But though she had resolved not to think about either of them, that was one of those resolutions which in the very nature of things cannot be kept, and afterwards when this business of returning his gifts was over, and she sat down with her piece of needlework, she could not keep her mind off them. But now, so far from vindictiveness being there, it was rather pity, pity deep and sincere, that filled it. Terrible though the practical result had been, bitter and deadly as was the blow dealt at the man whom she loved better than anyone else in the world, what other course had been open? Madge and Evelyn had found they loved each other, and that being so, how infinitely more wretched must any attempt to disregard or stifle that have proved! The thought of the girl as Philip's wife secretly loving another was a situation which she knew well was far more terrible than this, far more rotten, far more insecure. There the foundation of their lives would be founded on a lie, their house would be built over a volcano which might break out and overwhelm with fire and burning the fabric that was reared upon it. At the best, what happiness could there be in it, and how could it be a home in any true sense? And since they two loved, what essential good was served by their waiting to join themselves together? Convention certainly would be shocked at the suddenness of it all, but Mrs. Home found as she thought about it that she, personally, was not. For what was Madge to do? Go home and continue to live with her mother? She herself knew Lady Ellington fairly well, and she knew that no girl could possibly stand it. So her resolve not to think about them at all had ended in this, that she thought about them with only pity for what in the inscrutable decrees of God had, so to speak, been forced on them. That necessity she deplored with all her heart, for it was pierced as it had never been pierced before with sorrow for her son, but even in these early hours of her knowledge of the tragedy, she could not blame them. Then, half-ashamed of her infirmity of purpose, she went quietly to the post-box, and took out the package she had just done up, and instead of sending it, locked it up.