Max, left to his own surmisings, opened wide and wondering eyes. "Did he throw that bomb at himself?" he murmured in astonishment. "It looks very much as if he did." II Parliament opened again without any difficulty in the middle of December; and the enormous popularity of the King and Queen was greatly enhanced by the circumstance of their reappearance within so short a time for an occasion so closely similar. Only another bomb could have increased the favorable impression made upon the populace by their affable return to the charge--if a slow walking-pace may be so described--within three weeks of the attempted outrage. As the Prime Minister had promised the police spared no pains to insure their safety, and behind the hoardings of the new Government offices detectives were packed like herrings in a barrel, with special eye-holes bored through so that they might note the actual passing of the royal carriage, and have it well under observation at the point of danger which was, presumably, that at which the last explosion had occurred. Then the whole police force held its breath, and the coach got past without any difficulty; and immediately the waiting multitude in Regency Row became violently demonstrative as though some great acrobatic feat had been achieved. And the piebald ponies came stepping like rope-dancers each held by a groom; and everything--except the fresh bomb for which so many stage preparations had been made--went off with all the success imaginable. The King did not read his own speech: he had a sore throat for the occasion, and only with his ears did he swallow the bitter pill of that foreshadowed scheme which he had so long and vainly resisted; for now he was bound by his own promise, and could no longer "stand in the way." And so, by the mouth of the Lord High Commissioner, the Bishops heard under its smooth-sounding title the plan for their approaching doom read out from the steps of the Throne, and as soon as the King and the Queen had retired, budding members on the ministerial side in both Houses rose up to congratulate the Cabinet and the country on those wise and statesmanlike proposals, and hardened veterans upon the other, the Archbishop included, rose up to condemn them. And after that, for three or four days a general wrangling--all leading to nothing--went on. But while Parliament talked vacuously within, outside came rumblings of storm; the discontent of certain sections of the community with conditions unsettled or unattended to was gathering to a head. And on the third day after the session had opened, Charlotte said to her father with rather a tragic look, "Papa, do you know what is going to happen to-night?" And then she told him. It was those Women Chartists again.