When Ghost Meets Ghost

by William De Morgan

PART II

CHAPTER I

MICKY'S AUNT, WHO HAD A COLD. MASCHIL THE CHIEF MUSICIAN, AND DOEG THE EDOMITE. A SUNDAY-RAPTURE. THE BEER. HOW MISS JULIA HAWKINS THOUGHT THE GLASS A FRAUD. HOW MICKY DELIVERED HIS MESSAGE. A CONDITIONAL OFFER OF MARRIAGE. JANUS HIS BASKET. ALETHEA'S AUNT TREBILCOCK. A SHREWD AND HOOKY KITTEN WHO GOT OUT. HER MAJESTY'S HORSE-SLAUGHTERER. OF A LEAN LITTLE GIRL. HER BROTHER'S NOSE. HOW MR. WIX KNOCKED AT AUNT M'RIAR'S DOOR. THE CHAIN. HOW AUNT M'RIAR IMPRESSED MR. WIX AS AN IDIOT. WHO WAS THE WOMAN? HOW SHE OPENED THE DOOR FOR MICKY'S SAKE, AND LOOKED HARD AT HER HUSBAND. HIS LAWFUL WIFE! SCRIPTURE READINGS IN HELL. HOW SHE WENT TO FETCH ALL THE MONEY SHE HAD IN THE HOUSE. HOW MR. WIX CAPTURED UNCLE MO'S OLD WATCH. HOW AUNT M'RIAR TRIPPED UNCLE MO UP

The return of the two young pagans to Sapps Court, and the complete re-establishment of Uncle Mo's household, had to be deferred yet one or two more days, to his great disappointment. On the morning following Aunt M'riar's provisional return, the weather set in wet, and the old boy was obliged to allow that there ought to be a fire in the grate of Aunt M'riar's wrecked bedroom for at least a couple of days before Dolly returned to sleep in it. He attempted a weak protest, saying that his niece was a dry sort of little party that moisture could not injure. But he conceded the point, to be on the safe side.

Aunt M'riar said never a word to him about the message she had received from the convict through the boy Micky, and the answer she had returned. She had not forgotten Uncle Mo's communications with that Police Inspector, and felt confident that her reception of a message from Mr. Wix at his old haunt would soon be known to the latter if she did not keep her counsel about it. The words she used in her heart about it were nearly identical with Hotspur's. Uncle Moses would not utter what he did not know. She had not a thought of blame for Mo, for she knew that her disposition to shield this man was idiosyncrasy—could not in the nature of things be shared, even by old and tried friends.

There was a fine chivalric element about this defensive silence of hers. The man was now nothing to her—dust and ashes, dead and done with! This last phrase was the one her heart used about him—not borrowed from Browning any more than its other speech from Shakespeare. "I've done with him for good and all," said she to herself. "But the Law shall not catch him along o' me." He was vile—vile to her and to all women—but she could bear her own wrong, and she was not bound to fight the battles of others. He was a miscreant and a felon, the mere blood on those hands was not his worst moral stain. He was foul from the terms of his heritage of life, with the superadded foulness of the galleys. But she had loved him once, and he was her husband.

Micky kept his word, going over to his great-aunt the following Sunday; to oblige, as he said. Mrs. Treadwell had a cold, and was confined to the house; but the boy was a welcome visitor. "There now, Michael," said she, "I was only just this minute thinking to myself, if Micky was here he could go on reading me the Psalms, where I am, instead of me putting my eyes out. For the sight is that sore and inflamed, and my glasses getting that wore out from being seen through so much, that I can't hardly make out a word."

Micky's only misgivings on his visits to Aunt Elizabeth Jane were connected with a Family Bible to which his old relative was devoted, and with her disposition to make him read the Psalms aloud. Neither of them attached any particular meaning to the text; she being contented with its religious aura and fitness for Sunday, and he absorbed in the detection of correct pronunciation by spelling, a syllable at a time. So early an allusion to this affliction disheartened Micky on this occasion, and made him feel that his long walk from Sapps Court had been wasted, so far as his own enjoyment of it was concerned.

"Oh, 'ookey, Arntey," said he dejectedly, "I say now—look here! Shan't I make it Baron Munch Hawson, only just this once?" For his aunt possessed, as well as the Holy Scriptures, a copy of Baron Munchausen's Travels and a Pilgrim's Progress. Conjointly, they were an Institution, and were known as Her Books.

But she resisted the secular spirit. "On Sunday morning, my dear!" she exclaimed, shocked. "How ever you can! Now if on'y your father was to take you to Chapel, instead of such a bad example, see what good it would do you both."

The ounce of influence that Aunt Elizabeth Jane alone possessed told on Michael's stubborn spirit, and he did not contest the point. "Give us the 'Oly Bible!" said he briefly. "Where's where you was?"

"That's a good boy! Now you just set down and read on where I was. 'To, the, chief, musician,' and the next word's a hard word and you'll have to spell it." For, you see, Aunt Elizabeth Jane's method was to go steadily on with a text, and not distinguish titles and stage directions.

So her nephew, being docile, tackled the fifty-second Psalm, and did not flinch from m, a, s, mass—c, h, i, l, chill; total, Mass-Chill—nor from d, o, do; e, g, hegg; total, Do-Hegg. But when he came to Ahimelech, he gave him up, and had to be told. However, he laboured on through several verses, and the old charwoman listened in what might be called a Sunday-rapture, conscious of religion, but not attaching any definite meaning to the words. As for Micky, he only perceived that David and Saul, Doeg the Edomite, and Ahimelech the Priest, were religious, and therefore bores. He had a general idea that the Psalmist could not keep his hair on. He might have enjoyed the picturesque savagery of the story if Aunt Elizabeth Jane had known it well enough to tell him. But when you read for flavour, and ignore import, the plot has to go to the wall.

Aunt Elizabeth Jane kept her nephew to his unwelcome devotional enterprise until the second "Selah"—a word which always seemed to exasperate him—provoked his restiveness beyond his powers of restraint. "I say, Aunt Betsy," said he, "shan't I see about gettin' in the beer?" This touched a delicate point, for his visit being unexpected, rations were likely to be short.

Some reproof was necessary. "There now, ain't you a tiresome boy, speaking in the middle!" But this was followed by: "Well, my dear, I can't take anything myself, the cold's that heavy on me. But that's no reason against a glass for you, after your walk. On'y I tell you, you'll have to make your dinner off potatoes and a herring, that you will, by reason there's nothing else for you. And all the early shops are shut an hour ago."

Then Michael showed how great his foresight and resource had been. "Bought a mutting line-chop coming along, off of our butcher. Fivepence 'a'pen'y. Plenty for two if you know how to cook it right, and don't cut it to waste." In this he showed a thoughtfulness beyond his years, for the knowledge that the amount of flesh, on any bone, may be doubled—even quadrupled—by the skill of its carver, is rarely found except in veterans.

Aunt Elizabeth Jane paid a tribute of admiration. "My word!" said she, "who ever would have said a boy could! Now you shall cook that chop while I tell you how." So the fifty-second Psalm lapsed, and Michael was at liberty to forget Doeg the Edomite.

But the glass of beer claimed attention first, because it would never do to leave that chop to get cold while he went for it next door. Aunt Elizabeth Jane allowed Michael to take the largest glass, as he had read so good and bought his own chop, and with it he crossed the wall into the garden of The Pigeons, as the story has seen him do before.

Miss Juliarawkins, summoned by a whistle through the keyhole, looked a good deal better in sackcloth and ashes than she had done in several discordant colours. She was going to stop as long as ever she could in mourning for her father, so as to get the wear out of the stuff, and make it of some use. Some connection might die, by good luck. She was one of those that held with making the same sackcloth and ashes do for two.

She looked critically at the rather large tumbler Micky had brought for his beer, and made difficulties about filling of it right up, even with the top. For this was a supply under contract. A glass full was to be paid for as a short half-pint. But as Miss Hawkins truly said, no glass had any call to be half as big as Saint Paul's. Her customer, however, was not to be put off in this way. A glass was a glass, and a half-pint was a half a pint. There was no extry reduction when the glass was undersized. You took the good with the bad.

A voice Micky knew growled from a recess:—"Give the young beggar full measure, Juliar. What he means is, you go by a blooming average."

Miss Hawkins filled up the glass this once, but said:—"You tell your Aunt Treadwell she'll have to keep below the average till Christmas. I never see such a glass!"

Micky was not sorry to find that he could deliver his message direct. He had not hoped to come upon the man himself. He paid for his beer on contract terms, and said confidentially:—"I say, missis, I got a message for him in there."

"Mrs. Treadwell's nephew Michael from next door says he's got a message for you, and you can say if you'll see him. Or not." This was spoken snappishly, as though a coolness were afoot.

The man replied with mock amiability, meant to irritate. "You can send him in here, Juliar. You're open to." But when in compliance with the woman's curt:—"You hear—you can go in," the boy entered the little back-parlour, he turned on him suddenly and fiercely, saying:—"You're the * * * young nark of some damned teck—some * * * copper, by Goard!"

If the boy had flinched before this accusation, which meant that he was a police-spy employed by a detective, he might have repented it. But Micky was no coward, and stood his ground; all the more firmly that he fully grasped the man's precarious position, in the very house where he had been once before captured. He answered resolutely:—"I could snitch upon you this minute, master, if I was to choose. But you aren't no concern of mine, further than I've got a message for you."

"The boy's all safe," said Miss Hawkins briefly, outside. Whereupon the man, after a subsiding growl or two, said:—"You gave the party my message? What had she got to say back again? You may mouth it out and cut your lucky."

Micky gave his message in a plain and business-like manner. "Mrs. Wardle she's back after the accident, and Mrs. Prichard she's in the country, and she don't know where."

"Who don't know where? Mrs. Prichard?"

"Mrs. Wardle. I said you was a-coming to see your mother, onlest the old lady wasn't your mother. Then you shouldn't come."

"What did she say about Skillicks?"

"Said Mrs. Prichard come from Skillickses. Three year agone."

"You hear that, Miss Hawkins?" Mr. Wix seemed pleased, as one who had scored, adding:—"I knew it was the old woman.... Anything else she said?"

Micky appeared to consider his answer; then replied:—"Said I wasn't to split upon you."

"What the Hell does she say that for? She don't know who I am."

Micky considered again, and astutely decided, perceiving his mistake, to say as little as possible about Aunt M'riar's seeming interest in Mr. Wix's safety from the Law. Then he said:—"She don't know nothing about you, but when I says to her the Police was after you, she cuts in sharp, and says, she does, that was no concern o' mine, and I was to say nothing to them, and they wouldn't say nothing to me."

Mr. Wix said, "Rum!" and Miss Hawkins, who had been keeping her ears open close at hand, looked in through the barcasement to say:—"You go there, Wix, and back to gaol you go! I only tell you." And retired, leaving the convict knitting tighter the perplexed scowl on his face. He called after her:—"Come back here, you Juliar!"

"I can hear you."

"What the Devil do you mean?"

"Can't you see for yourself? This woman don't want the boy to get fifty pound. If I was in her shoes, I shouldn't neither." Micky only heard this imperfectly.

"You wouldn't do anything under a hundred, you wouldn't. Good job for me they don't double the amount.... Easy does it, Juliar—only a bit of my fun!" For Miss Hawkins, even as a woman stung by a cruel insult, had shown her flashing eyes, heightened colour, and panting bosom at the bar-opening as before. Mr. Wix seemed gratified. "Pity you don't flare up oftener, Juliar," said he. "You've no idea what a much better woman you look. Damn it, but you do!"

The woman made an effort, and choked her anger. "God forgive you, Wix!" said she, and fell back out of sight. Michael thought he heard her sob. He was not too young to understand this little drama, which took less time to act than to tell.

The convict had lost the thread of his examination, and had to hark back. Why was it, Mrs. Prichard had gone away into the country?... Oh, the house had fallen down, had it? But, then, how came Mrs. Wardle to be living in it still? Because, said Michael, it was only the wall fell off of the front, and now Mr. Bartlett he'd made all that good, and Mrs. Prichard was only kep' out by the damp. Did Mrs. Wardle really not know where Mrs. Prichard was? She had not told Michael, that was all he could say. Old Mo he'd never slept out of the house, only the family. And they was coming back soon now. Was old Mo an invalid, who never went out? "No fear!" said Michael. "He's all to rights, only a bit oldish, like. He spends the afternoons round at The Sun, and then goes home to supper." The interview ended with a present of half-a-bull to Micky from the convict, which the boy seemed to stickle at accepting. But he took it, and it strengthened his resolution not to turn informer, which was probably Mr. Wix's object.

He came away with an impression that Miss Hawkins had said:—"The boy's lying. How could the front-wall of a house fall down?" But he had heard no more and was glad to come away. He went back to his Aunt Betsy and cooked his chop under her tutelage. What a time he had been away, said she!

If Micky had remembered word for word the whole of this interview, he might have had misgivings of the effect of one thing he had said unawares. It was his reference to Uncle Mo's absence at The Sun during the late afternoon. Manifestly, it left the house in Mr. Wix's imagination untenanted, during some two hours of the day, except by Aunt M'riar, and the children perhaps. And what did they matter?

"You're mighty wise, Juliar, about the party of the house and the fifty-pun' reward." So said the convict when the woman came back, after seeing that Micky had crossed the wall unmolested by authority. "Folk ain't in any such a hurry to get a man hanged when they know what'll happen if they fail of doing it. Not even for fifty pound!"

"What will happen?"

"Couldn't say to a nicety. But she would stand a tidy chance of getting ripped up, next opportunity." He seemed pleased at his expression of this fact, as he took the first pulls at a fresh pipe, on the window-seat with his boots against the shutter and a grip of interlaced fingers behind his close-cut head for support. Why in Heaven's name does the released gaol-bird crop his hair? One would have thought the first instinct of regained freedom would have been to let it grow.

Miss Hawkins looked at him without admiration. "I often wonder," said she, "at the many risks I run to shelter you, for you're a bloody-minded knave, and that's the truth. It was a near touch but I might have lost my licence, last time."

"The Beaks were took with your good looks, Juliar. They're good judges of a fine woman. An orphan you was, too, and the mourning sooted you, prime!" He looked lazily at her, puffing—not without admiration, of a sort. Her resentment seemed to gratify him more than any subserviency. He continued:—"Well, nobody can say I haven't offered to make an honest woman of you, Juliar."

"Much it was worth, your offer! As if you was free! And me to sell The Pigeons and go with you to New York! No—no! I'm better off as I am, than that."

"I'm free, accordin' to Law. Never seen the girl, nor heard from her—over twenty years now—twenty-three at least. Scot-free of her, anyhow! Don't want none of her, cutting in to spoil my new start in life. Re-spectable man—justice of peace, p'r'aps." He puffed at his pipe, pleased with the prospect. Then he sounded the keynote of his thought, adding:—"Why—how much could you get for the freehold of this little tiddleywink?"

If Miss Julia had been ever so well disposed towards being made technically an honest woman by her betrayer of auld lang syne, this declaration of his motives might easily have hardened her heart against him. What fatuity of affection could have survived it? Yet his candour was probably his only redeeming feature. He was scarcely an invariable hypocrite; he was merely heartless, sensual, and cruel to the full extent of man's possibilities. Nevertheless, he could and would have lied black white with a purpose. He was, this time, thrown off his guard, as it were, and truthful by accident. Whether the way in which the woman silently repelled his offer was due to her disgust at its terms, or whether she had her doubts of the soundness of his jurisprudence, the story can only guess. Probably the latter. She merely said:—"I'm going to open the house," and left his inquiry unanswered. This was notice to him that his free run of the lower apartments was ended. He went upstairs to some place of concealment.

