"Ah! so it becomes a simple matter of official duty. Thank you for explaining it to me." Then suddenly the blood rushed up into her face. "Oh, Dr Dudley," she said impulsively, "what a brute I am to laugh and jest the moment I have turned my back on a tragedy like that!" "And why?" he asked. "Do not the laughter and jesting, like the flowers and the sunshine, show that the heart of things is not all tragedy? If you and I could not laugh a little, in sheer healthy human reaction from too near a view of the seamy side of life, I think we should go mad; don't you?" "Yes," she said earnestly. "I think it is a great mistake to encourage mere feeling beyond the point where it serves as a motive. As we say in physiology that the optimum stimulus is the one that produces the maximum contraction; so the optimum feeling is not the maximum feeling, but the one that produces the maximum of action. Maggie is as safe with you as if she had fallen into the hands of her guardian angel. There is but little I can do, as the law does not permit us, even under strong provocation, to wring the necks of our fellow-men; but I will see Jenny to-morrow, and arrange about making the fellow contribute to the support of the child. Do you think you and I need to be afraid of an innocent laugh if it chances to come in our way?" Dudley spoke simply and naturally, without realising how his sympathetic chivalrous words would appeal to a woman who loved her own sex. Mona tried to thank him, but the words would not come, so with an instinct that was half that of a woman, half that of a child, she looked up and paid him the compliment of the tears for which she blushed. It was then that Dudley understood for the first time all the possibilities of Mona's beauty, and realised that the face of the woman he loved was as potter's clay in the grasp of a beautiful soul. He held out his hand without a word, and left the shop. CHAPTER XLIII. "MITHER!" The clear sky was obscured by driving clouds, and the night was darkening fast, as Mona walked up and down the draughty little station, waiting for the arrival of Jenny's train. The prospect of a long walk across the bleak open country, with a heartrending tale to tell on the way, was not an inviting one, and Mona had serious thoughts of hiring a conveyance; but that would have been the surest method of attracting attention to herself and Jenny, so she reluctantly relinquished the idea. The train was very late, and the wind seemed to rise higher every minute; but at last the whistle was heard, and in a few moments more Jenny's quaint old figure alighted from a grimy third-class carriage, and proceeded with difficulty to "rax doun" the basket and bundle from the high seat.