“And you have heard Victoire’s declaration that you left a letter for her, apprising her of your departure for London the night of the supposed murder. Is this true?”

“It is not,” she answers. “I wrote no letter.”

“Will you give his lordship and the gentlemen of the jury your version of what occurred on the night in question.”

She gives it in a firm, clear voice, without hesitation or faltering. She tells the facts as we have described them in a former chapter. A shudder runs through the court at their mere recital. Is it possible that such horrors reflect the truth? Sir Anthony smiles superciliously.

“Hallucination,” he mutters audibly. “Many women are subject to it.”

She looks at him contemptuously, but scorns to further notice the great man’s brutality.

“You swear, Mrs. de Lara, that what you have stated is absolutely correct?”

“Absolutely,” she answers calmly; “I swear it.”

Cross-examined by the Attorney-General.

“You will swear that you were not in the habit of receiving Lord Westray, Mrs. de Lara? Now, pray be careful, very careful.”

Again the same contemptuous glance, as she proudly replies, “I swear it.”

“And you mean to say that you never sent Rita Vernon with a letter to Mr. Trackem, or left a note for Victoire Hester on the day of Lord Westray’s murder? Again I ask you to be careful.”

“I did not!” is her fierce reply.

Sir Anthony puts his hands on his hips. There is a self-satisfied smile on his face as he glances round the court, but he questions no further.

“I have no more to ask the witness,” he remarks jauntily.

Rita Vernon is next called and questioned. She describes her first meeting with the Duke of Ravensdale, and what followed. She gives in simple, unaffected language the story of the attack on Speranza and the part she played in it. Again Sir Anthony is heard to mutter the word “hallucination.” He has no questions to put to the witness—yet stay—as she is about to leave the box he jumps up.

“One moment please, Miss Vernon,” he remarks in a suave voice. “I presume, of course, that you are grateful to the Duke of Ravensdale for all his kindness?”

There is a flash in her grey eyes, but she answers quietly,

“Need you ask it, sir? I would die for his Grace.”

The next witness is the duke himself. He corroborates the statements made by Hector D’Estrange, Speranza de Lara, and Rita Vernon. His evidence is listened to with marked attention, and the keenest interest by the Court. Sir Anthony does not cross-examine him.

As he steps down, Hector D’Estrange’s voice is heard speaking.

“I have one more witness to call,” he is saying. “This will be my last, my lord. I call for Dr. Merioneth.”

A white-haired man enters the box and is sworn.

“Dr. Merioneth, do you recall attending Mrs. de Lara many years ago?” inquires the accused.

“I do,” replies the witness.

“Will you state for what purpose, and how many years have elapsed since then?” is the next question.

“I attended Mrs. de Lara in her confinement, and it is twenty-eight years ago,” answers the old doctor.

“Where, Dr. Merioneth?”

“At Ancona, sir, on the Adriatic.”

“The child was born well and healthy, I believe?”

“A beautiful child indeed,” replies the doctor. “I wish all children resembled it.”

“Thank you, Dr. Merioneth.”

“Stay, I have a word, please, to put to you,” exclaims the Attorney-General, jumping up. “You have not told us the sex of the child, doctor.”

For a moment the old man hesitates. Then he looks sadly at the prisoner.

“A girl it was,” he replies in a low voice.

“Ha! a girl you say?” echoes the counsel for the prosecution in a loud voice, as he looks round the court with a knowing air. “Thank you, doctor. I am greatly obliged to you for that information.”

This concludes the evidence for the defence.

Then Sir Anthony rises slowly and portentously. His hands are behind him, he leans perilously forward, and his gown is stuck out behind like a lady’s dress-improver. He appears thoroughly satisfied with the appearance of importance which he believes this attitude gives him, but it is not so certain that others share that opinion.