---

"What was you and young Carrots so busy about below here?" said Uncle Mo next day, coming down the stairs to breakfast in the kitchen an hour later than Aunt M'riar.

"Telling me of his Aunt Betsy yesterday. Mind your shirt-sleeve. It's going in the butter."

"What's Aunt Betsy's little game?... No, it's all right—the butter's too hard to hurt.... Down Chiswick way, ain't she?"

"Hammersmith." Aunt M'riar wasn't talkative; but then, this morning, it was bloaters. They should only just hot through, or they dry.

"Who was the bloke he was talking about? Somebody he called him." Uncle Mo's ears had been too sharp.

"There!—I've no time to be telling what a boy says. No one any good, I'll go bail!" Whereupon, as Uncle Mo's curiosity was not really keenly excited, the subject dropped.

But, as a matter of fact, Michael had contrived in a short time to give an account of his experience of yesterday. And he had left Aunt M'riar in a state of disquiet and apprehension which had to be concealed, somehow. For she was quite clear that she would not take Mo into her confidence. She saw she had to choose between risking an interview with this convict husband of hers, and giving him up to the Law, probably to the gallows.

The man would come again to seek out his old mother, to extort money from her; that was beyond a doubt. But would he of necessity recognise the wife of twenty-three years ago in the very middle-aged person Aunt M'riar saw in the half of a looking-glass that Mr. Bartlett's careful myrmidons had not broken? Would she recognise him? Need either see the other? Well—no! Communications might be restricted to speech through a door with the chain up.

She took the boy Michael freely into her confidence about her unwillingness to see this man. But that she could do on the strength of his bad character; her own relation to him of course remained concealed. She puzzled her confidant not a little by her seeming inconsistency—so repugnant was she to the miscreant himself, yet so anxious that he should not fall into the hands of the Police. Micky kept his perplexity to himself, justifying his mother's estimate of his character.

But this much was clearly understood between them, that should the convict be seen by Micky on his way to the house, he should forthwith take one of two courses. If Uncle Mo was absent at the time, he was to warn Aunt M'riar of Mr. Wix's approach. If otherwise, he was to warn the unwelcome visitor of the risk he would run if he persisted in his attempt to procure an interview. Of course the chances were that Micky would be away on business, selling apples, potatoes, and turnips.

As it turned out, however, he was able to observe one of the conditions of this compact.

---

It was on the Tuesday following the boy's visit to his great-aunt that Mrs. Tapping had words with her daughter Alethea. They arose out of Alethea's young man, an upstart. At least, he was so designated by Mrs. Tapping, for aspiring to the hand of this young lady; who, though plain by comparison with her mother at the same age, and no more figure than what you see, was that sharp with her tongue when provoked, it made your flesh curdle within you to hear her expressions. We need hardly say that we have to rely on her mother for these facts. It was, however, the extraction of Alethea that determined the presumptuousness of her young man's aspirations. He was marrying into two families, the Tappings and the Davises, which, though neither of them lordly, had always held their heads high and their behaviour according. Whereas this young Tom was metaphorically nobody, though actually in a shoe-shop and giving satisfaction to his employers, with twenty-one shillings a week certain and a rise at Christmas. You cannot do that unless you are a physical entity, but when your grandmother is in an almshouse and your father met his death in an inferior capacity at a Works, you have no call to give yourself airs, and the less you say the better.

This brief sketch of the status quo was given to Mrs. Riley by Mrs. Tapping, in her woollen shawl for the first time, because of the sharp edge in the wind, with a basket on her arm that Janus would have found useful, owing to its two lids, one each side the handle. They were at the entrance to Mrs. Riley's shop, and that good woman was bare-armed and bonnetless in the cold north wind. She had not lost her Irish accent.

"It is mesilf agrays with you intoirely," said she sympathetically.

"Not but what I do freely admit," said Mrs. Tapping, pursuing her topic in a spirit of magnanimity, "that young Rundle himself never makes bold, and is always civil spoke, which we might expect, seeing what is called for, measuring soles. For I always do say that the temptation to forget theirself is far more than human, especially flattenin' down the toe to get the len'th, though of course the situation would be sacrificed, and no character." This was an allusion to the delicacy of the position of one who adjusts a sliding spanner to the foot of Beauty, to determine its length to a nicety. The subject suggests curious questions. Suppose—to look at its romantic side, as easier of discussion—that you, young lady, were passionately adored by the young man at your shoe-shop, and he were to kiss your foot as Vivien did Merlin's, could you—would you—complain at the desk and lose him his situation? And how about the Pope? Is his Holiness never measured—sal a reverentia!—for his shoes? Or does the Oecumenical Council guess, and strike an average? However, the current of the story need not be interrupted to settle that.

"He intinds will," said Mrs. Riley. This was merely a vague compliment to Alethea's suitor. "Ye see, me dyurr, it's taking the young spalpeen's part she'll be, for shure! It is the nature of thim." That is to say, lovers.

"But never to the point of calling tyrant, Mrs. Riley. Nor ojus vulgarity. Nor epithets I will not repeat, relating to family connections. Concerning which, I say, God forgive Alethear! For the accommodation at a nominal rent of persons in reduced circumstances is not an almshouse, say what she may. And her Aunt Trebilcock is not a charitable object, nor yet a deserving person, having mixed with the best. And in so young a girl texts are not becoming, to a parent."

"Which was the tixt, thin?" said Mrs. Riley, interested. "I'm bel'avin' ye, me dyurr!" This was to encourage Mrs. Tapping, and disclaim incredulity.

"Since you're asking me, Mrs. Riley ma'am, I will not conceal from you the Scripture text used only this morning by my own daughter, to my face. 'Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.' Whereupon I says to Alethear, 'Alethear,' I says, 'be truthful, and admit that old Mrs. Rundle and your Aunt Trebilcock are on a dissimular footing, one being distinctly a Foundation in the Whitechapel Road, and the other Residences, each taking their own Milk.'" Some further particulars came in here, relating to the bone of that mornin's contention, which had turned on Mrs. Tapping's objections to her daughter's demeaning, or bemeaning, herself, by marrying into a lower rank of life than her own.

All this conversation of these two ladies has nothing to do with the story. The only reason for referring to it is that it took place at this time, just opposite Mrs. Riley's shop, and led her to remark:—"You lave the young payple alone, Mrs. Tapping, and they'll fall out. You'll only kape thim on, by takin' order with thim. Thrust me. Whativer have ye got in the basket?"

Mrs. Tapping explained that she was using it to convey a kitten, born in her establishment, to Miss Druitt at thirty-four opposite, who had expressed anxiety to possess it. It was this kitten's expression of impatience with its position that had excited Mrs. Riley's curiosity. "Why don't ye carry the little sowl across in your hands, me dyurr?" said she; not unreasonably, for it was only a stone's-throw. Mrs. Tapping added that this was no common kitten, but one of preternatural activity, and possessed of diabolical tentacular powers of entanglement. "I would not undertake," said she, "to get it across the road, ma'am, only catching hold. Nor if I got it safe across, to onhook it, without tearing." Mrs. Riley was obliged to admit the wisdom of the Janus basket. She knew how difficult it is to be even with a kitten.

This one was destined to illustrate the resources of its kind. For as Mrs. Tapping endeavoured to conduct the conversation back to her domestic difficulties, she was aware that the Janus basket grew suddenly lighter. Mrs. Riley exclaimed at the same moment:—"Shure, and the little baste's in the middle of the road!" So it was, hissing like a steam-escape, and every hair on its body bristling with wrath at a large black dog, who was smelling it in a puzzled, thoughtful way, sans rancune. A cart, with an inscription on it that said its owner was "Horse-Slaughterer to Her Majesty," came thundering down the street, shaking three drovers seriously. The dog, illuminated by some new idea, started back to bark in a sudden panic-stricken way. Who could tell what new scourge this was that dogdom had to contend with?

Her Majesty's Horse-Slaughterer pulled his cart up just in time. It would else have run over a man who was picking the kitten up. All the males concerned exchanged execrations, and then the cart went on. The dog's anxiety to smell the phenomenon survived, till the man kicked him and told him to go to Hell.

"Now who does this here little beggar belong to?" said the man, whom Mrs. Riley did not like the looks of. Mrs. Tapping claimed the cat, and expressed wonder as to how it had got out of the basket. Heaven only knew! It is only superhuman knowledge, divine or diabolical, that knows how cats get out of baskets; or indeed steel safes, or anything.

"As I do not think, mister," said Mrs. Tapping—deciding at the last moment not to say "my good man"—"it would be any use to try getting of it inside of this basket out here in the street, let alone its aptitude for getting out when got in, I might trouble you to be so kind as to fetch it into my shop next door here, by the scruff of its neck preferable.... Thank you, mister!" She had had some idea of making it "Sir," but thought better of it.

The kitten, deposited on the counter, concerned itself with a blue-bottle fly. The man remarked that it was coming on to rain. Mrs. Tapping had not took notice of any rain, but believed the statement. Why is it that one accepts as true any statement made by a visibly disreputable male? Mrs. Tapping did not even look out at the door, for confirmation or contradiction. She was so convinced of this rain that she suggested that the man should wait a few minutes to see if it didn't hold up, because he had no umbrella. His reply was:—"Well, since you're so obliging, Missis, I don't mind if I do. My mate I'm waiting for, he'll be along directly." He declined a chair or stool, and waited, looking out at the door into the cul de sac street that led to Sapps Court, opposite. Mrs. Tapping absented herself in the direction of a remote wrangle underground, explaining her motive. She desired that her daughter, whose eyesight was better than her own, should thread a piece of pack-thread through a rip in the base of the Janus basket, which had to account for the kitten's appearance in public. She did not seem apprehensive about leaving the shop ungarrisoned.

But had she been a shrewder person, she might have felt misgivings about this man's character, even if she had acquitted him of such petty theft as running away with congested tallow candles. For no reasonable theory could be framed of a mate in abeyance, who would emerge from anywhere down opposite. A mate of a man who seemed to be of no employment, to belong to no recognised class, to wear description-baffling clothes—not an ostler's, nor an undertaker's, certainly; but some suspicion of one or other, Heaven knew why!—and never to look straight in front of him. Without some light on his vocation, imagination could provide no mate. And this man looked neither up nor down the street, but remained watching the cul de sac from one corner of his eye. It was not coming on to rain as alleged, and he might have had a better outlook nearer the door. But he seemed to prefer retirement.

The wrangle underground fluctuated slightly, went into another key, and then resumed the theme. A lean little girl came in, who tapped on the counter with a coin. She called out "'A'p'orth o' dips!" taking a tress of her hair from between her teeth to say it, and putting it back to await the result. She had a little brother with her, who was old enough to walk when pulled, but not old enough to discipline his own nose, being dependent on his sister's good offices, and her pocket-handkerchief. He offered a sucked peardrop to the kitten, who would not hear of it.

There certainly was no rain, or Mrs. Riley would never have remained outside, with those bare arms and all. There she was, saying good-evening to someone who had just come from Sapps Court. The man in the shop listened, closely and curiously.

"Good-avening, Mr. Moses, thin! Whin will we see the blessed chilther back? Shure it's wakes and wakes and wakes!" Which written, looks odd; but, spoken, only conveyed regretful reference to the time Dave and Dolly had been away, without taxing the hearer's understanding. "They till me your good lady's been sane, down the Court."

Uncle Mo had just come out, on his way to a short visit to The Sun. He was looking cheerful. "Ay, missis! Their aunt's bringin' of 'em back to-morrow from Ealing. I'll be glad enough to see 'em, for one."

"And the owld sowl upstairs. Not that I iver set my eyes on her, and that's the thrruth."

"Old Mother Prichard? Why—that's none so easy to say. So soon as her swell friends get sick of her, I suppose. She's being cared for, I take it, at this here country place."

"'Tis a nobleman's sate in the Norruth, they sid. Can ye till the name of it, to rimimber?" Mrs. Riley had an impression shared by many, that noblemen's seats are, broadly speaking, in the North. She had no definite information.

Uncle Mo caught at the chance of warping the name, uncorrected. "It's the Towels in Rocestershire," said he with effrontery. "Some sort of a Dook's, good Lard!" Then to change the subject:—"She won't have no place to come back to, not till Mrs. Burr's out and about again."

"The axidint, at the Hospital. No, indade! And how's the poor woman, hersilf? It was the blissin' of God she wasn't kilt on the spot!"

"It warn't a bad bit of luck. She'll be out of hospital next week, I'm told. They're taking their time about it, anyhow! Good-night to ye, missis! The rain's holdin' off." And Uncle Mo departed. Aunt M'riar had insisted on his not discontinuing any of his lapses into bachelorhood proper; which implies pub or club, according to man's degree.

---

Just a few minutes ago—speaking abreast of the story—Aunt M'riar, getting ready at last to do a little work after so much tidying up, had to go to the door to answer a knock. Its responsible agent was Michael, excited. "It's him!" said he. "I seen him myself. Over at Tappingses. And Mr. Moses, he's a-conversing with Missis Riley next door." He went on to offer to make an affidavit, as was his practice, not only on the Testament, but on most any book you could name.

It was not necessary: Aunt M'riar believed him. "You tell him," she replied, "that Mrs. Prichard's gone away, and no time fixed for coming back. Then he'll go. If he don't go, and comes along, just you say to him Mr. Wardle he'll be back in a minute. He'll be only a short time at The Sun."

"I'll say wotsumever you please, Missis Wardle. Only that won't carry no weight, not if I says it ever so. He's a sly customer. Here he is a-coming. Jist past the post!" That is, the one Dave broke his head off.

Aunt M'riar's heart thumped, and she felt sick. "You say there's no one in the house then," said she. This was panic, and loss of judgment. For the interview was palpable to anyone approaching down the Court. Micky must have felt this, but he only said:—"I'll square him how I can, missis," and withdrew from the door. Mr. Wix's lurching footstep, with the memory of its fetters on it, approached at its leisure. He stopped and looked round, and saw the boy, who acknowledged his stare. "I see you a-coming," said Michael.

Mr. Wix said:—"Young Ikey." He appeared to consider a course of action. "Now do you want another half-a-bull?"

"Ah!" Micky was clear about that.

"Then you do sentry-go outside o' this, in the street, and if you see a copper turning in here, you run ahead and give the word. Understand? This is Wardle's, ain't it?"

"That's Wardle's. But there ain't nobody there."

"You young liar. I saw you talking through the door, only this minute."

"That warn't anybody, only Aunt M'riar. Party you wants is away—gone away for a change. Mr. Moses ain't there, but he'll be back afore you can reckon him up. You may knock at that door till you 'ammer in the button, and never find a soul in the house, only Aunt M'riar. You try! 'Ammer away!" There was a faux air of self-justification in this, which did not bear analysis. Possibly Micky thought so himself, for he vanished up the Court. He would at least be able to bring a false alarm if any critical juncture arose.

The ex-convict watched him out of sight, and then knocked at the door, and waited. The woman inside had been listening to his voice with a quaking heart—had known it for that of her truant husband of twenty years ago, through all the changes time had made, and in spite of such colour of its own as the prison taint had left in it. And he stood there unsuspecting; not a thought in his mind of who she was, this Aunt M'riar! Why indeed should he have had any?

She could not trust her voice yet, with a heart thumping like that. She might take a moment's grace, at least, for its violence to subside. She sat down, close to the door, for she felt sick and the room went round. She wanted not to faint, though it was not clear that syncope would make matters any the worse. But the longer he paused before knocking again, the better for Aunt M'riar.

