“I appeal to your lordships to face these facts, and act upon them generously and courageously. From our midst a great and commanding figure has but lately passed away,—one who began in childhood an heroic and courageous resistance to wrong, and who maintained that resistance through her all too short career. Gloria de Lara, in the person of Hector D’Estrange, triumphantly established the fact of woman’s equality with man, and undeniably asserted the right of her sex to share with him in the government of the world. “And I ask your lordships to consider in a generous manner the motives which first prompted the great heart of Gloria de Lara to do battle for her sex, and which ultimately strengthened its resolve to maintain the contest to the last. Was it not a dawning comprehension of the terrible wrong under which her mother had become an outcast in this world, shunned and despised by Society at large? Did not Gloria de Lara recognise that in woman’s unnatural position lay the root of the evil? Then, as she grew up, and personally made herself acquainted with the woes afflicting Society, did she not struggle to remedy this position, recognising therein the key to human suffering? I bear testimony to her life of patient, unwearying research amidst the suffering and slaving classes. This it was that gave her such a grasp of her subject, when in the House of Commons she sought to unveil to the members thereof the horrors that existed. The dream of her life was, to be spared in order to carry great social measures of reform, but she recognised the fact that to do this effectually, woman must first be placed on the level of equality with man. For this she struggled, for this she fought on against overwhelming odds. I need not dwell on the false and brutal charge which was brought against her, which forced her to disclose her sex, which condemned her to die, and which—when rescued by her own Women Guards—made her an outcast and a wanderer, and a felon in the eyes of the law. The falsity of this detestable lie has been abundantly proved in the discovery of the dead body of the man who ruined and blasted her mother’s life, who brought about her own pathetic and irredeemable death. In her name I appeal for justice, and I confidently believe that I shall not appeal in vain. I desire that the division shortly to be taken shall seal the fate of the measure on behalf of victory or defeat. You have the voice of the country ringing in your ears, but high above that voice should sound the loud appeal, which a great and noble example sends forth, the appeal of the glorious dead.” He sits down amidst a storm of applause, unusual in this august and dignified assembly. He hardly hears it; he takes no note of the varied scene around him. Evie Ravensdale sees before him the face of but one being, that being Gloria de Lara. Is not her spirit near encouraging, upholding, and leading him on to victory?