The young man had fought his way into Queen's Hall on the night of the great meeting, solely and wholly because he had heard that Miss Jardine was likely to be present. But he had no idea what line she was likely to adopt in reference to the momentous question under discussion. Yet the one drawback that hitherto he had found in her was her attitude, or what he feared was her attitude, towards the question of woman's ascendency. In the crush of the hot and noisy meeting, he had failed to see Zenobia on the platform, and when she rose to speak his feelings were strangely blended--of admiration at her bearing, and of dread less she might say something than ran counter to his own convictions. But her actual utterance astonished and delighted him; and the hostile method of the "Cat" provoked in him such feelings of fierce resentment as he had never felt towards womanhood before. Yet there was one sentence that fell from the Vice-President which caused him to be sensible of emotion of another sort. That sneering suggestion that the younger speaker must be in love excited him strangely. He felt an intimate personal concern in that scornful imputation. In love with whom? And now he had ample time in his uncle's riverside house, with the empty dwelling and silent garden on the other side of the hedge, to ponder the same question. The _Bladud_, however, proved a great boon. It had been left at his disposal, and Wilton, the Jardine's engineer and skipper, was always ready to accompany him in an air trip. Wilton was a hard-featured little man with a soft heart and a shrewish wife, who kept the domestic nest in so spick and span a condition that poor Wilton could never take his ease at home, and therefore appreciated any good and sufficient reason for getting out of it. Wilton confessed to Linton Herrick a treacherous thought. It concerned the wife of his bosom and the new Amazons. "Seems to me," said the little man, "as this here scheme may be a good thing in a manner of speaking. There's girls, and, maybe, there's wives too, that wants a bit of a change. Well, that's right enough. Why not?" "What do you mean?" asked Linton, wondering and amused. "Wot I mean, under pervisions, mind, under pervisions...." Linton laughed, but Wilton was quite serious, his thoughts engaged in a great domestic problem, his hands busy with the machinery of the _Bladud_, in which they were just about to go aloft. "Well, it's like this, I wouldn't be for letting women jine a reg'lar army, but militia's different. They'd get a 'oliday at Government expense. When they come back they'd be more contented-like with their 'omes; and while they was away, well, there...." rubbing his head with a pair of pincers. "And while they were away the men would have a quiet time, eh?" laughed Linton, who had heard of Wilton's family history.