The knock came, a crescendo on the previous one. She had to respond some time. Make an effort and get it over!

"That * * * young guttersnipe's given me a bad character," muttered Wix, as he heard the chain slipped into its sheath. Then the door opened, and a tremulous voice came from within.

"What is it ... you want?" it said. Its trepidation was out of all proportion to the needs of the case. So thought Mr. Wix, and decided that this Aunt M'riar was some poor nervous hysteric, perhaps an idiot outright.

"Does an old lady by the name of Prichard live here, mistress?" He hid his impatience with this idiot, assuming a genial or conciliatory tone—a thing he perfectly well knew how to do, on occasion. "An old lady by the name of Prichard.... You've got nothing to be frightened of, you know. I'm not going to do her any harm, nor yet you." He spoke as to the idiot, in a reassuring tone. For the hysterical voice had tried again for speech, and failed.

Aunt M'riar mustered a little more strength. "Old Mrs. Prichard's away in the country," she said almost firmly. "She's not likely to be back yet awhile. Can I take any message?"

"Are you going in the country?"

"For when she comes back, I should have said."

"Ah—but when will that be? Next come strawberry-time, perhaps! I'll write to her."

"I can't give her address." Aunt M'riar had an impression that the omission of "you" after "give" just saved her telling a lie here. Her words might have meant: "I am not at liberty to give her address to anyone." It was less like saying she did not know it.

His next words startled her. "I know her address. Got it written down here. Some swell's house in Rocestershire." He made a pretence of searching among papers.

Aunt M'riar was so taken by surprise at this that she had said "Yes—Ancester Towers" before she knew it. She was not a person to entrust secrets to.

"Right you are, mistress! Ancester Towers it is." He was making a pretence, entirely for his own satisfaction, of confirming this from a memorandum. Mr. Wix had got what he wanted, but he enjoyed the success of his ruse. Of course, he had only used what he had just overheard from Uncle Moses.

The thought then crossed Aunt M'riar's mind that unless she inquired of him who he was, or why he wanted Mrs. Prichard, he would guess that she knew already. It was the reaction of her concealed knowledge—a sort of innocent guilty conscience. It was not a reasonable thought, but a vivid one for all that—vivid enough to make her say:—"Who shall I say asked for her?"

"Any name you like. It don't matter to me. I shall write to her myself."

Guilty consciences—even innocent ones—can never leave well alone. The murderer who has buried his victim must needs hang about the spot to be sure no one is digging him up. One looks back into the room one lit a match in, to see that it is not on fire. A diseased wish to clear herself from any suspicion of knowing anything about her visitor, impelled Aunt M'riar to say:—"Of course I don't know the name you go by." Obviously she would have done well to let it alone.

A person who had never borne an alias would have thought nothing of Aunt M'riar's phrase. The convict instantly detected the speaker's knowledge of himself. Another thought crossed his mind:—How about that caution this woman had given to Micky? Why was she so concerned that the boy should not "split upon" him? "Who the devil are you?" said he suddenly, half to himself. It was not the form in which he would have put the question had he reflected.

The exclamation produced a new outcrop of terror or panic in Aunt M'riar. She found voice to say:—"I've told you all I can, master." Then she shut the door between them, and sank down white and breathless on the chair close at hand, and waited, longing to hear his footsteps go. She seemed to wait for hours.

Probably it was little over a minute when the man outside knocked again—a loud, sepulchral, single knock, with determination in it. Its resonance in the empty house was awful to the lonely hearer.

But Aunt M'riar's capacity for mere dread was full to the brim. She was on the brink of the reaction of fear, which is despair—or, rather, desperation. Was she to wait for another appalling knock, like that, to set her heartstrings vibrating anew? To what end? No—settle it now, under the sting of this one.

She again opened the door as before. "I've told you all I know about Mrs. Prichard, and it's true. You must just wait till she comes back. I can't tell you no more."

"I don't want any more about Mrs. Prichard. I want to see side of this door. Take that * * * chain off, and speak fair. I sent you a civil message through that young boy. He gave it you?"

"He told me what you said."

"What did he say I said? If he told you any * * * lies, I'll half murder him! What did he say?"

"He said you was coming to see your mother, and Mrs. Prichard she must be your mother if she comes from Skillicks. So I told him she come from Skillicks, three year agone. Then he said you wanted money of Mrs. Prichard...."

"How the devil did he know that?"

"He said it. And I told him the old lady had no money. It's little enough, if she has."

"And that was all?"

"All about Mrs. Prichard."

"Anything else?"

"He told me your name."

"What name?"

"Thornton Daverill." The moment Aunt M'riar had said this she was sorry for it. For she remembered, plainly enough considering the tension of her mind, that Micky had only given her the surname. Her oversight had come of her own bitter familiarity with the name. Think how easy for her tongue to trip!

"Anything else?"

"No—nothing else."

"You swear to Goard?"

"I have told you everything."

"Then look you here, mistress! I can tell you this one thing. That young boy never told you Thornton. I've never named the name to a soul since I set foot in England. How the devil come you to know it?"

Aunt M'riar was silent. She had given herself away, and had no one but herself to thank for it.

"How the devil come you to know it?" The man raised his voice harshly to repeat the question, adding, more to himself:—"You're some * * * jade that knows me. Who the devil are you?"

The woman remained dumb, but on the very edge of desperation.

"Open this damned door! You hear me? Open this door—or, look you, I tell you what I'll do! Here's that * * * young boy coming. I'll twist his neck for him, by Goard, and leave him on your doorstep. You put me to it, and I'll do it. I'm good for my word." A change of tone, from savage anger to sullen intent, conveyed the strength of a controlled resolve, that might mean more than threat. At whatever cost, Aunt M'riar could not but shield Micky. It was in her service that he had provoked this man's wrath.

She wavered a little, closed the door, and slipped the chain-hook up to its limit. Even then she hesitated to withdraw it from its socket. The man outside made with his tongue the click of acceleration with which one urges a horse, saying, "Look alive!" She could see no choice but to throw the door open and face him. The moment that passed before she could muster the resolution needed seemed a long one.

That she was helped to it by an agonising thirst, almost, of curiosity to see his face once more, there can be no doubt. But could she have said, during that moment, whether she most desired that he should have utterly forgotten her, or that he should remember her and claim her as his wife? Probably she would not have hesitated to say that worse than either would be that he should recognise her only to slight her, and make a jest, maybe, of the memories that were his and hers alike.

She had not long to wait. It needed just a moment's pause—no more—to be sure no sequel of recognition would follow the blank stare that met her gaze as she threw back the door, and looked this husband of hers full in the face. None came, and her heart throbbed slower and slower. It would be down to self-command in a few beats. Meanwhile, how about that chance slip of her tongue? "Thornton" had to be accounted for.

The man's stare was indeed blank, for any sign of recognition that it showed. It was none the less as intent and curious as was the scrutiny that met it, looking in vain for a false lover long since fled, not a retrievable one, but a memory of a sojourn in a garden and a collapse in a desert. So little was left, to explain the past, in the face some violence had twisted askew, close-shaved and scarred, one white scar on the temple warping the grip in which its contractions held a cold green orb that surely never was the eye that was a girl-fool's ignis fatuus, twenty odd years ago. So little of the flawless teeth, which surely those fangs never were!—fangs that told a tale of the place in which they had been left to decay; for such was prison-life three-quarters of a century since. It was strange, but Aunt M'riar, though she knew that it was he, felt sick at heart that he should be so unlike himself.

He was the first to speak. "You'll know me again, mistress," he said. He took his eyes off her to look attentively round the room. Uncle Mo's sporting prints, prized records of ancient battles, caught his eye. "Ho—that's it, is it?" said he, with a short nod of illumination, as though he had made a point as a cross-examiner. "That's where we are—Figg and Broughton—Corbet—Spring?... That's your game, is it? Now the question is, where the devil do I come in? How come you to know my name's Thornton? That's the point!"

Now nothing would have been easier for Aunt M'riar than to say that Mrs. Prichard had told her that her only surviving son bore this name. But the fact is that the old lady, quite a recent experience, had for the moment utterly vanished from her thoughts, and the man before her had wrenched her mind back into the past. She could only think of him as the cruel betrayer of her girlhood, none the less cruel that he had failed in his worst plot against her, and used a legitimate means to cripple her life. She could scarcely have recalled anything Mrs. Prichard had said, for the life of her. She was face to face with the past, yet standing at bay to conceal her identity.

Think how hard pressed she was, and forgive her for resorting to an excusable fiction. It was risky, but what could she do? "I knew your wife," said she briefly. "Twenty-two years agone."

"You mean the girl I married?" He had had to marry one of them, but could only marry one. That was how he classed her. "What became of that girl, I wonder? Maybe you know? Is she alive or dead?"

"I couldn't say, at this len'th of time." Then, she remembered a servant, at the house where her child was born, and saw safety for her own fiction in assuming this girl's identity. Invention was stimulated by despair. "She was confined of a girl, where I was in service. She gave me letters to post to her husband. R. Thornton Daverill." That was safe, anyhow. For she remembered giving letters, so directed, to this girl.

The convict sat down on the table, looking at her no longer, which she found a relief. "Did that kid live or die?" said he. "Blest if I recollect!"

"Born dead. She had a bad time of it. She came back to London, and I never see any more of her." Aunt M'riar should have commented on this oblivion of his own child. She was letting her knowledge of the story influence her, and endangering her version of it.

The man stopped and thought a little. Then he turned upon her suddenly. "How came you to remember that name for twenty-two years?" said he.

A thing she recollected of this servant-girl helped her at a pinch. "She asked me to direct a letter when she hurt her hand," she said. "When you've wrote a name, you bear it in mind."

"What did she call the child?"

"It was born dead."

"What did she mean to call it?"

The answer should have been "She didn't tell me." But Aunt M'riar was a poor fiction-monger after all. For what must she say but "Polly, after herself"?

"Not Mary?"

Then Aunt M'riar forgot herself completely. "No—Polly. After the name you called her, at The Tun." She saw her mistake, too late.

Daverill turned his gaze on her again, slowly. "You seem to remember a fat lot about this and that!" said he. He got down off the table, and stepped between Aunt M'riar and the door, saying: —"Come you here, mistress!" The harshness of his voice was hideous to her. He caught her wrist, and pulled her to the window. The only gas-lamp the Court possessed shone through it on her white face. "Now—what's your * * * married name?"

Aunt M'riar could not utter a word.

"I can tell you. You're that * * * young Polly, and your name's Daverill. You're my lawful wife—d'ye hear?" He gave a horrible laugh. "Why, I thought you was buried years ago!"

She began gasping hysterically:—"Leave me—leave me—you are nothing to me now!" and struggled to free herself. Yet, inexpressibly dreadful as the fact seemed to her, she knew that her struggle was not against the grasp of a stranger. Think of that bygone time! The thought took all the spirit out of her resistance.

He returned to his seat upon the table, drawing her down beside him. "Yes, Polly Daverill," said he, "I thought you dead and buried, years ago. I've had a rough time of it, since then, across the water." He paused a moment; then said quite clearly, almost passionlessly:—"God curse them all!" He repeated the words, even more equably the second time; then with a rough bear-hug of the arm that gripped her waist:—"What have you got to say about it, hay? Who's your * * * husband now? Who's your prizefighter?"

The terrified woman just found voice for:—"He's not my husband." She could not add a word of explanation.

The convict laughed unwholesomely, beneath his breath. "That's what you've come to, is it? Pretty Polly! Mary the Maid of the Inn! The man you've got is not your husband. Sounds like the parson—Holy Scripture, somewhere! I've seen him. He's at the lush-ken down the road. Now you tell the truth. When's he due back here?"

She had only just breath for the word seven, which was true. It was past the half-hour, and he would not have believed her had she said sooner. But it was as though she told him that she knew she was helplessly in his power for twenty-five minutes. Helplessly, that is, strong resolution and desperation apart!

"Then he won't be here till half-past. Time and to spare! Now you listen to me, and I'll learn you a thing or two you don't know. You are my—lawful—wife, so just you listen to me! Ah, would you?..." This was because he had supposed that a look of hers askant had rested on a knife upon the table within reach. It was a pointed knife, known as "the bread knife," which Dolly was never allowed to touch. He pulled her away from it, caught at it, and flung it away across the room. "It's a narsty, dangerous thing," he said, "safest out of the way!" Then he went on:—"You—are—my—lawful—wife, and what St. Paul says mayhap you know? 'Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.' ... What!—me not know my * * * Testament! Why!—it's the only * * * book you get a word of when you're nursing for Botany Bay fever. God curse 'em all! Why—the place was Hell—Hell on earth!"

Aunt M'riar now saw too late that she should not have opened that door, at any cost. But how about Micky? Surely, however, that was a mere threat. What had this man to gain by carrying it out? Why had she not seen that he would never run needless risk, to gain no end?

The worst thorn in her heart was that, changed as he was from the dissolute, engaging youth that she had dreamed of reforming, she still knew him for himself. He was, as he said, her husband. And, for all that she shrank from him and his criminality with horror, she was obliged to acknowledge—oh, how bitterly!—that she wanted help against herself as much as against him. She was obliged to acknowledge the grisly force of Nature, that dictated the reimposition of the yoke that she had through all these years conceived that she had shaken off. And she knew that she might look in vain for help to Law, human or theological. For each in its own way, and for its own purposes, gives countenance to the only consignment of one human creature to the power of another that the slow evolution of Justice has left in civilised society. Each says to the girl trapped into unholy matrimony, from whom the right to look inside the trap has been cunningly withheld:—"Back to your lord and master! Go to him, he is your husband—kiss him—take his hand in thine!" Neither is ashamed to enforce a contract to demise the self-ownership of one human being to another, when that human being is a woman. And yet Nature is so inexorable that the victim of a cruel marriage often needs help sorely—help against herself, to enable her, on her own behalf, to shake off the Devil some mysterious instinct impels her to cling to. Such an instinct was stirring in Aunt M'riar's chaos of thought and feeling, even through her terror and her consciousness of the vileness of the man and the vileness of his claim over her. The idea of using the power that her knowledge of his position gave her never crossed her mind. Say rather that the fear that a call for help would consign him to a just retribution for his crimes was the chief cause of her silence.

A dread that she might be compelled to do so was lessened by his next speech. "You've no call to look so scared, Polly Daverill. You do what I tell you, and be sharp about it. What are you good for?—that's the question! Got any money in the house?"

She felt relieved. Now he would take his arm away. That arm was all the worse from the fact that her shrinking from it was one-sided. "A little," she answered. "It's upstairs. Let me get it."

He relaxed the arm. "Go ahead!" he said. "I'll follow up."

She cried out with sudden emphasis:—"No—I will not. I will not." And then with subdued earnestness:—"Indeed I will bring it down. Indeed I will."

"You won't stick up there, by any chance, till your man that's not your husband happens round?"

She addressed him by name for the first time. "Thornton, did I ever tell you a lie?"

"I never caught you in one, that I know of. Cut along!"

She went like a bird released. Once in her room, and clear of him, she could lock her door and cry for help. She turned the key, and had actually thrown up the window-sash, when her own words crossed her mind—her claim to veracity. No—she would keep a clear conscience, come what might. She glanced up the Court, and saw Micky coming through the arch; then closed the window, and took an old leather purse from the drawer of the looking-glass Mr. Bartlett's men had not broken. It contained the whole of her small savings.

