Farquharson spoke to a silent House, a House which hung upon his words. But suddenly from the distance another noise made itself heard--cries, shouting and disturbance. Evelyn and those about her did not take the interruption seriously at first. Yet presently it penetrated to the body of the House; Members broke free from the spell of Farquharson's words and turned, uneasily aware that some important matter was in progress.
The shouts concentrated, then reached even to the gallery. One or two Members left their places, attendants were seen hurrying, now at the gallery door, and again in the lobby below that immediately faced the Ladies' Gallery. Farquharson went on speaking, apparently unmoved, but he had lost his hold upon his hearers. Every eye was turned away from him in the direction of a white-faced member of the Government who, at Beadon's direction, handed him a slip of paper.
Outside the House the noise reached its climax, the shouting of an angry mob at bay. Evelyn saw other Members come back hurriedly; there were whispered colloquies between separate members of the Opposition; the Irish benches were almost deserted. Then suddenly Beadon rose to his feet, catching convulsively his collar; he flung his hands up, with an inarticulate cry, and fell down as though he had been shot.
Evelyn heard the outside cry taken up again by those within the House itself, and saw peace broken visibly as though an earthquake had rent the whole assembly. Farquharson had leapt to Beadon's side, and was bending over him; for a moment the business of the House was set aside in the sense of imminent personal disaster. Impervious to private sorrow, the Leader of the Irish Party sprang upon his feet, gesticulating and pointing at the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. And Evelyn saw the men of his own party turn to look at Farquharson as though they could not trust the evidence of their own eyes; she saw him break and falter as the word "traitor" rang through the House.
In the Speaker's Gallery, confusion, horror; in the Peeresses' Gallery, a flash of light as women in evening dress rose hurriedly from their seats; in the Strangers' Gallery, a murmur of comment and dissension; the body of the House, convulsed with new and overwhelming emotion, collapsing like a house of cards.