Madge sat silent, looking at Churchill's letter till every word seemed to burn itself into her brain. The firm, straight hand, the letters long and narrow, and a little pointed—something like that wonderful writing of Joseph Addison's—how well she knew it! 'And yet he _must_ have been agitated,' thought Madge. 'Even his quiet force of character could not stand against such a shock as this. After what he said to me, too, last Sunday—to think that wealth and position should have come to him so suddenly. There seems something awful in it.' Lady Cheshunt had quite recovered her habitual gaiety by this time, and dismissed James Penwyn's death as a subject that was done with for the moment, merely expressing her intention of reading the details of the event in the newspapers at her leisure. 'And so, my dear Madge, Mr. Penwyn wrote to you immediately,' she said. 'Doesn't that look _rather_ as if there were some kind of understanding between you?' 'There was no understanding between us, Lady Cheshunt, except that I could never be Mr. Penwyn's wife while he was a poor man. He understood that perfectly. I told him in the plainest, hardest words, like a woman of the world as I am.' 'You needn't say that so contemptuously, Madge. I'm a woman of the world, and I own it without a blush. What's the use of living in the world if you don't acquire worldly wisdom? It's like living ever so long in a foreign country without learning the language, and implies egregious stupidity. And so you told Churchill Penwyn that you couldn't marry him on account of his poverty! and you pledged yourself to wait ten or twenty years for him, I suppose, and refuse every decent offer for his sake?' 'No, Lady Cheshunt, I promised nothing.' 'Well, my dear, Providence has been very good to you: for, no doubt, if Mr. Penwyn had remained poor you'd have made a fool of yourself sooner or later for his sake, and gone to live in Bloomsbury, where even I couldn't have visited you, on account of my servants. One might get over that sort of thing one's self, but coachmen are so particular where they wait.' Her ladyship rattled on for another quarter of an hour, promised Madge to come and stay at Penwyn Manor with her by and by, congratulated Viola on her sister's good fortune, hoped that her dear Madge would make a point of spending the season in London when she became Mrs. Penwyn; while Madge sat unresponsive, hardly listening to this flow of commonplace, but thinking how awful fortune was when it came thus suddenly, and had death for its herald. She felt relieved when Lady Cheshunt gathered up her silken train for the last time, and went rustling downstairs to the elegant Victoria which appeared far too fairy-like a vehicle to contain that bulky matron. 'Thank Heaven she's gone!' cried Madge. 'How she does talk!' 'Yes, dear, but she is always kind,' pleaded Viola, 'and so fond of you.'