After she left the room, Daverill had glanced round for valuables. An old silver watch of Uncle Mo's, that always stopped unless allowed to lie on its back, was ticking on the dresser. The convict slipped it into his pocket, and looked round for more, opening drawers, looking under dish-covers. Finding nothing, he sat again on the table, with his hands in the pockets of his velveteen corduroy coat. His face-twist grew more marked as he wrinkled the setting of a calculating eye. "I should have to square it with Miss Juliar," said he, in soliloquy. He was evidently clear about his meaning, whatever it was.

The boy came running down the Court, and entering the front-yard, whose claim to be a garden was now nil, tapped at the window excitedly. Daverill went to the door and opened it.

"Mister Moses coming along. Stopping to speak to Tappingses. You'd best step it sharp, Mister Wix!"

"Polly Daverill, look alive!" The convict shouted at the foot of the stairs, and Aunt M'riar came running down. "Where's the * * * cash?" said he.

"It's all I've got," said poor Aunt M'riar. She handed the purse to him, and he caught it and slipped it in a breast-pocket, and was out in the Court in a moment, running, without another word. He vanished into the darkness.

Five minutes later, Uncle Mo, escaping from Mrs. Tapping, came down the Court, and found the front-door open and no light in the house. He nearly tumbled over Aunt M'riar, in a swoon, or something very like it, in the chair by the door.

---

CHAPTER II

HOW ADRIAN TORRENS COULD SING WITHOUT WINCING. FIGARO. DICTATION OF LETTERS. HOW ADRIAN BROKE DOWN. THE LERNAEAN HYDRA'S EYE-PEEPS. HOW ADRIAN COULD SEE NOTHING IN ANY NUMBER OF LOOKING-GLASSES. HOW GWEN, IN SPITE OF APPEARANCES, HELD TO THE SOLEMN COMPACT. SIR MERRIDEW'S TREACHERY. SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS. HOW GWEN HAD BEEN TO LOOK AT ARTHUR'S BRIDGE. A KINKAJOU IS NOT A CARCAJOU. OF THE PECULIARITIES OF FIRST-CLASS SERVANTS. MRS. PICTURE'S STORY DIVULGED BY GWEN. HOW DAVE'S RIVAL GRANNIES WERE SAFEST APART

Old folk and candles burn out slowly at the end. But before that end comes they flicker up, once, twice, and again. The candle says:—"Think of me at my best. Remember me when I shone out thus, and thus; and never guttered, nor wanted snuffing. Think of me when you needed no other light than mine, to look in Bradshaw and decide that you had better go early and ask at the Station." Thus says the candle.

And the old man says to the old woman, and she says it back to him:—"Think of me in the glorious days when we were dawning on each other; of that most glorious day of all when we found each other out, and had a tiff in a week and a reconciliation in a fortnight!" Then each is dumb for a while, and life ebbs slowly, till some chance memory stirs among the embers, and a bright spark flickers for a moment in the dark. The candle dies at last, and smells, and mixes with the elements. And some say you and I will do the very same—die and go out. Possibly! Just as you like! Have it your own way.

It is even so with the Old Year in his last hours. Is ever an October so chill that he may not bid you suddenly at midday to come out in the garden and recall, with him, what it was like in those Spring days when the first birds sang; those Summer days when the hay-scent was in Cheapside, and a great many roses had not been eaten by blights, and it was too hot to mow the lawn? Is ever a November so self-centred as to refuse to help the Old Year to a memory of the gleams of April, and the nightingale's first song about the laggard ash-buds? Is icy December's self so remorseless, even when the holly-berries are making a parade of their value as Christmas decorations?—even when it's not much use pretending, because the Waits came last night, and you thought, when you heard them, what a long time ago it was that a little boy or girl, who must have been yourself, was waked by them to wonder at the mysteries of Night? But nothing is of any use in December, because January will come, and this year will be dead and risen from its tomb, and the metaphorically disposed will be hoping that Resurrection is not so uncomfortable as all that comes to.

That time was eight weeks ahead one morning at Pensham Steynes, which has to be borne in mind, as the residence of Sir Hamilton Torrens, Bart., when the blind man, his son, was dictating to his sister Irene one of the long missives he was given to sending to his fiancée in London. It was just such a late October day as the one indirectly referred to above; in fact, it would quite have done for a Spring day, if only you could have walked across the lawn without getting your feet soaked. The chance primroses that the mild weather had deluded into budding must have felt ashamed of their stupidity, and disgusted at the sight of the stripped trees, although they may have reaped some encouragement from a missel-thrush that had just begun again after the holiday, and been grateful to the elms and oaks that had kept some decent clothing on them. Irene had found one such primrose in a morning walk, and a confirmation of it in the morning's Times.

"Why didn't you say the ground was covered with them, 'Re? I could have believed in any number on your authority. Surely, a chap with his eyes out is entitled to the advantages which seeing nothing confers on him. Do please perjure yourself about violets and crocuses on my behalf. It is quite a mistake to suppose I shall be jealous. You've no idea what a magnanimous elder brother you've got." So Adrian had said when they came in, and had felt his way to the piano—it was extraordinary how he had learned to feel his way about—and had played the air of "Sumer is ycumin in, lhude sing cucu," with the courage of a giant. Not only that, but actually sang it, and never flinched from:—"Groweth seed and bloweth meed and springeth wood anew." And his heart was saying to him all the while that he might never again see the springing of the young corn, and the daisies in the grass, and the new buds waiting for the bidding of the sun.

Irene, quite alive to her brother's intrepidity, but abstaining resolutely from spoken acknowledgment—for would not that have been an admission of the need for courage?—had gone through a dramatic effort on her own behalf, a kind of rehearsal of the part she had to play. She had arranged writing materials for action, and affected the attitude of a patient scribe, longing for dictation. She had assumed a hardened tone, to say:—"When you're ready!" Then Adrian had deserted the piano, and addressed himself to dictation. "Where were we?" said he. For the letter was half written, having been interrupted by visitors the day before.

"When the Parysfort women came in?" said Irene. "We had got to the old woman. After the old woman—what next?"

Adrian repeated, "After the old woman—after the old woman." Then he said suddenly:—"Bother the old woman. I tell you what, 'Re, we must tear this letter up, and start fair. Those people coming in spoiled it." His tone was vexed and restless. The weariness of his blindness galled him. This fearful inability to write was one of his worst trials. He fought hard against his longing to cry out—to lighten his heart, ever so little, by expression of his misery; but then, the only one thing he could do in requital of the unflagging patience of this dear amanuensis, was to lighten the weight of her sorrow for him. And this he could only do by showing unflinching resolution to bear his own burden. One worst unkindest cut of all was that any word of exasperation against the cruelty of a cancelled pen might seem an imputation on her of ineffective service, almost a reproach. It was perhaps because the visitors of yesterday were so evidently to blame for the miscarriage of this letter, that Adrian felt, in a certain sense, free to grieve aloud. It was a relief to him to say:—"The Devil fly away with the Honourable Misses Parysforts!"

"Suppose we have a clean slate, darling, and I'll tear the letter up, old woman and all. Or shall I read back a little, to start you?"

"Oh no—please! On no account read anything again.... Suppose I confess up! Make some stars, and go on like this:—'These are not Astronomy, but to convey the idea that I have forgotten where I was, and that we have to make it a rule never to re-read, for fear I should tear it up. I believe I was trying to find a new roundabout way of saying how much more to me you were than anything in Heaven or Earth.'" The dictation paused.

"Go on," said the amanuensis. "After 'Heaven and Earth'?" She paused with an expectant pen, her eyes on the paper. Then she looked up, to see that her brother's face was in his hands, dropped down on the side-cushion of the sofa. She waited for him to speak, knowing he would only think she did not see him. But she had to wait overlong for the lasting powers of this excuse; so she let it lapse, and went to sit beside him, and coaxed his hands from his face, kissing away something very like a tear. "But why now, darling?" said she. "You know what I mean. What was it in the letter?"

"Why—I was going to say," replied Adrian, recovering himself, "I was going on to 'the thing that makes day of my darkness' or something of that sort—some poetical game, you know—and then I thought what a many things I could write if I could write them myself, and shut them in the envelope for Gwen alone, that I can't say now, though the dearest sister ever man had yet writes them for me. I can say to her, darling, that if I were offered my eyesight back, by some irritating fairy godmother—that kind of thing—in exchange for the Gwen that is mine, I would not accept her boon upon the terms. I should, on the contrary, wish I were the Lernæan Hydra, that I might give the balance of seven pairs of eyes rather than....

"Rather than lose Gwen." Irene spoke, because he had hesitated.

"Exactly. But I got stuck a moment by the reflection that Gwen's sentiments might not have remained altogether unchanged, in that case. In fact, she might have run away, at Arthur's Bridge. It is an obscure and difficult subject, and the supply of parallel cases is not all one could wish."

"I don't see why we shouldn't put all or any of that in the letter." For Irene always favoured her brother's incurable whimsicality as a resource against the powers of Erebus and dark Night, and humoured any approach to extravagance, to disperse the cloud that had gathered. This one pleased him.

"How shall we put it?... somehow like this.... By-the-by, do you know how to spell Lernæan?..." He paused abruptly, and seemed to listen. "Sh—sh a minute! What's that outside? I thought I heard somebody coming." Irene listened too.

"Ply hears somebody," she said. And then she had all but said "Look at him!" in an unguarded moment.

An instant later the dog had started up and scoured from the room as if life and death depended on his presence elsewhere. Adrian heard something his sister did not, and exclaimed "What's that?"

"Nothing," said Irene. "Only someone at the front-door. Ply's always like that."

"I didn't mean Ply. Listen! Be quiet." The room they were in was remote from the front-door of the house, and the voice they heard was no more than a musical modulation of silence. It had a power in it, for all that, to rouse the blind man to excitement. He had to put a restraint on himself to say quietly:—"Suppose you go and see! Do you mind?" Irene left the room.

Anyone who had seen Adrian then for the first time, and watched him standing motionless with his hands on a chairback and the eyes that saw nothing gazing straight in front of him, but not towards the door, would have wondered to see a man of his type apparently so interested in his own image, repeated by the mirror before him as often as eyesight could trace its give-and-take with the one that faced it on the wall behind him. He was the wrong man for a Narcissus. The strength of his framework was wrong throughout. Narcissus had no bone-distances, as artists say, and his hair was in crisp curls, good for the sculptor. No one ever needed to get a pair of scissors to snip it. But though anyone might have marvelled at Adrian Torrens's seeming Narcissus-like intentness on his own manifold image, he could never have surmised that cruel blindness was its apology. He could never have guessed, from anything in their seeming, that the long perspective of gazing orbs, vanishing into nothingness, were not more sightless than their originals.

He only listened for a moment. For, distant as she was, Irene's cry of surprise on meeting some new-comer was decisive as to that new-comer's identity. It could be no one but Gwen. Irene's welcome settled that.

The blind man was feeling his way to the door when Gwen opened it. Then she was in his arms, and what cared he for anything else in the heavens above or the earth beneath? His exultation had to die down, like the resonant chords in the music he had played an hour since, before he could come to the level of speech. Then he said prosaically:—"This is very irregular! How about the solemn compact? How are we going to look our mamma in the face?"

"Did it yesterday evening!" said Gwen. "We had an explosion.... Well, I won't say that—suppose we call it a warm discussion, leading to a more reasonable attitude on the part of ... of the people who were in the wrong. The other people, that is to say!"

"Precisely. They always are. I vote we sit on the sofa, and you take your bonnet off. I know it's on by the ribbons under your chin—not otherwise."

"What a clever man he is—drawing inferences! However, bonnets have got very much out of sight, I admit. Hands off, please!... There!—now I can give particulars."

Irene, who—considerately, perhaps—had not followed closely, here came in, saying:—"Stop a minute! I haven't heard anything yet.... There!—now go on."

She found a seat, and Gwen proceeded.

"I came home yesterday, with an old woman I've picked up, who certainly is the dearest old woman...."

"Never mind the old woman. Why did you come?"

"I came home because I chose. I came here because I wanted to.... Well, I'll tell you directly. What I wish to mention now is that I have not driven a coach-and-six through the solemn compact. I assented to a separation for six months, but no date was fixed. I assure you it wasn't. I was looking out all the time, and took good care."

"Wasn't it fixed by implication?" This was Irene.

"Maybe it was. But I wasn't. We can put the six months off, and start fair presently. Papa quite agreed."

"Mamma didn't?" This was Adrian.

"Of course not. That was the basis of the ... warm discussion which followed on my declaration that I was coming to see you to-day. However, we parted friends, and I slept sound, with a clear conscience. I got up early, to avoid complications, and made Tom Kettering drive me here in the dog-cart. It took an hour and a half because the road's bad. It's like a morass, all the way. I like the sound of the horse's hoofs when I drive, not mud-pie thuds."

"We didn't hear any sound at all, except Ply.... Yes, dear!—of course you heard. I apologize." Irene said this to Achilles, who, catching his name, took up a more active position in the conversation, which he conceived to be about himself. Some indeterminate chat went on until Gwen said suddenly:—"Now I want to talk about what I came here for."

"Go it!" said Adrian.

"I want to know all about what 'Re said to Dr. Merridew in her letter.... Well, what's the matter?"

Amazement on Irene's fact had caused this. "And that man calls himself an F.R.C.S.!" said she.

Adrian, uninformed, naturally asked why not. Gwen supplied a clue for guessing. "He said he couldn't read your handwriting, and gave me your letter to make out."

"What nonsense! I write perfectly plainly."

"So I told him. But he maintained he had hardly been able to make out a word of it. Of course I read it. Your caution to him not to tell me was a little obscure, but otherwise I found it easy enough. Anyhow, I read all about it. And now I know."

"Well—I'll never trust a man with letters after his name again. Of course he was pretending."

"But what for?"

"Because he wanted to tell you, and didn't want to get in a scrape for betraying my confidence."

Adrian struck in. Might he ask what the rumpus was about? Why Sir Merridew, and why letters?

Irene supplied the explanation. "I wrote to him about you and Septimius Severus.... Don't you recollect? And I cautioned him particularly not to tell Gwen.... Why not? Why—of course not! It was sheer, inexcusable dishonesty, and I shall tell him so next time I see him."

Gwen appeared uninterested in the point of honour. "I wonder," she said, "whether he thought telling me of it this way would prevent my building too much on it, and being disappointed. That would be so exactly like Dr. Merridew."

"I think," said Adrian deliberately, "that I appreciate the position. Septimius Severus figures in it as a bust, or as an indirect way of describing a circumstance; preferably the latter, I should say, for it must be most uncomfortable to be a bust. As an Emperor he is inadmissible. I remember the incident—but I suspect it was only a dream." His voice fell into real seriousness as he said this; then went back to mock seriousness, after a pause. "However, I am bound to say that 'inexcusable dishonesty' is a strong expression. I should suggest 'pliable conscience,' always keeping in view the motive of ... Yes, Pelides dear, but I have at present nothing for you in the form of cake or sugar. Explain yourself somehow, to the best of your ability." For Achilles had suddenly placed an outstretched paw, impressively, on the speaker's knee.

"I see what it was," said Gwen. "You said 'pliable conscience'—just now."

"Well?"

"He thought he was the first syllable. Never mind him! I want you to tell me about Septimius Severus. He's what I came about. What was it that happened, exactly?" Thereupon Adrian gave the experience which the story knows already, in greater detail.

In the middle, a casual housekeeper was fain to speak to Miss Torrens, for a minute. Who therefore left the room and became a voice, housekeeping, in the distance.

