Judith was silent for a long moment.
"No," she said. "No, you have made it easier." She looked at him: at the rain-dark shoulders and the scar and the tired, brown, stubborn face. "Captain Leventhorpe, there is something I ought to have told you in this room a fortnight ago, and did not. I have been computing the moon's places for the Nautical Almanac, under my father's name, for two years since he died, and for some years before that while he was living. Every Penrose sheet that has gone into Kennington since the year fifteen has been mine. That is how I knew about the sign. I have lost it myself, at three in the morning, more than once, and been fined for it." She drew a breath. "Your uncle means to stand up before the Commissioners and say that I am a fraud. I am not. But I have been deceiving the Board, and if he says so he will be telling the truth. So I think I had better say it first."
Mrs. Gage, in the doorway, made a small sound. Captain Leventhorpe did not move.
"You will lose the work," he said at last.
"I expect so."
"And they will say, all of them, that a woman who has deceived the Board for two years is not to be believed upon a sign."
"They may say it. But they will have to say it after they have looked at the board." She stood up, and found that her knees, once again, held her up perfectly well. "And you will tell them about the Abrolhos. And Mr. Oakes, if he will come, will tell them what my sheets are worth. And then, sir, I shall ask for the chalk."
He looked at her for a long time, the look she remembered from the fourth bench, of a man raising a light he had not expected.
"I think," he said, "I had better bring you some of your own. I don't trust the Institution's. It squeaks."
* * *
On Thursday the third of April the lecture theatre was not full. The Council had meant it to be a small and private meeting, and had sent out perhaps forty notices. But London had heard of it, as London heard of everything, and by a quarter to twelve there were some hundred and fifty people on the benches, and more in the gallery, and the porter had given up trying to tell Fellows from their friends.
Judith sat on the front bench this time, because she had been invited. On her left was Mrs. Gage, in the new bonnet, very upright, with the expression of a woman going to the scaffold in good millinery. On her right was Mr. Josiah Oakes, in a