"Miss Blanchflower--you may be quite sure--will be as ready as anyone else to make sacrifices for the cause. But we don't expect _you_ to understand that!" "Nobody can doubt your zeal, Lady Fanny." "Only my discretion? Oh, I've long left that to take care of itself. What are you here for?" "To look after my ward." Lady Fanny eyed him again. "Of course! I had forgotten. Well, she'll be all right." "What are you really preparing to do to-morrow?" "Force our way into the House of Commons!" "Which means--get into an ugly scrimmage with the police, and put your cause back another few years?" "Ah! I can't talk to you, if you talk like that! There isn't time," she threw back, with laughing affectation, and nodding to him, she fluttered off to a distant table where a group of girls were busy making black and orange badges. But her encounter with him seemed to have affected the hive. Its buzz sank, almost ceased. Winnington indeed suddenly discovered that all eyes were fixed upon him--that he was being closely and angrily observed. He was conscious, quickly and strangely conscious, of an atmosphere of passionate hostility, as though a pulse of madness ran through the twenty or thirty women present. Meredithian lines flashed into memory-- "Thousand eyeballs under hoods Have you by the hair--" and a shock of inward laughter mingled in his mind with irritation for Delia--who was to have no place apparently in her own flat for either rest or food--and the natural wish of a courteous man not to give offense. At the same moment, he perceived on one of the tables a heap of new and bright objects; and saw at once that they were light hammers, fresh from the ironmongers. Near them lay a pile of stones, and two women were busily casing the stones in a printed leaflet. But he had no sooner become aware of these things than several persons in the room moved so as to stand between him and them. He went back into the passage, closing the door behind him. The little parlour-maid came hurriedly from the back regions carrying a tray on which was tea and bread and butter. "Are you taking that to Miss Blanchflower?" "Yes, Sir." "Shew me the way, please." Winnington followed her, and she, after a scared look, did not attempt to stop him. She paused outside a door, and instantly made way for him. He knocked, and at the "Come in" he entered, the maid slipping in after him with the tea. Two persons rose startled from their seats--Delia and Gertrude Marvell. He had chanced upon the dining-room, which no less than the drawing-room had been transformed into an office and a store-room. Masses of militant literature, copies of the _Tocsin_, books and Stationery covered the tables, while, on the wall opposite the door, a large scale map of the streets in the neighbourhood of the Houses of Parliament had been hung over a picture. It seemed to him that Delia looked ill and agitated. He walked up to her companion, and spoke with vivacity--