Then Gwen made Adrian tell the story again, cross-examining him as one cross-examines obduracy in the hope of admissions that will at least countenance a belief in the truth that we want to be true. If Adrian had seen his way to a concession that would have made matters pleasant, he would have jumped at the chance of making it. But false hope was so much worse than false despair. Better, surely, a spurious growth of the latter, with disillusionment to come, than a stinted instalment of the former with a chance of real despair ahead. Adrian took the view that Sir Coupland was really a weak, good-natured chap who had wanted Gwen to have every excuse for hope that could be constructed, even with unsound materials; but who also wanted the responsibilities of the jerry-builder to rest on other shoulders than his own. Gwen discredited this view of the great surgeon's character in her inner consciousness, but hardly had courage to raise her voice against it, because of the danger of fostering false hopes in her lover's mind. Nevertheless she could not be off fanning a little flame of comfort to warm her heart, from the conviction that so responsible an F.R.C.S. would never have gone out of his way to show her the letter if he had not thought there was some chance, however small, of a break in the cloud.

After Sir Coupland's letter and its subject had been allowed to lapse, Gwen said:—"So now you see what I came for, and that's all about it. What do you think I did, dearest, yesterday as soon as I had seen my old lady comfortably settled? She was dreadfully tired, you know. But she was very plucky and wouldn't admit it."

"Who the dickens is your old lady?"

"Don't be impatient. I'll tell you all in good time. First I want to tell you where I went yesterday afternoon. I went across the garden through the rose-forest ... you know?—what you said must be a rose-forest to smell like that...."

"I know. And you went through the gate you came through,"—even so a Greek might have spoken to Aphrodite of "the sea-foam you sprang from"—"and along the field-path to the little bridge fat men get stuck on...." This was an exaggeration of an overstatement of a disputed fact.

"Yes, my dearest, and I was there by myself. And I stood and looked over to Swayne's Oak and thought to myself if only it all could happen again, and a dog might come with a rush and kiss me, and paw me with his dirty paws! And then if you—you—you were to come out of the little coppice, and come to the rescue, all wet through and dripping, how I would take you in my arms, and keep you, and not let you go to be shot. I would. And I would say to you:—'I have found you in time, my darling, I have found you, in time to save you. And now that I have found you, I will keep you, like this. And you would look at me, and see that it was not a forward girl, but me myself, your very own, come for you.... I wonder what you would have said."

"I wonder what I should have said. I think I know, though. I should have said that although a perfect stranger, I should like, please, to remain in Heaven as long—I am quoting Mrs. Bailey—as it was no inconvenience. I might have said, while in Heaven, that we were both under a misapprehension, having taken for granted occurrences, to the development of which our subsequent experiences were essential. But I should have indulged the misapprehension...."

"Of course you would. Any man in his senses would...."

"I agree with you."

"Unless he was married or engaged or something."

"That might complicate matters. Morality is an unknown quantity.... But, darling, let's drop talking nonsense...."

"No—don't let's! It's such sensible nonsense. Indeed, dearest, I saw it all plain, as I stood there yesterday at Arthur's Bridge. I saw what it had all meant. I did not know at the time, but I should have done so if I had not been a fool. I did not see then why I stood watching you till you were out of sight. But I do see now."

Adrian answered seriously, thoughtfully, as one who would fain get to the heart of a mystery. "I knew quite well then—I am convinced of it—why I turned, when I thought I was out of sight, to see if you were still there. I turned because my heart was on fire—because my world was suddenly filled with a girl I had exchanged fifty words with. I was not unhappy before you dawned—only tranquil."

"What were you thinking of, just before you saw me, when you were wading through the wet fern? I think I was only thinking how wet the ferns must have been. How little I thought then who the man was, with the dog! You were only 'the man' then."

"And then—I got shot! I'm so glad. Just think, dearest, what a difference it would have made to me if that ounce of lead had gone an inch wrong...."

"And you had been killed outright!"

"I didn't mean that. I meant the other way. Suppose it had missed, and I had finished my walk with my eyes in my head, and come back here and got an introduction to the girl I saw in the Park, and not known what to say to her when I got it!"

"I should have known you at once."

"Dearest love, some tenses of verbs are kittle-cattle to shoe behind. 'Should have' is one of the kittlest of the whole lot. You would have thought me an interesting author, and I should have sent you a copy of my next book. And then we should have married somebody else."

"Where is the organ of nonsense in Poets' heads, I wonder. It must be this big one, on the top."

"No—that's veneration. My strong point. It shows itself in the readiness with which I recognise the Finger of Providence. I discern in the nicety with which old Stephen's bullet did its predestined work a special intervention on my behalf. A little more and I should have been sleeping with my fathers, or have joined the Choir of Angels, or anyhow been acting up to my epitaph to the best of my poor ability. A little less, and I should have gone my way rejoicing, ascribing my escape from that bullet to the happy-go-lucky character of the Divine disposition of human affairs. I should never have claimed the attentions due to a slovenly, unwholesome corpse...."

"You shall not talk like that. Blaspheme as much as you like. I don't mind blasphemy."

Adrian kissed the palm of the hand that stopped his mouth, and continued speech, under drawbacks. "An intelligent analysis will show that my remarks are reverential, not blasphemous. You will at least admit that there would have been no Mrs. Bailey."

Gwen removed her hand. "None whatever! Yes, you may talk about Mrs. Bailey. There would have been no Mrs. Bailey, and I should never have lain awake all night with your eyes on my conscience.... Yes—the night after mamma and I had tea with you...."

"My eyes on your conscience! Oh—my eyes be hanged! Would I have my eyes back now?—to lose you! Oh, Gwen, Gwen!—sometimes the thought comes to me that if it were not for my privation, my happiness would be too great to be borne—that I should scarcely dare to live for it, had the price I paid for it been less. What is the loss of sight for life to set against...."

"Are you aware, good man, that you are talking nonsense? Be a reasonable Poet, at least!"

She was drawing her hand caressingly over his, and just as she said this, lifted it suddenly, with a start. "Your ring scratches," said she.

"Does it?" said he, feeling it. "Oh yes—it does. I've found where. I'll have it seen to.... I wonder now why I never noticed that before."

"It's a good ring that won't scratch its wearer. I suppose I was unpopular with it. It didn't hurt. Perhaps it was only in fun. Or perhaps it was to call attention to the fact that you have never told me about it. You haven't, and you said you would."

"So I did, when we had The Scene." He meant the occasion on which, according to Gwen's mamma, she had made him an offer of her affections in the Jacobean drawing-room. "It's a ring with magic powers—nothing to do with any young lady, as you thought. It turns pale at the approach of poison."

"Let's get some poison, and try. Isn't there some poison in the house?"

"I dare say there is, in the kitchen. You might touch the bell and ask."

"I shall do nothing of the sort. I mean private poison—doctor's bottles—blue ones with embossed letters.... You know?"

"I know. My maternal parent has any number. But all empty, I'm afraid. She always finishes them. Besides—don't let's bring her in! She has such high principles. However, I've got some poison—what an Irish suicide would consider the rale cratur—only I won't get it out even for this experiment, because I may want it...."

"You may want it!"

"Of course." He suddenly deserted paradox and levity, and became serious. "My dearest, think of this! Suppose I were to lose you, here in the dark!... Oh, I know all that about duty—I know! I would not kill myself at once, because it would be unkind to Irene. But suppose I lost Irene too?"

"I can't reason it out. But I can't believe it would ever be right to destroy oneself."

"Possibly not, but once one was effectually destroyed...."

"That sounds like rat-paste." Gwen wanted to joke her way out of this region of horrible surmise.

But Adrian was keen on his line of thought. "Exactly!" said he. "Vermin destroyer. I should be the vermin. But once destroyed, what contrition should I have to endure? Remorse is a game that takes two selves to play at it—a criminal and a conscientious person! Suppose the rat-paste had destroyed them both!"

"But would it?"

"Absolute ignorance, whether or no, means an even chance of either. I would risk it, for the sake of that chance of rich, full-blown Non-Entity. Oh, think of it!—after loneliness in the dark!—loneliness that once was full of life...."

"But suppose the other chance—how then?"

"Suppose I worked out as a disembodied spirit—and I quite admit it's as likely as not, neither more nor less—it does not necessarily follow that Malignity against Freethinkers is the only attribute of the Creator. When one contemplates the extraordinary variety and magnitude of His achievements, one is tempted to imagine that He occasionally rises above mere personal feeling. It certainly does seem to me that damning inoffensive Suicides would be an unwarrantable abuse of Omnipotence. The fact is, I have a much better opinion of the Most High than many of His admirers."

"But, nonsense apart.... Yes—it is nonsense!... do you mean that you would kill yourself about me?"

"Yes."

"I'm so glad, because I shan't give you the chance. But dear, silly man—dearest, silliest man!—I do wish you would give me up that bottle. I'll promise to give it back if ever I want to jilt you. Honour bright!"

"I dare say. With the good, efficacious poison emptied away; and tea, or rum, or Rowland's Macassar instead! I cannot conceive a more equivocal position than that of a suicide who has taken the wrong poison under the impression that he has launched himself into Eternity."

"Oh no—I could never do that! It would be such a cruel hoax. Now, dearest love, do let me have that bottle to take care of. Indeed, if ever I jilt you, you shall have it back. Engaged girls—honourable ones!—always give presents back on jilting. Do let me have it!"

Adrian laughed at her earnestness. "I'm not going to poison myself," said he. "Unless you jilt me! So it comes to exactly the same thing, either way. There—be easy now! I've promised. Besides, the Warroo or Guarano Indian who gave it me—out on the Essequibo; it was when I went to Demerara—told me it wouldn't keep. So I wouldn't trust it. Much better stick to nice, wholesome, old-fashioned Prussic Acid." He had quite dropped his serious tone, and resumed his incorrigible levity.

"Did you really have it from a wild Indian? Where did he get it? Did he make it?"

"No—that's the beauty of it. The Warroos of Guiana are great dabs at making poisons. They make the celebrated Wourali poison, the smallest quantity of which in a vein always kills. It has never disappointed its backers. But he didn't make this. He brought it from the World of Spirits, beyond the grave. It is intended for internal use only, being quite inoperative when injected into a vein. Irene unpacked my valise when I came back, and touched the bottle. And an hour afterwards she saw that her white cornelian had turned red."

"Nonsense! It was a coincidence. Stones do change."

"I grant you it was a coincidence. Sunrise and daybreak are coincidences. But one is because of t'other. Irene believed my poison turned her stone red, or she would never have refused to wear it a minute longer, from an unreasonable dislike of the Evil One, whose influence she discerned in this simple, natural phenomenon. I considered myself justified in boning the ring for my own use, so I had it enlarged to go on my finger, and there it is, on! I shall never see it again, unless Septimius Severus turns up trumps. What colour should you say it was now?"

Gwen took the hand with the mystic ring on it, turning it this way and that, to see the light reflected. "Pale pink," she said. "Yes—certainly pale pink." She appeared amused, and unconvinced. "I had no idea 'Re was superstitious. You are excusable, dearest, because, after all, you are only a man. One expects a woman to have a little commonsense. Now if...." She appeared to be wavering over something—disposed towards concessions.

"Now if what?"

"If the ring had had a character from its last place—if it had distinguished itself before...."

"Oh, I thought I told you about that. I forgot. It was a ring with a story, that came somehow to my great-great-grandfather, when he was in Paris. It had done itself great credit—gained quite a reputation—at the Court of Louis Quatorze, on the fingers I believe of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers and Louise de la Vallière.... Yes, I think both, but close particulars have always been wanting. 'Re only consented to wear it on condition she should be allowed to disbelieve in it, and then when this little stramash occurred through my bringing home the Warroo poison, her powers of belief at choice seem to have proved insufficient.... Isn't that her, coming back?"

It was; and when she came into the room a moment later, Gwen said:—"We've been talking about your ring, and a horrible little bottle of Red Indian poison this silly obstinate man has got hidden away and won't give me."

"I know," said Irene. "He's incorrigible. But don't you believe him, Gwen, when he justifies suicide. It's only his nonsense." Irene had come back quite sick and tired of housekeeping, and was provoked by the informal status quo of the young lady and gentleman on the sofa into remarking to the latter:—"Now you're happy."

"Or ought to be," said Gwen.

"Now, go on exactly where you were," said Irene.

"I will," said Adrian. "I was just expressing a hope that Gwen had been regular in her attendance at church while in London." He did not seem vitally interested in this, for he changed almost immediately to another subject. "How about your old lady, Gwen? She's your old lady, I suppose, whose house tumbled down?"

"Yes, only not quite. We got her out safe. The woman who lived with her, Mrs. Burr.... However, I wrote all that in my letter, didn't I?"

"Yes—you wrote about Mrs. Burr, and how she was a commonplace person. We thought you unfeeling about Mrs. Burr."

"I was, quite! I can't tell you how it has been on our consciences, Clo's and mine, that we have been unable to take an interest in Mrs. Burr. We tried to make up for it, by one of us going every day to see her in the hospital. I must say for her that she asked about Mrs. Prichard as soon as she was able to speak—asked if she was being got out, and said she supposed it was the repairs. She is not an imaginative or demonstrative person, you see. When I suggested to her that she should come to look after Mrs. Prichard in the country, till the house was rebuilt, she only said she was going to her married niece's at Clapham. I don't know why, but her married niece at Clapham seemed to me indisputable, like an Act of Parliament. I said 'Oh yes!' in a convinced sort of way, as if I knew this niece, and acknowledged Clapham."

"Then you have got the old lady at the Towers?"

"Yes—yesterday. I don't know how it's going to answer."

Adrian said: "Why shouldn't it answer?"

Irene was sharper. "Because of the servants, I suppose," said she.

Gwen said:—"Ye-es, because of the household."

"I thought," said Adrian, "that she was such a charming old lady." This took plenty of omissions for granted.

"So she is," said Gwen. "At least, I think her most sweet and fascinating. But really—the British servant!"

"I know," said Irene.

"Especially the women," said Gwen. "I could manage the men, easily enough."

"You could," said Adrian, with expressive emphasis. And all three laughed. Indeed, it is difficult to describe the subserviency of her male retinue to "Gwen o' the Towers." To say that they were ready to kiss the hem of her garment is but a feeble expression of the truth. Say, rather, that they were ready to fight for the privilege of doing so!

"I can't say," Gwen resumed, "precisely what I found my misgivings on. Little things I can't lay hold of. I can't find any fault with Lutwyche when she was attending on the dear old soul in Cavendish Square. But I couldn't help thinking...."

"What?"

"Well—I thought she showed a slightly fiendish readiness to defer to my minutest directions, and perhaps, I should say, a fell determination not to presume." Telegraphies of slight perceptive nods and raised eyebrows, in touch with shoulder shrugs not insisted on, expressed mutual understanding between the two young ladies. "Of course, I may be wrong," said Gwen. "But when I interviewed Mrs. Masham last thing last night, it was borne in upon me, Heaven knows how, that she had been in collision with Lutwyche about the old lady."

"What is it you call her?" said Irene. "Old Mrs. Picture? There's nothing against her, is there?"

Adrian had seemed to be considering a point. "Did you not say something—last letter but one, I think—about the old lady's husband having been convicted and transported?"

"Oh yes!—but that's not to be talked about, you know! Besides, it was her son, not her husband, that I wrote about. I only found out about the husband a day or two ago. Only you must be very careful, dearest, and remember it's a dead secret. I promise not to tell things, and then of course I forget, when it's you. Old Mrs. Picture would quite understand, though, if I told her."

Adrian said that he really must have some more of the secret to keep, or it would not be worth keeping.

