A sweet-faced, white-haired old lady came to me a few weeks ago and asked me to sign a petition to the Home Secretary for the release of her son, who, many years ago, murdered a woman who had driven him to desperation. The young man was condemned to death, but the capital sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. I knew the young man, I knew his father and mother. The father died. The old lady took her son's children, moved into a new neighbourhood, and brought them up in ignorance of the tragedy that had shadowed their lives. I have seen the children, now grown up, happy in the home that granny has made for them. They have never read in that gentle, loving face the story of the sorrow that shattered her happiness for ever. To them granny is the embodiment of great happiness. She has set herself the task of brightening their lives and keeping the shadows away. I hope and believe that the petition for her son's release will presently be granted. Then the father, whom the children believe to be far away engaged in business on the other side of the world and unable to leave it, will suddenly appear among them. He will have come home at last. But the secret so carefully guarded will be kept to the end. The children will never know that all these years their gentle, smiling, loving granny has worn a mask before them and before the world, and that night after night, when they could not see her, she has wept bitter tears for the son who was sentenced to death, and spared to work out a life sentence within the walls of a convict gaol. The Humbert case startled the world. A family on the brink of a volcano of shame and humiliation lived gaily and grandly, imposing upon the cleverest and shrewdest men in Europe. In their case suspicion was aroused before the final crash came, and the famous safe was found to be empty. But we have our Humberts here in London, concerning whom not the slightest suspicion exists. We see them living in luxury, indulging in the most lavish hospitality, and fêted everywhere in return. Less fortunate people envy them, perhaps, for their wealth. No one guesses that they are hopelessly involved, and that their life is a perpetual stress and harass because they are compelled to scheme from morning to night in order to continue the imposture and postpone the fatal day of discovery, which is rapidly approaching. When that day comes the head of the family will have his choice between the pistol or poison of the suicide and the dock of the Old Bailey.