However, her quiet voice was somewhat unsteady and hoarse when she spoke to Madelon on the threshold of the outer door, although the words were still gently formal.

"I am grateful to you for the interest you take in my son," she said; "I hope you will not excite yourself so much that you will be ill." "I will die if that can save him," answered Madelon Hautville, and went down the snowy steps over the terraces.
Elvira Gordon, when she had closed the door, drew the bolt softly.
Truth was, she thought the girl had gone mad through grief and love for her son.

Believing, as she did, that the love was all unsought and unreturned, and being also shocked in all her delicate decorum by such unmaidenly violence and self-betrayal, she regarded Madelon with a strange mixture of scorn and sympathy and fear.
Moreover, not one word did she believe of Madelon's assertion that she herself was guilty.

"She is accusing herself to save my son," thought Elvira Gordon, and her heart seemed to leap after the girl with half-shamed gratitude, in spite of her astonishment and terror, as she watched her go out of the yard and across the road to Lot Gordon's house.

Mrs.Gordon stood at one of the narrow lights beside her front door and watched until Madelon entered the opposite house; then she went hastily through her fine sitting-room to her own bedroom, and there went down on her knees, and all her icy constraint melted into a very passion of weeping and prayer.