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270 "What does that matter?" asked Madge, "since you are not in love with him? Lies, slanders are always still-born. It is the unfortunate circumstance of guilt that hangs people. You have only got to do nothing, and—and before long there is quiet little funeral of all such gossip. Nobody attends it; it is no longer interesting. And even if you are guilty, you must remember you have to be found out before they hang you."

Lucia again cleared a broader space for her elbows, knocking a wine-glass over, that broke into splinters on the cloth. But she was quite unconscious of it; she knew only of some deep-seated uneasiness of mind that suddenly felt lonely and called for companionship.

"Yes, but this isn't lies," she said quietly. "I said it was One always does at first, I imagine. Didn't you?"

Lady Heron got up with rather a terrible look in her face tha frightened Lucia.

"You are rather strange and mysterious," she said. "At one moment you tell me you are not in love with Charlie; at the very next you say you are. And then you proceed to ask me whether I have not done the same under similar circumstances."

Lucia tried to interrupt, but Madge stopped her by a little contemptuous gesture of her hand.

"I assure you I don't care in the least what your relations with Charlie are. But when you assume that I have been in the same position, and have—well, equivocated about it, you commit a gross impertinence. You have never asked me about my life; I have never spoken of it to you; and it is obvious you have been listening to gossip about me, and believing it, assuming it was true. You may do that to your heart's content, but it is a little too much that you should refer it to me. Now, I am older than you, and I give you a word of warning. You have done wonderful things in London; you are right up at the very top; but so far from that making you safe, it makes the greatest care necessary. I am not speaking now of your private relations—or the absence of them—with Charlie; I am speaking of what you have just said to me. It was a great mistake to say that; it is the sort of thing that wrecks people. It's lucky it is to me that you said it. Do you understand? You may be Messalina, if you choose, but—I am going to speak very plainly—you must not be a cad."

Lucia listened at first in mere astonishment and bewilderment, then gradually it dawned upon her that Madge was quite right. Those two little words, "Didn't you?" she saw to have been