"That is so," assented the Returning Officer. "I'm afraid your vote won't count this time, Mr Hoppett. Good morning!"

There was a roar of delighted laughter from friend and foe, and the fermenting Hoppett was cast forth.

I succeeded in getting back to the hotel for ten minutes at luncheon-time. Dolly met me--pale, sleepless, but unbeaten.

"The doctor is with her just now," she said. "She has been in fearful pain, poor kiddy; but he has given her a drug of some sort, and she is easier now."

"Couldn't I see her, just a moment?" I said wistfully.

"The answer to that question, sir," replied Dolly, "is in the negative."

We both smiled resolutely at this familiar tag, and Dolly concluded--

"Kitty is lying down. I made her. But she is going to get up when they--I mean----"

I detected a curious confusion in her voice.

"When what?" I asked.

"Nothing."

I surveyed my sister-in-law uneasily

"Are they expecting--a crisis, then?"

"Yes--a sort of a one."

"When?"

Dolly seemed to consider.

"About five," she said.

"Hadn't I better be near, in case----?"

"Where are you to be this afternoon?"

"Hunnable."

Dolly nodded her head reflectively.

"When can you be back?" she asked.

"I can do it by five, I should think."

"That will be soon enough. The doctor said that if--you were wanted, it would be about then. Good-bye, old gentleman!"

"Good-bye, Dolly! Mind you go to bed." (We seem to have spent a large portion of that twenty-four hours urging each other to go to bed.)

Then I went back to work.

Polling had been brisk during the dinner-hour, and both Cash and Robin considered that we were doing fairly well. Things would be slack at Stoneleigh itself during the afternoon, and the obvious and politic course now was to drive over to the fishing village of Hunnable--I had only time for one, and this was the most considerable--and catch my marine constituents as they emerged from the ocean, Proteus-like, between three and four o'clock.

I did so, and for the space of an hour and a half I solicited the patronage of innumerable tarry mariners, until their horny hands had filled up the voting-papers and my own smelt to heaven of fish.

It was a quarter to five, and dark, before I escaped from the attentions of a small but pertinacious group of inquirers who wanted to understand my exact attitude on the question of trawling within the three-mile limit, and proceeded at a hand-gallop back to Stoneleigh. (That odoriferous but popular vehicle, the motor-car, was still in the preceded-by-a-man-ten-yards-in-front-bearing-a-red-flag stage in those days, and we had to rely on that antiquated but much more reliable medium of transport, the horse.) The snow lay very heavily in places, and our progress was not over-rapid. Moreover, passing the central Committee Rooms on my way to the hotel, I was stopped and haled within to conciliate various wobblers, and another twenty minutes of precious time sped. But I stuck to my determination to let nothing interfere with duty that day, and I argued with free-thinkers and pump-handled bemused supporters until all was settled and Cash said I might go.

Still, it was nearer six than five when my panting horses drew up at the Cathedral Arms.

There was no Dolly to receive me this time, but at the top of the stairs leading to our rooms I met the doctor. He was accompanied by a grey-haired, kind-eyed old gentleman in a frock-coat, with "London Specialist" written all over him. It was Sir James Fordyce.

"Well?" I asked feverishly as I shook hands.

The two men motioned me into the sitting-room, and Farquharson said, in a curiously uncertain fashion--

"Mr Inglethwaite, we have done a thing which should not, properly, have been done without your consent. Your secretary suggested the idea, and I agreed. Mrs Inglethwaite made a point of our saying nothing to you, and volunteered to take all responsibility on herself. She said you were not to be worried. So I wired for Sir James----"

"I see," I said, "and he operated?"

"Yes, at three o'clock this afternoon. Indeed, your sister-in-law, I think, purposely concealed from you----"

"She did." That, then, was the "crisis" that Dolly had in her mind, and that, too, was why she had told me to come back at five--when everything would be well over!

I continued--

"And how have you--I mean--is she----?"

"The operation," said the old man, "was entirely successful, and, as it turned out, most necessary. But of course for so young a patient the strain was terrible."

"How is she?"

"She came through finely, but I do not conceal from you the fact that her life hangs by a thread."

I had a premonition that something was going to be "broken" to me. I dropped into a chair, and waited dully. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder, and Sir James continued--

"Just weakness, you understand! Her exhaustion when she came out of the chloroform was extreme, but every moment now is in our favour. Children have such extraordinary recuperative power."

He was speaking in the usual cheery tones of the bedside optimist. I raised my head.

"Tell me straight, Sir James--will the child live?"

The old man's grip on my shoulder tightened just for a moment, and when he spoke it was in an entirely unprofessional voice.

"Thanks to two of the bravest and most devoted of women," he said, "I think she will."

I dropped my head into my hands.

"Please God!" I murmured brokenly.