“My lord, and gentlemen of the jury,” he begins in a somewhat pompous voice, “the case before us is a very peculiar one, yet I hope to detain you at very little length in reviewing it. The prisoner, Mr. D’Estrange, is accused of a base and horrible murder, and it is my painful duty to endeavour to bring home to the jury the absolute certainty of his guilt. It will be necessary in so doing to show motive for the crime, and I think I shall be able to point to this motive as conclusive, jealousy prompting and being at the bottom of it. It is now, my lord, and gentlemen of the jury, nigh on thirty years ago that Mrs. de Lara, then known as Lady Altai, broke faith with her husband, whom in wedding she had sworn to love, honour, and obey, and shamelessly fled with her lover, Captain Harry Kintore. It is known that Lord Altai, who was devoted to his wife, pursued the two, coming up with them at Ancona. Here, having confronted them, a fierce dispute ensued. It is said that Captain Kintore drew a revolver, and in self-defence Lord Altai fired at him, unfortunately with fatal effect. I wish to dwell as lightly as possible upon a matter so terrible, and therefore pass on to the next event in this painful story, namely, the birth of a child. Dr. Merioneth has been called, ostensibly to bear witness to that birth. Unfortunately he has marred the case for the defence by informing us that the child to which Mrs. de Lara gave birth was a female. Now, my lord, one of the chief points of Mr. D’Estrange’s defence is, that the intimacy which we declare has existed between him and this lady for so long a time is impossible, inasmuch as Mrs. de Lara is his mother. She has herself so stated this, and furthermore pointed to Captain Kintore as being Mr. D’Estrange’s father. This statement must fall to the ground in face of what Dr. Merioneth has told us. So much for that portion of the defence, as I do not suppose Mr. D’Estrange is going to pose before us as a woman. It would appear that Mrs. de Lara is not averse to this mode of life. She married Lord Altai by her own free will. Next we find her leaving him and electing a new lover in the person of Captain Kintore, and of late years we have direct evidence that Mr. D’Estrange has been the favoured man. Yet not only this, but the evidence sworn to by Charles Weston, Victoire Hester, and Mr. Trackem points to the existence of a secret intimacy carried on by this lady with her divorced husband, Lord Westray. Both she and Mr. D’Estrange now tell us that only once did the late earl obtain admission to Mrs. de Lara’s house, and then it was in opposition to the latter’s wishes. I leave you to judge if this statement be possible of either acceptance or belief, in face of what the witnesses referred to have told us.

“We have heard some evidence likewise of the way in which Rita Vernon became introduced into Mrs. de Lara’s household. It appears that she was formerly no novice to Mr. Trackem’s house. She does not deny this. In fact, how could she? Does it not strike you, gentlemen, that Rita Vernon was just a peculiar class of young woman to put in the responsible position described by Mrs. de Lara, and does it not seem very clear that the use to which her services were put was of a totally different nature? We were told distinctly by Mr. Trackem that Mrs. de Lara sent him a note by Rita Vernon on the day of the murder, instructing him to retain his house for her and Lord Westray. Mrs. de Lara denies having written this note. I produce it, and it runs as follows:—

“‘Sir,—Please to reserve the house to-night as usual for Lord Westray and myself. We shall arrive between twelve and one.

“S. de Lara.’

“What is to be thought, my lord, of the veracity of such witnesses as Mrs. de Lara and Rita Vernon, for the girl denies having delivered this note? Yet here we have it, and we have furthermore the fact, that on the night when Mr. D’Estrange shot Lord Westray, Mrs. de Lara was found alone with that nobleman in Mr. Trackem’s house. And, gentlemen, as against this very clear and circumstantial evidence, we are asked by Mrs. de Lara and Rita Vernon to accept a romance which all sane men can only regard in the light of hallucination, if not, as I regret to believe, downright deliberate falsehood. We are asked to believe that Mrs. de Lara was waylaid in her own grounds at night, overcome by ruffians, and carried off bound hand and foot to London. We are asked to believe that a slight, frail girl like Rita Vernon performed a task which a man of herculean strength would have found almost beyond his power to accomplish. We are asked, in fact, to believe that Rita Vernon, whom you have had an opportunity of seeing, could cling to a brougham between Windsor and London, and then sum up sufficient force to make her way to Montragee House at half-past two in the morning, where of course, like in a fairy tale, she finds the Duke of Ravensdale and Mr. D’Estrange all ready to accompany her to the release of the lady fair. The story defeats its own end by its wild improbability, unsupported by fact, and establishes at once the reasonable and circumstantial evidence of the side for the prosecution. I maintain that there is proof positive that Mr. D’Estrange, assisted by Rita Vernon,—who in this instance betrayed her mistress,—came upon the unfortunate earl with intent to murder. He admits that he shot him, but he declines to give any further information as to what he did with Lord Westray after leaving the house in Verdegrease Crescent. We find, moreover, that the three letters purporting to come from Lord Westray, and addressed to Mr. Trackem, are all written on paper which Victoire Hester has identified as the quality and class always used by Mr. D’Estrange and Mrs. de Lara, and exactly similar to the paper on which the notes to Mr. Trackem and Victoire Hester were penned on the day of the murder. The writing of the last note is denied. Again I meet that denial by producing the note. It runs thus:—

