Rhona Helvellyn came stalking in, looked round, recognised Patrine, came over and dropped down beside her on the divan, full to the brim of the invariable subject, and suffering to talk. Through the good offices of a legal pal she had got in to hear the Suffragette Trial at the Old Bailey that day. Fan Braid and Kitty Neek had been frightfully plucky. Full of grit and vim, in spite of the six weeks’ hunger-strike. Began shrieking like Jimmy O! the moment they were brought into the dock by the warders and wardresses. On being rebuked by the Judge, Fan had bunked a bundle of pamphlets at the head of his lordship, catching the Clerk of the Court, who was seated immediately underneath the Bench, no end of a biff in the eye. "And then?" Patrine heard a strange voice from her own stiff lips asking the question. "Then both of ’em were removed from the Dock. It was done—in time!" Rhona’s light eyes danced with enjoyment. "Such a scrimmage! Such a rumpus! Took three men and a woman to tackle each of ’em. We could hear ’em giving tongue all the way down to the cells. Then they had to go on with the Trial without ’em." She chuckled. "You may guess there were a lot of us at the back of the Court waiting—just for that! Perfect wadge all together. Hell and trimmings when we started. They had to eject us before they could jog on with their gay old summing-up!" "But in the end they got through?" The weary voice was so unlike Patrine’s that she wondered why Rhona did not jump and stare at her. But Rhona was mounted on her hobby-horse, and unobservant of other things. "Through right enough! And Fan and Kitty—" Rhona screwed up her lips into the shape of a whistle, and winked away a tear that hung on one of her fair eyelashes; "It’s too brutal! Three months each, and poor little Kitty dying of lung-trouble. They only brought her back from Davos in May. That riles me!" She clenched her hands fiercely and went on, cautiously lowering her tone: "So far I’ve taken no active share in any Militant Demonstration. Partly because I’d be wiped off the Club books if I got spouting in public, or was mixed up in any police-court business, partly because I’m funky—there’s the word! But at last I’m wound up! It was Kitty’s little peaky-white face did it! ... She—she broke a blood-vessel as the warders were carrying her down to the cells." A sob choked Rhona’s voice, and a spasm of misery wrenched her. She controlled herself. She was deadly in earnest—wound up to go, as she had said. She went on, talking rapidly, in a tone that only reached the ear it had been meant for. How many such secret disclosures the Club divan had known.