So Gwen told them then and there all that old Mrs. Picture had told her of her terrible life-story. It may have contained things this present narrative has missed, or vice versa, but the essential points were the same in both.

"What a queer story!" said Adrian. "Did the old body cry when she told it?"

"Scarcely, if at all. She looked very beautiful—you've no idea how lovely she is sometimes—and told it all quite quietly, just as if she had been speaking of someone else."

"I have always had a theory," said Adrian, "that one gets less and less identical, as Time goes on...."

"What do you mean by that?" said Gwen.

"Haven't the slightest idea!" Adrian had been speaking seriously, but at this point his whimsical mood seized him. He went on:—"You don't mean to say, I hope, that you are going to make meaning a sine qua non in theories? It would be the death-knell of speculation."

"You don't know what a goose you are engaged to, Gwen," said Irene parenthetically.

"Yes, I do. But he meant something this time. He does, you know, now and again, in spite of appearances to the contrary. What did you mean, please?"

"I can only conjecture," said Adrian incorrigibly. Then, more in earnest:—"I think it was something like this. I know that I am the same man that I was last week so long as I remember what happened last week. Suppose I forget half—which I do, in practice—I still remain the same man, according to my notion of identity. But it is an academical notion, of no use in everyday life. A conjurer who forgets how to lay eggs in defiance of natural law, or how to find canaries in pocket-handkerchiefs, is not the same conjurer, in practical politics. And yet he is the same man. Dock and crop his qualities and attributes as you will, he keeps the same man, academically. But not for working purposes. By the time you can say nothing about him, that was true of him last week, he may just as well be somebody else."

"Mind you recollect all that, and it will do in a book," said his sister. "But what has it to do with Gwen's old woman?"

"Yes—what has it to do with my old woman?" said Gwen.

"Didn't you say," Adrian asked, "that the old lady told all about her past quite quietly, just as if she had been speaking of somebody else? Your very expression, ma'am! You see, she was to all intents and purposes somebody else then, or has become somebody else now. I always wonder, whether, if one had left oneself—one of one's selves—behind in the past, like old Mrs. Picture, and some strange navigation on the sea of life were to land one in a long-forgotten port, where the memory still hung on, in a mind or two, of the self one had left behind—would the self one had grown to be bring conviction to the mind or two? Wouldn't the chance survivors who admitted that you were Jack or Jim or Polly be discouraged if they found that Jack or Jim or Polly had forgotten the old pier that was swept away, or the old pub which the new hotel was, once. Wouldn't they discredit you? Wouldn't they decide that, for all your bald, uninteresting identity—mere mechanical sameness—you wouldn't wash?"

"Rip van Winkle washed," said Gwen.

"Because Washington Irving chose. I sometimes imagine Rip isn't really true. Anyhow, his case doesn't apply. He remembered everything as if it was yesterday. For him, it was yesterday. So he was the same man, both in theory and practice. Jack and Jim and Polly were to forget, by hypothesis."

"Does old Mrs. Picture?" asked Irene.

"I should say—very little," said Gwen. "Less now than when I took her first to Cavendish Square. She'll get very communicative, I've no doubt, if she's fed up, in the country air. I shall see to that myself. So Mrs. Masham had better look out."

"There's mamma!" said Irene suddenly. "I'll go and see that she gets her writing things.... No—don't you move! She won't come in here. She wants to write important letters. You sit still." And Irene went off to intercept the Miss Abercrombie her father had married all those years ago instead of Gwen's mother. She does not come much into this story, but its reader may be interested to know that she was an enthusiastic Abolitionist, and a friend of the Duchess of Sutherland. There was only one thing in those days that called for abolition—negro slavery in America; so everyone who recollects the fifties will know what an Abolitionist was. Nevertheless, though Lady Torrens happens to keep outside the story, it would have been quite another story without her.

Adrian was a good son, and loved his mother duly. She returned his affection, but could not stand his poetical effusions, which she thought showed an irreverent spirit. We are not quite sure they did not.

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CHAPTER III

HOW AN OLD LADY WAS TAKEN FOR A DRIVE, AND SAW JONES'S BULL, ALL IN A DREAM. STRIDES COTTAGE AND A STRANGE CONTIGUITY. AFTER SIXTY YEARS! HOW TOBY SMASHED A PANE OF GLASS WITH A HORSE-CHESTNUT, AND NEARLY HAD NO SUGAR IN HIS BREAD-AND-MILK. HOW THE OLD BODY CURTSIED AND THE OLD SOUL DIDN'T GO TO SLEEP. HOW GWEN NEARLY FORGOT TO INTRODUCE THEM. HOW MRS. PICTURE KNOCKED UP AND RAN DOWN,—BUT WOULD NOT HAVE MUTTON BROTH. BUT NEITHER KNEW! HOW MRS. PICTURE THOUGHT MRS. MARRABLE A NICE PERSON. HOW GWEN LUNCHED WITH HER PARENTS. "REALLY, OUR DAUGHTER!" HOW LOOKING AMUSED DOES NO GOOD. WAS GWEN JONES'S BULL, OR HOW? NORBURY AS AN ORACLE. HOW THE EARL WENT ROUND TO SEE THE FAIRY GODMOTHER

It had all come on the old woman like a bewildering dream. It began with the sudden appearance, as she dozed in her chair at Sapps Court, all the memories of her past world creeping spark-like through its half-burned scroll, a dream of Gwen in her glory, heralded by Dave; depositing Dolly, very rough-headed, on the floor, and explaining her intrusion with some difficulty owing to those children wanting to explain too. This was dreamlike enough, but it had become more so with the then inexplicable crash that followed a discomfort in the floor; more so with that strange half-conscious drive through the London streets in the glow of the sunset; more so yet, when, after an interval of real dreams, she woke to the luxury of Sister Nora's temporary arrangements, pending the organization of the Simple Life; more dreamlike still when she woke again later, to wonder at the leaves of the creeper that framed her lattice at the Towers, ruby in the dawn of a cloudless autumn day, and jewelled with its dew. She had to look, wonderingly, at her old unchanged hands, to be quite sure she was not in Heaven. Then she caught a confirmatory glimpse of her old white head in a mirror, and that settled it. Besides, her old limbs ached; not savagely, but quite perceptibly, and that was discordant with her idea of Heaven.

Her acquiescence was complete in all that had happened. Not that it was clearly what she would have chosen, even if she could have foreseen all its outcomings, and pictured to herself what she would have been refusing, had refusal been practicable. Her actual choice, putting aside newly kindled love for this mysterious and beautiful agency, half daughter and half Guardian Angel, that had been sprung upon her life so near its close, might easily have been to face the risks of some half-dried plaster, and go back to her old chair by the fire in Sapps Court, and her day-dreams of the huge cruel world she had all but seen the last of; to watch through the hours for what was now the great relaxation of her life, the coming of Dave and Dolly, and to listen through the murmur of the traffic that grew and grew in the silence of the house, for the welcome voices of the children on the stairs. But how meet Gwen's impulsive decisions with anything but acquiescence? It was not, with her, mere ready deference to the will of a superior; she might have stickled at that, and found words to express a wish for her old haunts and old habits of life. It was much more nearly the feeling a mother might have had for a daughter, strangely restored to her, after long separation that had made her a memory of a name. It was mixed with the ready compliance one imputes to the fortunate owner of a Guardian Angel, who is deserving of his luck. No doubt also with the fact that no living creature, great or small, ever said nay to Gwen. But, for whatever reason, she complied, and wondered.

Remember, too, the enforced associations of her previous experience. Think how soon the conditions of her early youth—which, if they afforded no high culture, were at least those of a respected middle class in English provincial life—came to an end, and what they gave place to! Then, on her return to England, how little chance her antecedents and her son's vicious inherited disposition gave her of resuming the position she would have been entitled to had her exile, and its circumstances, not made the one she had to submit to abnormal! Aunt M'riar and Mrs. Burr were good women, but those who study class-niceties would surely refuse to ranger either with Granny Marrable. And even that old lady is scarcely a fair illustration; for, had her sister's bridegroom been what the bride believed him, the social outcome of the marriage would have been all but the same as of her own, had she wedded his elder brother.

It is little wonder that old Mrs. Picture, who once was Maisie, should succumb to the influences of this dazzling creature with all the world at her feet. And less that these influences grew upon her, when there was none to see, and hamper free speech with conventions. For when they were alone, it came about that either unpacked her heart to the other, and Gwen gave all the tale of the shadow on her own love in exchange for that of the blacker shadows of the galleys—of the convict's cheated wife, and the terrible inheritance of his son.

The story is sorry to have to admit that Gwen's bad faith to the old lady, in the matter of her pledge of secrecy, did not show itself only in her repetition of the story to her lover and his sister. She told her father, a nobleman with all sorts of old-fashioned prejudices, among others that of disliking confidences entrusted to him in disregard of solemn oaths of secrecy. His protest intercepted his daughter's revelation at the outset. "Unprincipled young monkey!" he exclaimed. "You mustn't tell me when you've promised not to. Didn't you, now?"

"Of course I did! But you don't count. Papas don't, when trustworthy. Besides, the more people of the right sort know a secret, the better it will be kept." Gwen had to release her lips from two paternal fingers to say this. She followed it up by using them—she was near enough—to run a trill of kisslets across the paternal forehead.

"Very good!" said the Earl. "Fire away!" It has been mentioned that Gwen always got her will, somehow. This how was the one she used with her father. She told the whole tale without reserves; except, perhaps, slight ones in respect of the son's misdeeds. They were not things to be spoken of to a good, innocent father, like hers.

She answered an expression on his face, when she had finished, with:—"As for any chance of the story not being true, that's impossible."

"Then it must be true," was the answer. Not an illogical one!

"Don't agree meekly," says Gwen. "Meek agreement is contradiction.... What makes you think it fibs?"

"I don't think it fibs, my darling. Because I attach a good deal of weight to the impression it has produced upon you. But other people might, who did not know you."

"Other people are not to be told, so they are out of it.... Well, perhaps that has very little to do with the matter."

"Not very much. But tell me!—does the old lady give no names at all?"

"N-no!—I can remember none. Her real name is not Picture, of course ... I should have said Prichard."

"I understand. But couldn't you get at her husband's name, to verify the story?"

"I don't want it verified. Where's the use?... No, she hasn't told me a single surname of any of the people.... Oh yes—stop a minute! Of course she told me Prichard was a name in her family—some old nurse's. But it's such a common name."

"Did she not say where she came from—where her family belonged?"

"Yes—Essex. But Essex is like Rutlandshire. Nobody has ever been to either, or knows anyone that is there by nature."

"I didn't know that was the case, but I have no interest in proving the contrary. Suppose you try to get at her husband's name—her real married name. I could tell my man in Lincoln's Inn to hunt up the trial. Or even if you could get the exact date it might be enough. There cannot have been so very many fathers-in-laws' signatures forged in one year."

But Gwen did not like to press the old lady for information she was reluctant to give, and the names of the family in Essex and the delinquent remained untold; or, if told to Gwen, were concealed more effectually by her than the narrative they were required to fill out. And as the confidants to whom she had repeated that narrative were more loyal to her than she herself had been to its first narrator, it remained altogether unknown to the household at the Towers; and, indeed, to anyone who could by repeating it have excited suspicion of the twinship of the farmer's widow at Chorlton-under-Bradbury and the old lady whom her young ladyship's eccentricities had brought from London.

Apart from their close contiguity, nothing occurred for some time to make mutual recognition more probable than it had been at any moment since Dave's visit to Chorlton had disclosed to each the bare fact of the other's existence. They were within five miles of one another, and neither knew it; nor had either a thought of the other but as a memory of long ago; still cherished, as a sepulchral stone cherishes what Time leaves legible, while his slow hand makes each letter fainter day by day.

And yet—how near they went on one occasion to what must have led to recognition, had the period of their separation been less cruelly long, and its strange conditions less baffling! How near, for instance, three or four days after old Maisie's arrival at the Towers, when Gwen the omnipotent decided that she would take Mrs. Picture for a long drive in the best part of the day—the longest drive that would not tire her to death!

Whether the old soul that her young ladyship had taken such a fancy to—that was how Blencorn the coachman and Benjamin the coachboy thought of her—really enjoyed the strange experience of gliding over smooth roads flanked by matchless woodlands or primeval moorland; cropless Autumn fields or pastures of contented cattle; through villages of the same mind about the undesirableness of change that had been their creed for centuries, with churches unconscious of judicious restoration and an unflawed record of curfews; by farms with all the usual besetting sins of farms, black duck-slush and uncaptivating dung-heaps; cattle no persuasion weighs with; the same hen that never stops the same dissertation on the same egg, the same cock that has some of the vices of his betters, our male selves to wit—whether the said old soul really enjoyed all this, who can say? She may have been pretending to satisfy her young ladyship. If so, she succeeded very well, considering her years. But it was all part of a dream to her.

In that dream, she waked at intervals to small realities. One of these was Farmer Jones's Bull. Not that she had more than a timid hope of seeing that celebrated quadruped himself. She was, however, undisguisedly anxious to do so; inquiring after him; the chance of his proximity; the possibility of cultivating his intimate acquaintance. No other bull would serve her purpose, which was to take back to Dave, who filled much of her thoughts, an authentic report of Farmer Jones's.

"Dave must be a very nice little boy," said Gwen. "Anyhow, he's pretty. And Dolly's a darling." This may have been partly due to the way in which Dolly had overwhelmed the young lady—the equivalent, as it were, of a kind of cannibalism, or perhaps octopus-greed—which had stood in the way of a maturer friendship with her brother. However, there had really been very little time.

"You see, my dear," said the old lady, "if I was to see Farmer Jones's Bull, I could tell the dear child about him in London. Isn't that a Bull?" But it wasn't, though possibly a relation he would not have acknowledged.

"I think Blencorn might make a point of Farmer Jones's Bull," said Gwen. "Blencorn!"

"Yes, my lady."

"I want to stop at Strides Cottage, coming back. You know—Mrs. Marrable's!"

"Yes, my lady."

"Well—isn't that Farmer Jones's farm, on the left, before we get there? Close to the Spinney." Now Mr. Blencorn knew perfectly well. But he was not going to admit that he knew, because farms were human affairs, and he was on the box. He referred to his satellite, the coachboy, whose information enabled him to say:—"Yes, my lady, on the left." Gwen then said:—"Very good, then, Blencorn, stop at the gate, and Benjamin can go in and say we've come to see the Bull. Go on!"

"I wonder," said old Mrs. Prichard, with roused interest, "if that is Davy's granny I wrote to for him. Such a lot he has to say about her! But it was Mrs.... Mrs. Thrale Dave went to stop with."

"Mrs. Marrable—Granny Marrable—is Mrs. Thrale's mother. A nice old lady. Rather younger than you, and awfully strong. She can walk nine miles." In Rumour's diary, the exact number of a pedestrian's miles is vouched for, as well as the exact round number of thousands Park-Laners have per annum. "I dare say we shall see her," Gwen continued. "I hope so, because I promised my cousin Clo to give her this parcel with my own hands. Only she may be out.... Aren't you getting very tired, dear Mrs. Picture?"

Mrs. Picture was getting tired, and admitted it. "But I must see the Bull," said she. She closed her eyes and leaned back, and Gwen said:—"You can drive a little quicker, Blencorn." There had been plenty of talk through a longish drive, and Gwen was getting afraid of overdoing it.

