"Poor Mr. Dennison," she said, "I was so sorry for him at breakfast when he said he thought we had heard the last of Evelyn. I am always sorry for people who put their foot in it. But I suppose that would be the middle-class view of poor Madge's marriage. It is easy to see that Mr. Dennison is not quite a gentleman." This was so calm and glorious a disregard of all that she had previously said, thought, and felt, that the very completeness of it roused Gladys's admiration. Lady Ellington took her previous attitude off, like a pair of gloves, just threw it into the gutter, and walked on. Gladys knew it must have been Lady Dover's pronouncement that had caused this change, for she too was aware that the social Greenwich time was largely taken from Glen Callan, and had made a mental note, just as Madge's mother had done, that she must also alter her own time by this. It clearly would be too ridiculous if all London welcomed them back with open arms, and only Madge's family turned their backs on her. But she had a certain Puck-like sense of malice, particularly when she could exercise it on Lady Ellington, and she could not resist a little tap or two now. "I am so glad you take it like that," she said, "and see it as Lady Dover does. At first, you know, I thought you were being too bitter about it, and really, to tell you the truth, I had no idea that you were taking Madge's part. Dear Madge; I hope they will ask her soon, while I am still here." "Of course I was bitter about it at first," said Lady Ellington. "Who could help being, when all my plans were upset, and poor Philip Home was suffering too? I was more sorry for him than for anybody else. I had to tell him, you know, and had a terrible interview with him. But I soon saw that since Madge was not in love with him, but with Evelyn, it was a thousand times better that we should all suffer that purely temporary disturbance and worry than that she should be in the dreadfully false position of being married to one man while she was in love with another." Gladys purred a rather feline approval. "How glad dear Madge must have been when you told her how you felt," she said. "I wish I had been there when you made it up with her. Who is it who says something about the 'blessings on the falling out which all the more endears'; it must have been quite like that." Lady Ellington met this as well as she could, though it was rather awkward. "Yes, I think Madge will be perfectly happy," she said, "now she finds that everyone is quite as nice as ever to her." "Dear Madge, I never felt different to her," said Gladys rather imprudently. Lady Ellington jumped on to this with extraordinary quickness and precision. "Ah, I am glad to know that," she said, "because I now also know that Lady Taverner must have simply invented a quantity of things that she said you had said to her about it. I felt sure you could not have been so unkind."