"How lovely those lights on the hillside are," said Lady Dover, in parenthesis. "Mr. Dennison ought to see them before he settles on the subject of his next picture. Yes, about Madge. I don't know what other people think about it all, I only know what I think, and I am sure Dover agrees with me. It was a love match, was it not? What more do you want? Of course if Mr. Home had been a duke and Madge a girl without any position----" "You mean it is just a question of degree?" asked Lady Ellington. "Ah, my dear--er--Margaret," said Lady Dover, with a certain intonation of relief, because she was sure that her excellent memory had not played her false, "everything is a question of degree; there is nothing in the world into which circumstances, mitigating or the reverse, do not enter. How beautiful the rowan-berries are, I wish Mr. Dennison could see them. They would work into his foreground so well. I must take him to the end of the terrace to-morrow. Yes; but the mitigating circumstances are here so strong. She threw over Mr. Home, who is charming--I met him twice last year at dinner somewhere, and we asked him to lunch, only he could not come--and has married a man who is charming also, with whom she fell in love. How vivid his portraits are, too; I am going to be painted by him next spring, if he can find time. Almost too vivid, perhaps; they seem to jump out on you. But that is my view about the whole question. Supposing she had married Mr. Home, and had fallen in love afterwards! That sort of tragedy is so dreadful; such extraordinary cleverness is required to avoid all the horror of publicity. I could never survive publicity." "But there is publicity as it is," said Lady Ellington. "Poor Madge! What will people think of her? And of me?" Lady Dover throughout this conversation had given justification after justification for the importance that Lady Ellington attached to her verdict. She gave more now. "There is publicity, it is true," she said; "but no sense of respectability has been offended. Of her, they will think that she fell in love and followed her instincts. Of you, they will think that you tried, like an excellent mother, to secure an excellent match for your daughter, but that your daughter chose for herself." Lady Dover's serene face grew a shade more shrewd. "You see, she has not married Tom or Dick or James," she said. "Mr. Dundas, in fact, is a sufficiently important person. Was it that you meant, by the way, by saying it was a question of degree? I don't know what his income is; it may be precarious. But he has great talent. And talent happens to be rather fashionable. I daresay it is only a phase, but after all one wants, if the sacrifice of no principle is involved, to be abreast with the world."