Demaine got up, took hold of the box, turned his back upon the questioner and looking full at the harmless and startled Opposition said, not without menace: “I must ask for a notice of that question”--and sat down. There were a few more sympathetic cheers and all was well. The Warden of the Court of Dowry was launched upon his great career. Meanwhile, beyond the Central Hall, Lord Repton of Giggleswick was rising for the first time among his Peers. That House also was full and was prepared to give the spare towering figure and the stoical face a sympathetic hearing, for the recognition of a man who had served his country so faithfully and so well and who had recently suffered a temporary malady of so distressing a nature was universal and sincere. The House of Lords knows a _Man_. Lord Repton, even as plain Sir Charles, had always been an admirable parliamentary speaker: not only quick at debate but with a grave and lucid delivery which, coupled with his intimate grasp of detail and the sense of balanced judgment behind his tone, made his one of the most effective voices in our public life. It would be difficult to say by what art he contrived to give in that large assembly the impression of speaking as quietly as though he were in a private room, and yet so managed that every word of his--every syllable,--was heard in every corner of the House. In the Peeresses’ Gallery women in mauve, heliotrope, eau-de-nil, crapaud mort, and magenta, made a brilliant scheme of colour. The Lords, who upon occasions of privilege are by custom robed, gave to the splendid place the deeper tone of red plush and white pelts with small black tails which is otherwise reserved for such great occasions of state as the Opening of Parliament, the Coronation, an Impeachment or a Replevin at Large; at the bar a crowd of Commoners pressed, many of whom recognised in the faces before them those of brothers, fathers, first cousins, debtors, creditors and clients in business. It was an animated and an impressive scene, and the audience, large as it was, would doubtless have been larger but for an unfortunate blunder by which the Eton and Harrow match and a particularly interesting rehearsal of the Mizraim dance were both fixed for that very afternoon. As it was, the two hundred or more Peers present were finely representative of all that is best and worst in the national life. The aged Duke of Battersea had made a point not only of coming but of speaking upon such an occasion; the Bishops had turned up in full force, and the Colonial Peers, now happily added to the ancient House, were remarkable not only for their strict attention to this historic business, but for their somewhat constrained attitudes: not one was absent from his seat.