The train was crowded. Winnington, separated from the Captain, plunged into a dimly-lighted third class, and found himself treading on the toes of an acquaintance. He saluted an elderly lady wearing a bonnet and mantle of primeval cut, and a dress so ample in the skirt that it still suggested the days of crinoline. She was abnormally tall, and awkwardly built; she wore cotton gloves, and her boots were those of a peasant. She carried a large bag or reticule, and her lap was piled with brown parcels. Her large thin face was crowned by a few straggling locks of what had once been auburn hair, now nearly grey, the pale spectacled eyes were deeply wrinkled, and the nose and mouth slightly but indisputably crooked. "My dear Miss Dempsey!--what an age since we met! Where are you off to? Give me some of those parcels!" And Winnington, seizing what he could lay hands on, transferred them to his own knees, and gave a cordial grip to the right hand cotton glove. Miss Dempsey replied that she had been in Brownmouth for the day, and was going home. After which she smiled and said abruptly, bending across her still laden knees and his--so as to speak unheard by their neighbours-- "Of course I know where you're going to!" "Do you?" The queer head nodded. "Why can't you keep her in order?" "Her? Who?" "Your ward. Why don't you stop it?" "Stop these meetings? My ward is of age, please remember, and quite aware of it." Miss Dempsey sighed. "Naughty young woman!" she said, yet with the gentlest of accents. "For us of the elder generation to see our work all undone by these maniacs! They have dashed the cup from our very lips." "Ah! I forgot you were a Suffragist," said Winnington, smiling at her. "Suffragist?" she held up her head indignantly--"I should rather think I am. My parents were friends of Mill, and I heard him speak for Woman Suffrage when I was quite a child. And now, after the years we've toiled and moiled, to see these mad women wrecking the whole thing!" Winnington assented gravely. "I don't wonder you feel it so. But you still want it--the vote--as much as ever?" "Yes!" she said, at first with energy; and then on a more wavering note--"Yes,--but I admit a great many things have been done without it that I thought couldn't have been done. And these wild women give one to think. But you? Are you against us?--or has Miss Delia converted you?" He smiled again, but without answering her question. Instead, he asked her in a guarded voice-- "You are as busy as ever?" "I am there always--just as usual. I don't have much success. It doesn't matter." She drew back from him, looking quietly out of window at the autumn fields. Over her wrinkled face with its crooked features, there dawned a look of strange intensity, mingled very faintly with something exquisite--a ray from a spiritual world.