“I know you don’t mean that for a hit at me,” said her friend; “though you may perhaps think a woman with so much to do must neglect her children. Madeline is every bit as bad as Rosamond, my dear. They mean no harm either of them. They want, poor darlings, to work for their living and to see life. It is a pity their brothers don’t share their youthful fancies. The boys prefer to do nothing, and the kind of life they see is not very desirable. But by the blessing of Providence nothing very dreadfully bad comes of it either way. The girls find that they have to marry and settle down, like their mothers before them; and the boys--well, the boys! oh, they come out of it somehow at the end.” And to the great amazement of Evelyn, this woman of the world, this busy idler and frivolous fine lady suddenly fell into a low outburst of crying, as involuntary as it was unexpected, saying, amid her tears: “Oh, please God, please God, they will all come through at the end!” Mrs. Rowland was a woman who had known a great deal of trouble, but when she was thus the witness of her friend’s unsuspected pain, she said to herself that she was an ignorant woman and knew nothing. She had not believed there was anything serious at all, not to say anguish and martyrdom, in Madeline Leighton’s life. She held her friend in her arms for a moment, and they kissed each other; but Evelyn did not ask any question. Perhaps Lady Leighton thought she had told her everything, perhaps she had that instinctive sense that everybody must know, which belongs to the class who are accustomed to have their movements chronicled, and all they do known. For she offered no explanation, but only said, as she raised her head from Evelyn’s shoulder and dried her eyes, with a little tremulous laugh in which the tears still lingered, “I am as sure of that as I am that I live. If we didn’t think so, half of us would die.” Not two minutes after this she returned to the charge again about the house in Chester Street. “Will you really not think of it again, Evelyn? It would be such a pleasure to have you near: and, my dear, I should never say a word about any Platonic diversion that amused you. On the contrary, I’d flirt with Mr. Rowland and keep him off the scent.--Oh, let me laugh: I must laugh after I have cried. Well, if you have decided, I don’t mind saying that you are quite as well out of Ned Saumarez’s way. Sending the girl to see you was a very serious step. And he is a man that will stick at nothing. Perhaps it is all the better that you are going away.” “That is the strongest argument you could use,” said Evelyn, “to keep me here.”