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276 you for your counsels of prudence; I think they are quite—quite excellent. But supposing you could put the clock of years back, and live your life over again, do you suppose you would do differently?"

The allusion to Madge's past life went unnoticed by both now. Lucia had not, in spite of the severe handling of an hour before, thought of any embarrassment that might attend its reintroduction.

"I suppose I should not do differently," said Madge; "but when I was forty-two again, I suppose I should be again sorry for not having done differently. And—and you may be sorry before," she added.

"You mean I am not so clever as you?" asked Lucia.

"I mean nothing of the sort. I mean you may be better than me. And I tell you—worldly disaster may be avoided; if you are clever you will probably avoid it. But there is damage beyond that. You can maim and scarify yourself, the essential you. I have done so, and when that is brought home to me, as somehow it has been to-night, I hate myself, as David hated the blind and the maim. I hate my soul. Don't laugh at me till I have gone. Even then I shall feel it all down my back."

Lucia smiled at her, quite untroubled.

"I shall not laugh at you at all," she said. "On the contrary, I think it is all rather sad, and you have given me just a touch of the blues. And I am dreadfully sorry for you. It must dreadful to feel, when you are only just forty, that you wish you had acted consistently otherwise, and that it is too late. Can't you get over that, put it behind you? It can do no good: it must be both unpleasant and useless, so that there is no excuse for its existence. And it was dear of you to have warned me. I think some of the things you said were excellent—quite excellent. I shall follow some of your advice. I might even go for a short cruise with Edgar in the Mediterranean, all alone. That would be a splendid insurance policy, would it not?"

Madge did not answer directly, but she gave a little shiver, and drove the poker into the heart of the fire.

"It is cold to-night," she said.

Lucia's dramatic sense was always quick, and she received a very poignant dramatic impression at these words. Poor Madge! the fire was beginning to burn not so warmly in her life, and, alas for her, there was no possibility of making it blaze afresh