This was the gate of the farm, my lady. Should Benjamin go across to the house, and express her ladyship's wishes? Benjamin was trembling for the flawless blacking of his beautiful boots, and the unsoiled felt of his leggings. Yes, he might go, and get somebody to come out and speak to her ladyship, or herself, as convenient. But while Benjamin was away on this mission, the unexpected came to pass in the form of a boy. We all know how rarely human creatures occur in fields and villages, in England. This sporadic example, in answer to a question "Are you Farmer Jones's boy?" replied guardedly:—"Ees, a be woon."

"Very well then," said Gwen. "Find Farmer Jones, to show us his Bull."

The boy shook his head. "Oo'r Bull can't abide he," said he. "A better tarry indowers, fa'ather had, and leave oy to ha'andle un. A be a foine Bull, oo'r Bull!"

"You mean, you can manage your Bull, and father can't. Is that it?" Assent given. "And how can you manage your Bull?"

"Oy can whistle un a tewun."

"Is he out in the field, or here in his stable or house, or whatever it's called?"

"That's him nigh handy, a-roomblin'." It then appeared that this youth was prepared, for a reasonable consideration, to lead this formidable brute out into the farmyard, under the influence of musical cajolery. He met a suggestion that his superiors might disapprove of his doing so, by pointing out that they would all keep "yower side o' th' gayut" until the Bull—whose name, strange to say, seemed to be Zephyr—was safe in bounds, chained by his nose-ring to a sufficient wall-staple.

Said old Mrs. Picture, roused from an impending nap by the interest of the event:—"This must be the boy Davy told about, who whistled to the Bull. Why—the child can never tire of telling that story." It certainly was the very selfsame boy, and he was as good as his word, exhibiting the Bull with pride, and soothing his morose temper as he had promised, by monotonous whistling. Whether he was more intoxicated with his success or with a shilling Gwen gave him as recompense, it would have been hard to say.

The old lady was infinitely more excited and interested about this Bull, on Dave's account, than about any of the hundred-and-one things Gwen had shown her during her five-mile drive. When Gwen gave the direction:—"Go on to Strides Cottage, Blencorn," and Blencorn, who had scarcely condescended to look at the Bull, answered:—"Yes, my lady," her interest on Dave's account was maintained, but on a rather different line. She was, however, becoming rapidly too fatigued to entertain any feelings of resentment against her rival, and none mixed with the languid interest the prospect of seeing her aroused during the three-minutes' drive from Farmer Jones's to Strides Cottage.

---

This story despairs of showing to the full the utter strangeness of the position that was created by this meeting of old Maisie and old Phoebe, each of whom for nearly half a century had thought the other dead. It is forced to appeal to its reader to make an effort to help its feeble presentations by its own powers of imagery.

Conceive that suddenly a voice that imposed belief on its hearers had said to each of them:—"This is your sister of those long bygone years—slain, for you, by a cunning lie; living on, and mourning for a death that never was; dreaming, as you dreamed, of a slowly vanishing past, vanishing so slowly that its characters might still be visible at the end of the longest scroll of recorded life. Look upon her, and recognise in that shrunken face the lips you kissed, the cheeks you pressed to yours, the eye that laughed and gave back love or mockery! Try to hear in that frail old voice the music of its speech in the years gone by; ask for the song it knew so well the trick of. Try to caress in those grey, thin old tresses the mass of gold from whose redundance you cut the treasured locks you almost weep afresh to see and handle, even now." Then try to imagine to yourself the outward seeming of its hearers, always supposing them to understand. It is a large supposition, but the dramatist would have to accept it, with the ladies in the stalls getting up to go.

Are you prepared to accept, off the stage, a snapshot recognition of each other by the two old twins, and curtain? It is hard to conceive that mere eyesight, and the hearing of a changed voice, could have provoked such a result. However, it is not for the story to decide that in every case it would be impossible. It can only record events as they happened, however much interest might be gained by the interpolation of a little skilful fiction.

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That morning, at Strides Cottage, a regrettable event had disturbed Granny Marrable's equanimity. A small convalescent, named Toby, who was really old enough to know better, had made a collection of beautiful, clean, new horse-chestnuts from under the tree in the field behind the house. Never was the heart of man more embittered by this sort being no use for cooking than in the case of these flawless, glossy rotundities. Each one was a handful for a convalescent, and that was why Toby so often had his hands in his pockets. He was, in fact, fondling his ammunition, like Mr. Dooley. For that was, according to Toby, the purpose of Creation in the production of the horse-chestnut tree. He had awaited his opportunity, and here it was:—he was unwatched in the large room that was neither kitchen nor living-room, but more both than neither, and he seized it to show his obedience to a frequent injunction not to throw stones. He was an honourable convalescent, and he proved it in the choice of a missile. His first horse-chestnut only gave him the range; his second smashed the glass it was aimed at. And that glass was the door or lid of the automatic watermill on the chimney-piece!

The Granny was quite upset, and Widow Thrale was downright angry, and called Toby an undeserving little piece, if ever there was one. It was a harsh censure, and caused Toby to weep; in fact, to roar. Roaring, however, did nothing towards repairing the mischief done, and nearly led to a well-deserved penalty for Toby, to be put to his bed and very likely have no sugar in his bread-and-milk—such being the exact wording of the sentence. It was not carried out, as it was found that the watermill and horses, the two little girls in sun-bonnets, and the miller smoking at the window, were all intact; only the glass being broken. There was no glazier in the village, which broke few windows, and was content to wait the coming round of a peripatetic plumber, who came at irregular intervals, like Easter, but without astronomical checks. So, as a temporary expedient to keep the dust out, Widow Thrale pasted a piece of paper over the breakage, and the mill was hidden from the human eye. Toby showed penitence, and had sugar in his bread-and-milk, but the balance of his projectiles was confiscated.

Consequently, old Mrs. Marrable was not in her best form when her young ladyship arrived, and Benjamin the coachboy came up the garden pathway as her harbinger to see if she should descend from the carriage to interview the old lady. She did not want to do so, as she felt she ought to get Mrs. Prichard home as soon as possible; but wanted, all the same, to fulfil her promise of delivering Sister Nora's parcel with her own hands. She was glad to remain in the carriage, on hearing from Benjamin that both Granny Marrable and her daughter were on the spot; and would, said he, be out in a minute.

"They'll curtsey," said Gwen. "Do, dear Mrs. Picture, keep awake one minute more. I want you so much to see Dave's other Granny. She's such a nice old body!" Can any student of language say why these two old women should be respectively classed as an old soul and an old body, and why the cap should fit in either case?

"I won't go to sleep," said Mrs. Prichard, making a great effort. "That must be Dave's duck-pond, across the road." The duck-pond had no alloy. She did not feel that her curiosity about Dave's other Granny was quite without discomfort.

"Oh—had Dave a duck-pond? It looks very black and juicy.... Here come the two Goodies! I've brought you a present from Sister Nora, Granny Marrable. It's in here. I know what it is because I've seen it—it's nice and warm for the winter. Take it in and look at it inside. I mustn't stop because of Mrs.... There now!—I was quite forgetting...." It shows how slightly Gwen was thinking of the whole transaction that she should all but tell Blencorn to drive home at this point, with the scantiest farewell to the Goodies, who had curtsied duly as foretold. She collected herself, and continued:—"You remember the small boy, Mrs. Marrable, when I came with Sister Nora, whose letter we read about the thieves and the policeman?"

"Ah, dear, indeed I do! That dear child!—why, what would we not give, Ruth and me, to see him again?"

"Well, this is Mrs. Picture, who wrote his letter for him. This is Granny Marrable, that Dave told you all about. She says she wants him back."

And then Maisie and Phoebe looked each other in the face again after half a century of separation. Surely, if there is any truth in the belief that the souls of twins are linked by some unseen thread of sympathy, each should have been stirred by the presence of the other. If either was, she had no clue to the cause of her perturbation. They looked each other in the face; and each made some suitable recognition of her unknown sister. Phoebe hoped the dear boy was well, and Maisie heard that he was, but had not seen him now nigh a month. Phoebe had had a letter from him yesterday, but could not quite make it out. Ruth would go in and get it, for her ladyship to see. Granny Marrable made little direct concession to the equivocal old woman who might be anything, for all she was in her ladyship's carriage.

"I suppose," said Gwen, "the boy has tried to describe the accident, and made a hash of it. Is that it?"

"Indeed, my lady, he does tell something of an accident. Only I took it for just only telling—story-book like!... Ah, yes, that will be the letter. Give it to her ladyship."

Gwen took the letter from Widow Thrale, but did not unfold it. "Mayn't I take it away," she said, "for me and Mrs. Picture to read at home? I want to get her back and give her some food. She's knocking up."

Immediately Granny Marrable's heart and Widow Thrale's overflowed. What did the doubts that hung over this old person matter, whatever she was, if she was running down visibly within the zone of influence of perceptible mutton-broth; which was confirming, through the door, what the wood-smoke from the chimney had to say about it to the Universe? Let Ruth bring out a cup of it at once for Mrs. Picture. It was quite good and strong by now. Granny Marrable could answer for that.

But it was one thing to be generous to a rival, another to accept a benevolence from one. Mrs. Picture quite roused herself to acknowledge the generosity, but she wouldn't have the broth on any terms, evidently. Gwen thought she could read the history of this between the lines. As we have seen, she was aware of the sort of jealousy subsisting between these two old Grannies about their adopted grandson. She thought it best to favour immediate departure, and Blencorn jumped at the first symptom of a word to that effect. The carriage rolled away, waving farewells to the cottage, and the tenants of the latter went slowly back to the mutton-broth.

And neither of the two old women had the dimmest idea whose face it was that she had looked at in the broad full light of a glorious autumn day; not passingly, as one glances at a stranger on the road, who comes one knows not whence, to vanish away one knows not whither; but inquiringly, as when a first interview shows us the outward seeming of one known by hearsay—one whom our mind has dwelt on curiously, making conjectural images at random, and wondering which was nearest to the truth. And to neither of those who saw this meeting, for all they felt interest to note what each would think of the other, did the thought come of any very strong resemblance between them. They were two old women—that was all!

And yet, in the days of their girlhood, these old women had been so much alike that they were not allowed to dress in the same colour, for mere mercy to the puzzled bystanders. So much alike that when, for a frolic, each put on the other's clothes, and answered to the other's name, the fraud went on for days, undetected!

It seems strange, but gets less strange as all the facts are sorted out, and weighed in the scale. First and foremost the whole position was so impossible per se—one always knows what is and is not possible!—that any true version of the antecedents of the two old women would have seemed mere madness. Had either spectator noted that the bones of the two old faces were the same, she would have condemned her own powers of observation rather than doubt the infallibility of instinctive disbelief, which is the attitude of the vernacular mind not only to what it wishes to be false, but to anything that runs counter to the octave-stretch forlorn—as Elizabeth Browning put it—of its limited experience. Had either noted that the eyes of the two were the same, she would have attached no meaning to the similarity. So many eyes are the same! How many shades of colour does the maker of false eyes stock, all told? Guess them at a thousand, and escape the conclusion that in a world of a thousand million, a million of eyes are alike, if you can. If they had compared the hair still covering the heads of both, they would have found Dave's comparison of it with Pussy's various tints a good and intelligent one. Maisie was silvery white, Phoebe merely grey. But the greatest difference was in the relative uprightness and strength of the old countrywoman, helped—and greatly helped—by the entire difference in dress.

No!—it was not surprising that bystanders should not suspect offhand that something they would have counted impossible was actually there before them in the daylight. Was it not even less so that Maisie and Phoebe, who remembered Phoebe and Maisie last in the glory and beauty of early womanhood, should each be unsuspicious, when suspicion would have gone near to meaning a thought in the mind of each that the other had risen from the grave? It is none the less strange that two souls, nourished unborn by the same mother, should have all but touched, and that neither should have guessed the presence of the other, through the outer shell it dwelt in.

How painfully we souls are dependent on the evidence of our existence—eyes and noses and things!

To get back to the thread of the story. Mrs. Picture, on her part, seemed—so far as her fatigue allowed her to narrate her impressions—to take a more favourable view of her rival than the latter of herself. She went so far as to speak of her as "a nice person." But she was in a position to be liberal; being, as it were, in possession of the bone of contention—unconscious Dave, equally devoted to both his two Grannies! Would she not go back to him, and would not he and Dolly come up and keep her company, and Dolly bring her doll? Would not Sapps Court rise, metaphorically speaking, out of its ashes, and the rebuilt wall of that Troy get bone-dry, and the window be stood open on summer evenings by Mrs. Burr, for to hear Miss Druitt play her scales? It was much easier for Maisie to forgive Phoebe her claim on Dave's affection than vice versa.

She was, however, so thoroughly knocked up by this long drive that she spoke very little to Gwen about Strides Cottage or anything else, at the time. Gwen saw her on the way to resuscitation, and left her rather reluctantly to Mrs. Masham and Lutwyche; who would, she knew, take very good care that her visitor wanted for nothing, however much she suspected that those two first-class servants were secretly in revolt against the duty they were called on to execute. They would not enter their protest against any whim of her young ladyship, however mad they might think it, by any act of neglect that could be made the basis of an indictment against them.

She herself was overdue at the rather late lunch which her august parents were enjoying in solitude. They were leaving for London in the course of an hour or so, having said farewell in the morning to such guests as still remained at the Towers; and intended, after a short stay in town, to part company—the Earl going to Bath, where it was his practice each year to go through a course of bathing, by which means he contended his life might be indefinitely prolonged—to return in time for Christmas, which they would probably celebrate—or, as the Earl said, undergo—at Ancester Towers, according to their usual custom.

"What on earth have you been doing, Gwen, to make you so late?" said the Countess. "We couldn't wait."

"It doesn't matter," was her daughter's answer. "I can gobble to make up for lost time. Don't bring any arrears, Norbury. I can go on where they are. What's this—grouse? Not if it's grousey, thank you!... Oh—well—perhaps I can endure it ... What have I been doing? Why, taking a drive!... Yes—hock. Only not in a tall glass. I hate tall glasses. They hit one's nose. Besides, you get less.... I took my old lady out for a drive—all round by Chorlton, and showed her things. We saw Farmer Jones's Bull."

"Is that the Bull that killed the man?" This was the Earl. His eyes were devouring his beautiful daughter, as they were liable to do, even at lunch, or in church.

"I believe he did. It was a man that beat his wife. So it was a good job. He's a dear Bull, but his eyes are red. He had a little boy ... Nonsense, mamma!—why don't you wait till I've done? He had a little boy to whistle to him and keep his nerves quiet. The potatoes could have waited, Norbury." The story hopes that its economies of space by omitting explanations will not be found puzzling.

The Countess's mien indicated despair of her daughter's manners or sanity, or both. Also that attempts to remedy either would be futile. Her husband laughed slightly to her across the table, with a sub-shrug—the word asks pardon—of his shoulders. She answered it by another, and "Well!" It was as though they had said:—"Really—our daughter!"

"And where else did you go?" said the Earl, to re-rail the conversation. "And what else did you see?"

"Mrs. Picture was knocking up," said Gwen. "So we didn't see so much as we might have done. We left a parcel from Cousin Clo at Goody Marrable's, and then came home as fast as we could pelt. You know Goody Marrable, mamma?"

"Oh dear, yes! I went there with Clo, and she gave us her strong-tea."

Gwen nodded several times. "Same experience," said she. "Why is it they will?" The story fancies it referred, a long time since, to this vice of Goody Marrable's. No doubt Gurth the Swineherd would have made tea on the same lines, had he had any to make.

The Countess lost interest in the tea question, and evidently had something to say. Therefore Gwen said:—"Yes, mamma! What?" and got for answer:—"It's only a suggestion."