“‘Hester,—I have gone up to town for a few days, will let you know when to expect me back. Miss Vernon has accompanied me.

“‘Faithfully yours,

“‘S. de Lara.’

“Such facts leave very little doubt in my mind but that Mrs. de Lara had arranged to meet Lord Westray, and that Rita Vernon betrayed her intention to Mr. D’Estrange. Such facts convince me that this latter resolved on vengeance. He deliberately went to Verdegrease Crescent, and shot Lord Westray, and finally, under cover of repentance, decoyed him from the house, and got rid of him somehow and somewhere. What follows? A letter arrives for Mr. Trackem, who is frightened out of his wits at the turn affairs have taken—a letter, purporting to come from Lord Westray. By a strange coincidence, this letter and others following are all written on the same class of paper as that used by Mr. D’Estrange in Mrs. de Lara’s house. Lastly, the very suit which Lord Westray was known to have been wearing the night he was shot at, has been found buried deep in the ground on the property of Mrs. de Lara at Windsor, bearing evidence of having been a long time under the earth, and in close proximity to it the body of a man reduced to a skeleton was also discovered. Around the neck of this skeleton a gold chain and locket was found, and on the little finger a plain gold ring. These have been identified by the late earl’s valet, who has sworn to seeing them on the earl’s person the day he disappeared. It would be superfluous for me to detain you with further details, the points of evidence which I have submitted being, it appears to me, too clear for it to be possible to draw any other conclusion but the one that Mr. D’Estrange deliberately, and of malice aforethought, did shoot at Lord Westray with intent to kill, and did afterwards, in some manner not yet unravelled, make away with the life of that unfortunate nobleman. I ask you, therefore, to put aside from your minds Mr. D’Estrange’s high position and social status, and to find a verdict in accordance with the evidence before you.”

The great man sits down hastily, and glances round the court. An almost unnatural stillness reigns therein. Every eye is bent on the prisoner, and then on the beautiful, pale, gold-headed woman, whose gaze is riveted on her child’s face with an intensity terrible to witness. But there is nothing but calmness on the features of Hector D’Estrange, in whose eyes the confident, triumphant expression shines, which conscious innocence alone could create.

“I will endeavour, like the Attorney-General,” he observes, “to detain the Court as shortly as possible. But at the very outset I would wish to point out to you that the evidence of Weston and Victoire is not trustworthy, as being that of discharged servants. Mrs. de Lara has told you most emphatically that Lord Westray paid her no visits, save the one referred to by the coachman, Alfred Hawkins. She has told you how that visit was forced upon her, and how Lord Westray was ordered out of the house by myself. There is absolutely no evidence corroborative of that given by Charles Weston, which I can only characterise as pure and malicious invention, the same remark applying to the false testimony of Victoire Hester. This woman has declared that Mrs. de Lara wrote her a note the night of the supposed murder apprising her of her visit to London. Yet these visits with Mrs. de Lara were of frequent occurrence, and she had never before found it necessary to acquaint Victoire of her movements. My lord, I declare the letter to be a forgery, as I also declare the letter to which Mr. Trackem refers as coming from Mrs. de Lara to be likewise. My lord, and gentlemen of the jury, the Attorney-General has passed a cruel and unnecessary sneer on Mrs. de Lara’s account of the ruffianly and brutal attack made upon her by the undoubtedly hired scoundrels of her most bitter foe. He has attributed all to romance, hallucination, deliberate falsehood. His insinuations are brutal and cowardly. My mother, like myself, would scorn to tell a lie. We leave that to the poltroons and cowards who seek by forgery and perjury to swear away the life of one who is innocent. I maintain that Mrs. de Lara’s account and description of what took place is in every essential particular true, while the corroborative evidence of Rita Vernon bears it out in every detail. The Duke of Ravensdale has clearly stated to you how the poor girl sought him at Montragee House, and the state she was in after her terrible drive. The Attorney-General smiles scornfully at the idea of a woman being capable of such pluck and heroism as Rita Vernon evinced on that occasion. I cast back the slur into his teeth. I tell him that if he wishes to find true courage and heroism combined, he must go to a woman to discover it. But it is not to such as he, that women will go for justice.

