The Chairman did not rise for a moment or two. She was scribbling something rapidly on a piece of paper, which she twisted up and sent down the length of the brilliantly lighted room to a man who stood lounging carelessly in the doorway. He untwisted it with extreme deliberation, crushed it up in his hand when he had read it, and looked his wife straight in the eyes, across the backs of the waiting people in the chairs. She met his look for just two seconds before she stood up and cleared her throat. The rows of people in the chairs stirred with a sensation of relief. Eloquence and wit, they knew, were not in the repertory of Mrs. Fontenella when she was posing as a Suffragette; but at least she could be counted upon not to make them feel uncomfortable. When she stood there silent, gripping the table with both hands and looking straight down the room, along the road that her twisted scrap of paper had taken to the man in the doorway, they began to think something was a little wrong. Did she, realising that the last speaker had overstepped the limits of good taste, feel incapable of dealing with the situation? It was certainly a little awkward for her to continue to occupy the Chair, under the circumstances. "Ask for questions," prompted the organiser who sat on her left; and she pushed the agenda paper towards her, thinking she was nervous and could think of nothing to say. Mrs. Fontenella was not nervous. She glanced round at her prompter with a reassuring smile and brushed aside the agenda paper. Then she faced the crowd she had brought there under false pretences, and gave them the second shock they had received that evening. "Friends," she said, in a voice that no longer faltered or apologised, a voice that was pitched exactly right and held her listeners strangely, "the last speaker has told us that another deputation of women will try to reach the presence of the Prime Minister, next week. You know what that means--almost certain imprisonment for the women who go on that deputation, but also a certain chance for every one of us to do something towards winning a great reform. I am going on that deputation. Which of you will come with me?" Those who managed furtively to look round at the man in the doorway, were extremely puzzled by the interested smile he wore. * * * * * "You were right about that woman, and I was utterly wrong," confessed the organiser, as she walked away from the house with the other speaker. "I do hope she won't have a bad time with that Anti husband of hers!" "You never know," said her companion, who had seen the interested smile of the man in the doorway. "That's the blessed thing about marriage;--you never know." "What!" exclaimed the younger woman. "Do you mean to say he is a Suffragette by birth, too?"