At the end of the room, behind a small table, stood a woman, still young, dressed in a tailor-made suit of masculine pattern and cut. Her hair was pretty in color and texture, but it was cut almost close, and just touched the collar of her covert coat. She wore a bowler hat, her gloves were on the table in front of her—thick, dogskin gloves, like a man's. She held a roll of paper in her hand, which was bare of rings, though feminine enough in size and shape. A pince-nez was balanced on her nose, and her chin—really a pretty chin—was held high in an aggressive manner.
Nell had an idea that this was Lady Wolfer, and she edged as close to the wall as she could, and watched and listened to the speaker with a natural curiosity and anxiety.
"To conclude," the orator was saying, with a wave of the roll of paper and a jerk of the chin, "to conclude, we are banded together to wage a war against our old tyrant—a war of equity and right. Oh, my sisters, do not let us falter, do not let us return the sword to the scabbard until we have cleaved our way to that goal toward which the eyes of suffering womanhood have been drawn since the gospel of equal rights for both sexes sounded its first evangel!"
It was evidently the close, the peroration, of the speech; there was a burst of applause, much clapping of hands, and immediately afterward a kind of stampede to some tables, behind which a couple of footmen were preparing to dispense light refreshments.
Nell, much mystified, and rather shy and frightened, remained where she was; and she was just upon the point of inquiring for Lady Wolfer, when the recent speaker came down the room, talking with one and another of the presumably less hungry mob, and catching sight of Nell's slight and rather shrinking figure, advanced toward her.
"This is a new disciple, I suppose," she said, smiling through her eyeglasses.
"I—I wish to see Lady Wolfer," said Nell, trying not to blush.
"I am Lady Wolfer," said the youngish lady with the short hair and mannish suit; and she spoke in a gentler voice than Nell would have been inclined to credit her with.
"I am—I am Nell Lorton."
Lady Wolfer looked puzzled for a moment; then she laughed and held out her hand.