“And now, my lord, and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you to put yourselves in my place. Had you been called to that house of ill fame, and there found a being whom you honoured, loved, and respected, in the hands and power of her bitterest enemy, bound hand and foot, gagged, bleeding, and helpless, would you not have acted as I did, and in the fury and horror of the moment lost all power of restraint? I admit that I shot Lord Westray; I have never denied it. But I do deny that I caused his death; and what is more, I confidently believe that he is alive at this moment, and that this foul accusation is a plot to ruin me, to be, in fact, revenged on yonder noble lady, who has through life resented his brutality, defied and scouted him, and refused to submit to his hideous desires. I make no pretence of being able to account for his disappearance, for the alleged discovery of his body and clothes, for the letters written in his handwriting on the paper used by myself and Mrs. de Lara. I am unable to understand it all save in the light of a base, foul, and detestable plot which has for its object revenge. Of that I know him to be perfectly capable.

“And now, my lord, and gentlemen of the jury, I have but one more statement to make ere I close these remarks. I once more positively affirm that Mrs. de Lara is my mother, and that the intimacy of which I am accused is a base and unfounded fabrication.”

He has folded his arms, and his voice has ceased. A burst of applause greets him as he stops speaking. Vainly the judge calls for order.

“This is an exhibition that I will not tolerate,” exclaims that worthy functionary. “Another such a disgraceful proceeding, and I will cause the whole court to be instantly cleared.”

This produces silence. Sir James Grumpy is a bit of a martinet. The public knows that he means what he says.

And now he proceeds in his summing up. Very carefully he goes over all the points advanced by both sides, but it is apparent to all, from the first, that the summing up is most unfavourable to the accused. It takes him about an hour to get through his task, and all the time Hector D’Estrange stands motionless, with folded arms and immovable features. Only now and again the dark blue eyes wander to where Speranza is sitting, with the Duke of Ravensdale by her side.

The summing up is over at length, and the jury have retired to consider their verdict. Apparently, however, they had made up their minds beforehand, for they do not keep the Court long waiting. In a few minutes every one has reassembled.

“Gentlemen of the jury, have you considered your verdict?” rings out a harsh, sing-song voice.

“We have,” answers the foreman.

“You find the accused guilty or not guilty of the murder of Lord Westray?”

Amidst a silence, terrible in its intensity, comes the answer—

“Guilty.”

A thrill of horror runs through the court. There is hardly a dry eye within it. The duke has got Speranza’s hand in his, but she never moves.

“Hector D’Estrange, have you any reason to give why sentence of death should not be passed upon you?” again inquires the harsh, sing-song voice.

“I have,” he answers, with a low musical laugh. “My reason is, that if I am put to death, murder will indeed be committed, for I am guiltless. I wish to add also one word of explanation, for I see the time has come. Both Sir Anthony and the learned judge have laid great stress on the apparent falsehood of which they allege I have been guilty, in declaring that I am the child of Captain Harry Kintore and Mrs. de Lara. They point to the fact that Dr. Merioneth has declared that the child born at Ancona was a girl. Has it never struck you, my lord, and gentlemen of the jury, that a girl could do what I have done in youth, a woman accomplish what I have accomplished in maturer years? No. I plainly see that this has not struck you, for you are men. You will not acknowledge that a woman can equal man, and with fair opportunities rise to power and fame. Yet such has been my aim in life to prove, for this I have struggled; and had it not been for the base machinations of enemies, would assuredly have lived to triumphantly achieve. Know, however, that Hector D’Estrange is no liar. If for sixteen years he has practised on Society what may be called a fraud, it was for the sake of righting a terrible wrong. My lord, and gentlemen of the jury, I again declare myself to be the child of Captain Kintore and Mrs. de Lara, but I confess my sex. In Hector D’Estrange the world beholds a woman—her name, Gloria de Lara.”

