Mrs. Fetherel frowned impatiently.  “How absurd!  They’ve no right to use my picture as a poster!”

“There’s our train,” said Hynes; and they began to push their way through the crowd surging toward one of the inner doors.

As they stood wedged between circumferent shoulders, Mrs. Fetherel became conscious of the fixed stare of a pretty girl who whispered eagerly to her companion:  “Look Myrtle!  That’s Paula Fetherel right behind us—­I knew her in a minute!”

“Gracious—­where?” cried the other girl, giving her head a twist which swept her Gainsborough plumes across Mrs. Fetherel’s face.

The first speaker’s words had carried beyond her companion’s ear, and a lemon-colored woman in spectacles, who clutched a copy of the “Journal of Psychology” on one drab-cotton-gloved hand, stretched her disengaged hand across the intervening barrier of humanity.

“Have I the privilege of addressing the distinguished author of ‘Fast and Loose’?  If so, let me thank you in the name of the Woman’s Psychological League of Peoria for your magnificent courage in raising the standard of revolt against—­”

“You can tell us the rest in the car,” said a fat man, pressing his good-humored bulk against the speaker’s arm.

Mrs. Fetherel, blushing, embarrassed and happy, slipped into the space produced by this displacement, and a few moments later had taken her seat in the train.

She was a little late, and the other chairs were already filled by a company of elderly ladies and clergymen who seemed to belong to the same party, and were still busy exchanging greetings and settling themselves in their places.

One of the ladies, at Mrs. Fetherel’s approach, uttered an exclamation of pleasure and advanced with outstretched hand.  “My dear Mrs. Fetherel!  I am so delighted to see you here.  May I hope you are going to the unveiling of the chantry window?  The dear Bishop so hoped that you would do so!  But perhaps I ought to introduce myself.  I am Mrs. Gollinger”—­she lowered her voice expressively—­“one of your uncle’s oldest friends, one who has stood close to him through all this sad business, and who knows what he suffered when he felt obliged to sacrifice family affection to the call of duty.”

Mrs. Fetherel, who had smiled and colored slightly at the beginning of this speech, received its close with a deprecating gesture.

“Oh, pray don’t mention it,” she murmured.  “I quite understood how my uncle was placed—­I bore him no ill will for feeling obliged to preach against my book.”

“He understood that, and was so touched by it!  He has often told me that it was the hardest task he was ever called upon to perform—­and, do you know, he quite feels that this unexpected gift of the chantry window is in some way a return for his courage in preaching that sermon.”

Mrs. Fetherel smiled faintly.  “Does he feel that?”

“Yes; he really does.  When the funds for the window were so mysteriously placed at his disposal, just as he had begun to despair of raising them, he assured me that he could not help connecting the fact with his denunciation of your book.”