“Je le crois bien, madame,” is all the other replies as she leaves the room. Marie is not a stranger to revolution. She was in Paris as a young girl during the revolt which cost Napoleon III. his throne. She knows well the suffering which an upheaval of the people always brings with it. She will be astonished at nothing that may come. Has she not been detailing her experiences downstairs to the frightened servants, who are undergoing _their_ first hardships in Mr. and Mrs. de Lacy Trevor’s luxurious service by having to go without milk in their tea that morning? Do they, by any chance, cast a thought to the suffering thousands who have no tea into which to put either milk or sugar,—those suffering thousands whose condition and very existence has given the brain of Gloria de Lara many a racking thought, as—when in power—she has pondered the problem, so far unravelled, of their amelioration and upraising? Not a bit of it. These servants do not realise a suffering which they have never seen. It is just the world’s way. Not one half of it knows how the other half lives. Left alone, Vivi Trevor opens her husband’s note. She thinks it strange he should write to her. He has never written to her before while staying under the same roof. She has not set eyes on him since the day before, when he parted with her after the trial, conviction, and sentence of Hector D’Estrange. He had not come in to dinner that night, nothing out of the way to Vivi, the comings and goings of her husband being of small importance or interest to her. These two have drifted more than ever apart since the days when Mr. Trevor first had his eyes opened by the Eton boy’s article in the _Free Review_. He has never sought to interfere with his wife’s goings on, feeling that to do so would only make his desolate home more unhomely and comfortless than ever. It is therefore with some surprise that Vivi reads the following:—