The Judge, the several peers, had hurried through without a glance at the man sitting by the fireside. Lady Harold Buckingham, as she went through, had stopped, bowed, and held out her hand. She had been astonished that Gilbert Lothian had risen, taken her hand and spoken to her in quite the ordinary fashion of society. She too had gone. The Bishop had shaken Gilbert Lothian by the hand and nodded at him as who should say, "Now we understand each other--Good-bye." Only Morton Sims, Julia Daly and the Priest had waited. They had not to wait long. There came a loud and authoritative knock at the door, within an hour of the breaking up of the Conference. Gilbert Lothian rose, as a pleasant-looking man in dark clothes with a heavy moustache entered the room. "Mr. Gilbert Lothian, I think," the pleasant-looking man said, staring immediately at the poet. Gilbert made a slight inclination of his head. The pleasant-looking man pulled a paper out of his pocket and read something. Gilbert bowed again. "It is only a short distance, Mr. Lothian," said the pleasant-looking man cheerfully, "and I am sure you will go with me perfectly quietly." As he said it he gave a half jerk of his head towards the corridor where, quite obviously, satellites were waiting. Gilbert Lothian put out his hands. One wrist was crossed over the other. "I am not at all sure," he said, "that I shall come with you quietly, so please put the manacles upon my wrists." The pleasant gentleman did so. Father Joseph Edward followed the pleasant gentleman and Gilbert Lothian. As the little cortège turned out of the Committee room, Julia Daly turned to Dr. Morton Sims. Her face was radiant. "Oh," she said, "at last I know!" "You know?" he said, horror still struggling within him, much as he would have wished to control it, "you know nothing, Julia! You do not know that the dreadful power of heredity has repeated itself within a circumscribed pattern. You do not know that this man, Lothian, has done--in his own degree and in his own way--just what a bastard brother of his did two years ago. The man who was begotten by Gilbert Lothian's father killed his wife. Gilbert Lothian has done so too." The woman put her hands upon the other's shoulders and looked squarely into his face. "Oh, John," she said--it was the first time she had ever called him by his Christian name--"Oh, John, be blind no more. This afternoon our Cause has been given an Impetus such as it has never had before. "Just think how splendidly Gilbert Lothian is going to his shameful death." "Oh, it won't be death. We shall make interest and it will be penal servitude for life." Julia Daly made a slight motion of her hands. "As you will," she said, "and as you wish. I think he would prefer death. But if he is to endure a longer punishment, that also will bring him nearer, and nearer, and nearer to his Mary." * * * * * Transcriber's note: