uting from Mr. Fox-Moore. Not merely because with the full weight of
his authority he would most assuredly have forbidden it, but because of
a nervous prefiguring on his wife's part of the particular things he
would say, and the particular way he would look in setting his
extinguisher on the enterprise.

Vida, from the first, had never explained or excused herself to him, so
that when he asked at luncheon what she was going to do with this fine
Sunday afternoon, she had simply smiled, and said, 'Oh, I have a tryst
to keep.'

It was her sister who added anxiously, 'Is Wood leading now at the
Queen's Hall Concerts?' And so, without actually committing herself to a
lie, gave the impression that music was to be their quest.

An hour later, while the old man was nursing his gout by the library
window, he saw the ladies getting into a hansom. In spite of the
inconvenience to his afflicted member he got up and opened the window.

'Don't tell me you're doing anything so rational--you two--as going to a
concert.'

'Why do you say that? You know I never like to take the horses out on
Sunday----'

'Rubbish! You think a dashing, irresponsible hansom is more in keeping
with the Factory Girls' Club or some giddy Whitechapel frivolity!'

Mrs. Fox-Moore gave her sister a look of miserable apprehension; but the
younger woman laughed and waved a hand. She knew that, even more than
the hansom, their 'get up' had given them away. It must be confessed she
had felt quite as strongly as her sister that it wouldn't do to be
recognized at a Suffragette meeting. Even as a nameless 'fine lady'
standing out from a mob of the dowdy and the dirty, to be stared at by
eyes however undiscerning, under circumstances so questionable, would be
distinctly distasteful.

So, reversing the order of Nature, the butterfly had retired into a
'grubby' state. In other words, Vida had put on the plainest of her
discarded mourning-gowns. From a small Tuscan straw travelling-toque,
the new maid, greatly wondering at such instructions, had extracted an
old paste buckle and some violets, leaving it 'not fit to be seen.' In
spite of having herself taken these precautions, Vida had broken into
uncontrollable smiles at the apparition of Mrs. Fox-Moore, asking with
pride--

'Will I do? I look quite like a Woman of the People, don't I?'

The unconscious humour of the manifestation filled Miss Levering with an
uneasy merriment every time she turned her eyes that