Amidst confusion and excitement unparalleled sentence of death is passed. Yet, as the judge’s words come to a close, a voice rings through the court, a voice in which defiance and love are mingled. It is a woman’s voice. Many recognise it as Flora Desmond’s.

“As there is a God above,” it cries, “Gloria de Lara shall not die!”

But even as all eyes are turned in search of the speaker, Flora Desmond has vanished.

CHAPTER V.

“Guilty!” “Condemned to death!” “Hector D’Estrange a woman!” The words have passed through the court, along the corridors, and out into the street beyond, where the crowds press eagerly forward to hear the news. It is received at first with astonishment and incredulity. Some people call it a hoax, others laugh at the statement as a wild improbability, and wonder what the real truth is. But even as they discuss the rumour, a movement is visible opposite the court, as an officer of the White Guards’ Regiment makes her appearance outside. An orderly mounted on a grey horse is holding an empty-saddled white one in readiness, and as the officer makes her appearance, brings the steed alongside the steps leading up to the entrance.

The officer is no stranger to the crowd. Flora Desmond’s features are well known to it. Is she not the leader of Hector D’Estrange’s especial regiment, a regiment entirely drawn from the women of “the people”? Whatever may be the feeling of the middle class and a portion of that one which claims to rank above it, in regard to Hector D’Estrange, one thing is certain, that amidst the poor and the needy, amidst the suffering and the struggling, that name is a talisman to conjure by.

She comes down the steps hurriedly, and mounts her horse in haste. The crowd sways and presses towards her in spite of the efforts of large numbers of police to repress them.

“The verdict?” they shout inquiringly. “Tell us the verdict!”

She stands up in her stirrups and looks at that sea of faces. Enemies there may be amongst them, hundreds, perhaps, antagonistic to Hector D’Estrange, but amidst the rough faces of the thousands that press around her, she knows that the majority are true as steel.

“Guilty!” she calls out. “He is condemned to die! I mistake the people, however, if they will believe the verdict or acquiesce in the sentence. Say you, whom he loves, whose hard lot he has struggled to raise, will you permit it?”

“Never!” comes the fierce shout from hundreds, nay, thousands of throats. “Hector D’Estrange shall not die!”

“I knew it,” she replies proudly. “Justice shall be upheld. I knew the people would be true to him, men as well as women. He shall not die!”

They cheer and cheer again as she makes her way through the crowd followed by her orderly. It gives room to her willingly, and opens a passage for her horse. She rides along rapidly in the direction of a quiet side street, well away from the thronging crowd of people. Even as she does so the rumbling wheels of the prison-van strike on her ear. She can see it approaching, surrounded by a strong force of police, and as she does so, she urges on her horse.

Flora Desmond passes rapidly along the quiet, deserted street, until she nearly reaches the end, and then turns her horse down a narrow alley leading therefrom. This brings her into a wide, spacious yard, around which a big square building is built, in the centre of which is a large archway with strong iron gates, guarded by two mounted sentries. They salute her as she rides up, and the iron gates are unlocked at once. She rides through them, and enters what appears to be an immense riding-school, in which are drawn up a hundred troopers of the White Regiment. Her eye scans them keenly and rapidly. They are in perfect order, and look fit for any work. Every face is turned towards her.

“Hector D’Estrange has been declared guilty,” she says in a clear, distinct voice, “and is condemned to die! I am here to lead you to his rescue. If any one is to die, it shall be we who will do so, not him. Follow me, guards. There is not a moment to be lost.”

She places herself at their head. They pass out into the courtyard, and the gates are locked behind them. The sentries fall into their places, and the troopers, six abreast, follow in the wake of their gallant-hearted leader. At a smart trot they pass down the quiet street. In the distance they can hear the roar of the crowd, which is cheering loudly; and they know that Hector D’Estrange is being removed to the prison from which his accusers hope never again to see him issue.

They are nearing the crowd now, for it is surging their way. The prison-van is coming along at a smart pace, guarded by its bevy of policemen. It is not a hundred yards from where Flora Desmond, at the head of her hundred and two guards, sits motionless on her horse, for she has called a halt, and is awaiting their coming.

Suddenly she stands up in her stirrups and turns to her troopers. At the same moment she draws her sword.