Gertrude dropped the paper in her lap and looked up like a frightened, hunted creature. "Great God!" she exclaimed, with an intensity born of a sudden revelation. "Great God! and they call themselves men! And other men keep silence--furnish all the soil and nurture for infamy like that! Those who keep silence are as guilty as the rest! Those who try to prevent women from knowing--oh, mamma!" Her eyes were intense. She sprang to her feet; "and John Martin, who thinks he loves _me_ is one of those men! Knowing such a bill as that is pending, his indignation is aroused, not at the bill, not at the men who try to smuggle it through, not at the awful thing it implies, but that so strict a silence is not kept that such as _we_ may not know of it! He blames Selden Avery for coming to me--to us--with his splendid chivalry, and sharing with us his horror, making us the confidants of that inner conscience which sees, in the intended victims of this awful bill, his little sisters and yours and mine!" There were indignant tears in her eyes. She closed them, and her white lips were drawn tense. Presently she asked, without opening her eyes: "Mamma, do you suppose if you, instead of Mr. Avery, were chairman of that committee, that such a bill as that would ever have been presented? Do you suppose, if any mother on earth held the veto power, that such a bill would ever disgrace a statute book? Are there enough men, even of a class who generally go to the Legislature, who, in spite of their fatherhood, in spite of the fact that they have little sisters, are such beasts as to pass a bill like that? A ten-year-old girl! A mere baby! And--oh, mamma! it is too hideous to believe, even of--such a bill could never pass. Never on earth! Surely, Ettie Berton, poor little thing, has the only father living who is capable of that!"