"And this, too," she said, "you must consider. How can you help Mr. Dundas not to feel bitter and resentful, for he has more direct cause to feel it than you, if you have that sort of thought in your heart? You will be unable to help him, in the one way in which you perhaps can, if you feel like that. Also, dear, supposing any one of us, Dover, I, Mr. Osborne, had to become either Mr. Dundas or Lord Ellington, do you think any of us could hesitate a moment? Do you not see that of all the people who have been made miserable by this terrible accident, which of them must be the most miserable?" Then came the second outward sign from Madge. She took Lady Dover's hand in both of hers. "Don't judge me too hardly," she said. "I spoke very hastily, very wrongly. I have been thinking of my own misery too much; I have not thought enough about poor Evelyn. But I did not know there was such sorrow in the world." Lady Dover looked at her a moment, and drew her gently to a seat behind some bushes. And her own pretty, neat face was suddenly puckered up. "Oh, Madge," she said, "just let yourself go for ten minutes, and cry, my dear, sob your heart out, as they say. Have a good cry, dear; it will do you good. It is not cowardly, that--it helps one, it softens one, and it makes one braver perhaps afterwards. Yes, dear, let it come." And then the fountain of tears was unloosed, and those sobs, those deep sobs which come from the heart of living and suffering men and women, and are a sign and a proof, as it were, of their humanity, poured out. Madge had surrendered, she had ceased to hold herself aloof; brave she had been before, but brave in a sort of impenetrable armour of her own reserve. But now she cast it aside, and the womanhood which her love for Evelyn had begun to wake in her, came to itself and its own, more heroic than it had been before, because the armour was cast aside, and she stood defenceless, but fearless. Before she went up again to Evelyn's room she wrote: MY DEAR ELLINGTON, I had no opportunity of speaking to you---- Then her pen paused; that was not quite honest, and she began again: I ought to have just seen you before you went yesterday, and I must ask your pardon that I did not. I just want to say this, that I am more sorry for you than I can possibly tell you, and I ask you to say to yourself, and to keep on saying to yourself, that it was in no way your fault. Also perhaps you may like to know how entirely I recognise that, and so, I know, will he. You will wish, of course, to hear about him. He is going on very well, though up to now they have kept him under morphia. He will be quite blind, though. We must all try to make that affliction as light as possible for him. And I want so much to make you promise not to blame yourself. Please don't; there is no blame. It was outside the control of any of us.