Lady Coryston recognized her eldest son. "Drive on, Patterson!" she said, furiously. "I can't, my lady--they're too thick." By this time the motor had reached the center of the gathering which filled the road, and the persons composing it had recognized Lady Coryston. A movement ran through the crowd; faces turned toward the motor, and then toward the platform; from the mother--back to the son. The faces seemed to have but one smile, conscious, sly, a little alarmed. And as the motor finally stopped--the chauffeur having no stomach for manslaughter--in front of the breach in the railings, the persons on the platform saw it, and understood what was the matter with the audience. Coryston paused in his speech. There was a breathless moment. Then, stepping in front of the table, to the edge of the platform, he raised his voice: "We scarcely expected, my friends, to see my mother, Lady Coryston, among us this evening. Lady Coryston has as good a right to her opinion as any of us have to ours. She has disapproved of this enterprise till now. She did not perhaps think there were so many Baptists--big and little Baptists--in Coryston--" he swept his hand round the audience with its fringe of babies. "May we not hope that her presence to-night means that she has changed her mind--that she will not only support us--but that she will even send a check to the Building Fund! Three cheers for Lady Coryston!" He pointed to the notice-board, his fair hair blown wildly back from his boyish brow, and queer thin lips; and raising his hand, he started the first "Hip!--hip--" "Go on, Patterson," cried Lady Coryston again, knocking sharply at the front windows of the open landaulette. The crowd cheered and laughed, in good-humored triumph; the chauffeur hooted violently, and those nearest the motor fled with shrieks and jeers; Lady Coryston sat in pale endurance. At last the way was clear, and the motor shot forward. Coryston stepped back to the table and resumed his speech as though nothing had happened. "Infamous! Outrageous!" The words formed themselves on Lady Coryston's angry lips. So the plot in which she had always refused to believe had actually been carried through! That woman on the platform was no doubt the butler's daughter, the miserly spinster who had guarded her Naboth's vineyard against all purchasers for twenty years. Coryston had squared her, and in a few months the Baptist Chapel his mother had staved off till now, would be flaunting it in the village.