‘I don’t think I’ve thanked you half enough,’ he said at length, ‘for what you did on Friday night.’

‘Yes, more than enough,’ was the reply.

’You make little of it, but it’s a thing very few women would have done.  And it was hard for you, because you’re a lady.’

‘No less a woman,’ murmured Adela, her head bowed.

’And a good woman—­I believe with all my heart.  I want to ask you to forgive me—­for things I once said to you.  I was a brute.  Perhaps if I had been brought up in the same kind of way that you were—­that’s the difference between us, you see.  But try if you can to forget it.  I’ll never think anything but good of you as long as I live.’

She could not reply, for a great sob was choking her.  She pressed his band; the tears broke from her eyes as she turned away.

It being Sunday afternoon, visitors were admitted to the hospital in which Alice lay.  Mutimer had allowed himself time to pass five minutes by his sister’s bedside on the way to Clerkenwell.  Alice was still unconscious; she lay motionless, but her lips muttered unintelligible words.  He bent over her and spoke, but she did not regard him.  It was perhaps the keenest pain Mutimer had ever known to look into those eyes and meet no answering intelligence.  By close listening he believed he heard her utter the name of her husband.  It was useless to stay; he kissed her and left the ward.

On his arrival at Clerkenwell Green—­a large triangular space which merits the name of Green as much as the Strand—­he found a considerable gathering already assembled about the cart from which he was to speak.  The inner circle consisted of his friends—­some fifty who remained staunch in their faith.  Prominent among them was the man Redgrave, he who had presented the address when Mutimer took leave of his New Wanley workpeople.  He had come to London at the same time as his leader, and had done much to recommend Mutimer’s scheme in the East End.  His muscular height made those about him look puny.  He was red in the face with the excitement of abusing Mutimer’s enemies, and looked as if nothing would please him better than to second words with arguments more cogent.  He and those about him hailed the agitator’s appearance with three ringing cheers.  A little later came a supporter whom Richard had not expected to see—­ Mr. Westlake.  Only this morning intelligence of what was going on had reached his ears.  At once he had scouted the accusations as incredible; he deemed it a duty to present himself on Mutimer’s side.  Outside this small cluster was an indefinable mob, a portion of it bitterly hostile, a part indifferent; among the latter a large element of mere drifting blackguardism, the raff of a city, anticipating with pleasure an uproar which would give them unwonted opportunities of violence and pillage.  These gentle men would with equal zeal declare for Mutimer or his opponents, as the fortune of the day directed them.