"But what is a suggestion?" said the Earl.

"No attention will be paid to it, so it's no use," said her ladyship.

"But what is it?" said the Earl. "No harm in knowing what it is, that I can see!"

"My dear," said the Countess, "you are always unreasonable. But Gwen may see some sense in what I say. It's no use your looking amused, because that doesn't do any good." After which little preliminary skirmish she came to the point, speaking to Gwen in a half-aside, as to a fellow-citizen in contradistinction to an outcast, her father. "Why should not your old woman be put up at Mrs. Marrable's? They do this sort of thing there. However, perhaps Mrs. Marrable is full up."

"I didn't see anybody there but the two Goodies. I didn't go in, though. But why is Mrs. Picture not to stop where she is?"

"Just as you please, my dear." Her ladyship abdicated with the promptitude of a malicious monarch, who seeks to throw the Constitution into disorder. "How long do you want to stop here yourself?"

"I haven't made up my mind. But why is Mrs. Picture not to stop where she is?" This was put incisively.

Her ladyship deprecated truculence. "My dear Gwen!—really! Are you Farmer Jones's Bull, or who?" Then, during a lull in the servants, for the moment out of hearing, she added in an undertone:—"You can ask Norbury, and see what he thinks. Only wait till Thomas is out of the room." To which Gwen replied substantially that she was still in possession of her senses.

Now Norbury stood in a very peculiar relation to this noble Family. Perhaps it is best described as that of an Unacknowledged Deity, tolerating Atheism from a respect for the Aristocracy. He was not allowed altars or incense, which might have made him vain; but it is difficult to say what questions he was not consulted on, by the Family. Its members had a general feeling that opinions so respectful as his must be right, even when they did not bear analysis.

Gwen let the door close on Thomas before she approached the Shrine of the Oracle. It must be admitted that she did so somewhat as Farmer Jones's Bull might have done. "You've heard all about old Mrs. Picture, Norbury?" said she.

Why should it have been that Mr. Norbury's "Oh dear, yes, my lady!" immediately caused inferences in his hearers' minds—one of which, in the Countess's, caused her to say to Gwen, under her voice:—"I told you so!"?

But Gwen was consulting the Oracle; what did it matter to her what forecasts of its decisions the Public had made? "But you haven't seen her?" said she. No—Mr. Norbury had not seen her; perfect candour must admit that. She was only known to him by report, gathered from conversations in which he himself was not joining. How could he be induced to disclose that part of them that was responsible for a peculiar emphasis in his reply to her ladyship's previous question?

Not by the Countess's—"She is being well attended to, I suppose?" spoken as by one floating at a great height above human affairs, but to a certain extent responsible if they miscarried. For this only produced a cordial testimonial from the Oracle to the assiduity, care, and skill with which every want of the old lady was being supplied. Gwen's method was likely to be much more effective, helped as it was by her absolute licence to be and to do whatever she liked, and to suffer nothing counter to her wishes, though, indeed, she always gained them by omnipotent persuasion. She had also, as we have seen, a happy faculty of going straight to the point. So had Farmer Jones's Bull, no doubt, on occasion shown.

"Which is it, Lutwyche or Mrs. Masham?" said she. What it was that was either remained indeterminate.

Mr. Norbury set himself to say which, without injustice to anyone concerned. He dropped his voice to show how unreservedly he was telling the truth, yet how reluctant he was that his words should be overheard at the other end of the Castle. "No blame attaches," said he, to clear the air. "But, if I might make so bold, the arrangement would work more satisfactory if put upon a footing."

The Countess said:—"You see, Gwen. I told you what it would be." The Earl exchanged understandings with Norbury, which partly took the form of inaudible speech. The fact was that Gwen had sprung the old lady on the household without doing anything towards what Mr. Norbury called putting matters on a footing.

---

CHAPTER IV

OLD MEMORIES, AGAIN. THE VOYAGE OUT, FIFTY YEARS SINCE. SAPPS COURT, AND BREAD-AND-BUTTER SPREAD ON THE LOAF. HOW GWEN CAME INTO THE DREAM SUDDENLY. HOW THEY READ DAVE'S LETTER, AND MUGGERIDGE WAS UNDECIPHERABLE. HOW IT WASN'T THE MIDDLE AGES, BUT JEALOUSIES BRED RUCTIONS. SO GWEN DINED ALONE, BUT WENT BACK. A CONTEMPTIBLE HOT-WATER BOTTLE. MISS LUTWYCHE'S SKETCH OF THE RUCTIONS, AND HER MAGNANIMITY. NAPOLÉON DE SOUCHY. HIS VANITY. BUT MAISIE AND PHOEBE REMAINED UNCONSCIOUS, AS WHY SHOULD THEY NOT? INDEED, WHY NOT POSTPONE THE DISCOVERY UNTIL AFTER THE GREAT INTERRUPTION, DEATH?

The problem of where the anomalous old lady was to be lodged might have been solved by what is called an accommodating disposition, but not by the disposition incidental to the esprit de corps of a large staff of domestic servants. To control them is notoriously the deuce's own delight, and old Nick's relish for it must grow in proportion as they become more and more corporate. As Mr. Norbury said—and we do not feel that we can add to the force of his words—her young ladyship had not took proper account of tempers. Two of these qualities, tendencies, attributes, or vices—or indeed virtues, if you like—had developed, or germinated, or accrued, or suppurated, as may be, in the respective bosoms of Miss Lutwyche and Mrs. Masham. It was not a fortunate circumstance that the dispositions of these two ladies, so far from being accommodating, were murderous. That is, they would have been so had it happened to be the Middle Ages, just then. But it wasn't. Tempers had ceased to find expression in the stiletto and the poison-cup, and had been curbed and stunted down to taking the other party up short, showing a proper spirit, and so on.

"What was that you were saying to Norbury, papa dear?" Gwen asked this question of her father in his own room, half an hour later, having followed him thither for a farewell chat.

"Saying at lunch?" asked the Earl, partly to avoid distraction from the mild Havana he was lighting, partly to consider his answer.

"Saying at lunch. Yes."

"Oh, Norbury! Well!—we were speaking of the same thing as you and your mother, I believe. Only it was not so very clear what that was. You didn't precisely ... formulate."

"Dear good papa! As if everything was an Act of Parliament! What did Norbury say?"

"I only remember the upshot. Miss Lutwyche has a rather uncertain temper, and Mrs. Masham has been accustomed to be consulted."

"Well—and then?"

"That's all I can recollect. It's a very extraordinary thing that it should be so, but I have certainly somehow formed an image in my mind of all my much too numerous retinue of servants taking sides with Masham and Miss Lutwyche respectively, in connection with this old lady of yours, who must be a great curiosity, and whom, by the way, I haven't seen yet." He compared his watch with a clock on the chimney-piece, whose slow pendulum said—so he alleged—"I, am, right, you, are, wrong!" all day.

"Suppose you were to come round and see her now!"

"Should I have time? Yes, I think I should. Just time to smoke this in peace and quiet, and then we'll pay her a visit. Mustn't be a long one."

---

The day had lost its beauty, and the wind in the trees and the chimneys was inconsolable about the loss, when Gwen said to the old woman:—"Here's my father, come to pay you a visit, Mrs. Picture." Thereon the Earl said:—"Don't wake her up, Gwennie." But to this she said:—"She isn't really asleep. She goes off like this." And he said:—"Old people do."

Her soft hand roused the old lady as gently as anything effectual could. And then Mrs. Picture said:—"I heard you come in, my dear." And, when Gwen repeated that her father had come, became alive to the necessity of acknowledging him, and had to give up the effort, being told to sit still.

"You had such a long drive, you see," said Gwen. "It has quite worn you out. It was my fault, and I'm sorry." Then, relying on inaudibility:—"It makes her seem so old. She was quite young when we started off this morning."

"Young folks," said his lordship, "never believe in old bones, until they feel them inside, and then they are not young folks any longer. Why—where did we drive to, to knock ourselves up so? What's her name—Picture?" He was incredulous, evidently, about such a name being possible. But there was a sort of graciousness, or goodwill, about his oblique speech in the first person plural, that more than outweighed abruptness in his question about her.

She rallied under her visitor's geniality—or his emphasis, as might be. "Maisie Prichard, my lord," said she, quite clearly. Her designation for him showed she was broad awake now, and took in the position. She could answer his question, repeated:—"And where did we drive?" by saying:—"A beautiful drive, but I've a poor head now for names." She tried recollection, failed, and gave it up.

"Chorlton-under-Bradbury?" said the Earl.

"We went there too. I know Chorlton quite well, of course. The other one!—where the clock was." Gwen supplied the name, a singular one, Chernoweth; and the Earl said:—"Oh yes—Chernoweth. A pretty place. But why 'Chorlton quite well, of course'?"

Gwen explained. "Because of the small boy, Dave. Don't you know, papa?—I told you Mrs. Picture has directed no end of letters to Chorlton, for Dave." The Earl was not very clear. "Don't you remember?—to old Mrs. Marrable, at Strides Cottage?" Still not very clear, he pretended he was, to save trouble. Then he weakened his pretence, by saying:—"But I remember Mrs. Marrable, and Strides Cottage, near forty years ago, when your Uncle George and I were two young fellows. Fine, handsome woman she was—didn't look her age—she had just married Farmer Marrable—was a widow from Sussex, I think. Can't think what her name had been ... knew it once, too!"

"She's a fine-looking old lady now," said Gwen. "Isn't she, Mrs. Picture?"

"I am sure she is that too, my dear, or you would not say so. Only my eyesight won't always serve me nowadays as it did, not for seeing near up." The reserves about Dave's other Granny were always there, however little insisted on. Old Maisie was exaggerating about her eyesight. She had seen her rival quite clearly enough to have an opinion about her looks.

"Did you see the inside of the cottage, and the old chimney-corners? And the well out at the back?" Thus the Earl.

"We didn't go in. I wanted to get home. But what a lot you recollect of it, papa dear!"

"I ought to recollect something about it. It was Strides Cottage where your Uncle George was taken when he broke his leg, riding."

"Oh, was it there? Yes, I've heard of that. His horse threw him on a heap of stones, and bolted, and pitched into Dunsters Gap, and had to be shot."

"Yes, he shouldn't have ridden that horse. But he was always at that sort of thing, George." A sound came in here that had the same relation to a sigh that a sip has to a draught. "Well!—Mrs. Marrable nursed him up at Strides Cottage till he was fit to move—they were afraid about his back at first—and I used to ride over every morning. We used to chaff poor Georgy about his beautiful nurse.... Oh yes!—she was young enough for that. Woman well under forty, I should say."

Gwen made calculations and attested possibilities. Oh dear, yes!—Granny Marrable must have been under forty then. She surprised his lordship, first by gently smoothing aside the silver hair on the old woman's forehead, then by stooping down and kissing it. "Why, how old are you now, dear?" she said, as though she were speaking to a child. He for his part was only surprised, not dumfounded. He just felt a little glad his Countess was elsewhere; and was not sorry, on looking round, to see that no domestic was present. What a wild, ungovernable daughter it was, this one of his, and how he loved it!

So did old Mrs. Picture, to judge by the illumination of the eyes she turned up to the girl's young face above her. "How old am I now, my dear?" said she. "Eighty-one this Christmas." Thereupon said Gwen:—"You see, papa! Old Mrs. Marrable must have been quite a young woman in Uncle George's time. She's heaps younger than Mrs. Picture." She again smoothed the beautiful silver hair, adding:—"It's not unfeelingness, because Uncle George died years before I was born."

"Killed at Rangoon in twenty-four," said the Earl, with another semi-sigh. "Poor Georgy!" And then his visit was cut as short as—even shorter than—his forecast of its duration, for his next words were:—"I hear someone coming to fetch me. Your mamma is sure to start an hour before the time. Good-bye, Mrs.... Picture. I hope you are being well fed and properly attended to." To which the old lady replied:—"I thank your lordship, indeed I am," in an old-fashioned way that went well with the silver hair. And Gwen said:—"Dear old parent! Do you think I shan't see to that?" and followed him out of the room.

"She's a nice old soul," said he, in the passage. "I wanted to see what she was like. But I thought it best to say nothing about the convict."

"Of course not. I'll follow you round before you go, to say good-bye. You won't start for half an hour." And Gwen returned to the old soul, who presently said to her—to account to her for knowing how to say "my lord" and "your lordship"—"When I first married, my husband's great friend was Lord Pouralot. But I very soon called him Jack." This was a reminiscence of her interim between her victimisation and loneliness, which of course her innocence thought of as marriage. But was this early lordship's really a ladyship, if such a one appeared, we wonder? Very likely she was only another dupe, like Maisie. Possibly less fortunate, in one way. For, owing to the high price of women, in the land of Maisie's destiny, she—poor girl—never knew she was not a good one, until she found she was not a widow, although her worthless love of a lifetime was dead.

Oh, the difference Law's sanctions make! For a woman shall be the same in thought and word and deed through all her sojourn on Earth, yet vary as saint and sinner with the hall-mark of Lincoln's Inn.

---

Gwen followed the Earl very shortly, and left old Maisie to dream away the time until, somewhile after the final departure of her parents, she was free to return. When she did so she found the old woman sitting where she had left her, to all seeming quite contented. The day had died a sudden death intestate, and the flickering firelight meant to have its say unmolested, till candletime. The intrusion of artificial light was intercepted by Gwen, who liked to sit and talk to Mrs. Picture in the twilight, thank you, Mrs. Masham! Take it away!

Where had the old mind wandered in that two hours' interval? Had the actual meeting with her sister—utterly incredible even had she known its claims to belief—taken any hold on it that bore comparison with that of Farmer Jones's Bull, for instance, or the visit of a real live Earl? Certainly not the former, while as for the latter it was at best a half-way grip between the two; perhaps farther, if anything, from the supreme Bull, the great enthralling interest that was to be vested in her letter to Dave, to be written at the next favourable climax of strength, nourished by repose. Some time in the morning—to-day she was far too tired to think of it.

How she dwelt upon that appalling quadruped, and his savage breast—have bulls breasts?—soothed by the charms of music! How she phrased the various best ways of describing the mountain he was pleased to call his neck, with its half-hundredweight of dewlap; the merciless strength of his horns; the blast of steam from his nostrils into the chill of the October day; the deep-seated objection to everybody in his lurid eyes, attesting the unclubableness of his disposition! How she hesitated between this way and that of expressing to the full his murderousness and the beautiful pliancy of his soul, if got at the right way; showing, as the pseudo-Browning has it, that "we never should think good impossible"!

One thing she made up her mind to. She would not tell that dear boy, that this bull—which was in a sense his bull, or Sapps Court's, according as you look at it—had ever had to succumb on a fair field of battle. For Gwen had told her, as they rode home, and she had roused herself to hear it, how one summer morning, so early that even rangers were still abed and asleep, they were waked by terrific bellowings from a distant glade in the parklands, and, sallying out to find the cause, were only just in time to save the valued life of this same bull—even Jones's. For he had broken down a gate and vanished overnight, and wandered into the sacred precincts of the villosi terga bisontes, the still-wild denizens of the last league of the British woodlands Cæsar found; and Bos Taurus had risen in his wrath, and showed that an ancient race was not to be trifled with, with impunity. Even Jones's Bull went down in the end—though, mind you, evidence went to show that he made an hour's stand!—before the overwhelming rush and the terrible horns of the forest monarch. And the victor only gave back before a wall of brandished torch and blazing ferns, that the unsportsmanlike spirit of the keepers did not scruple to resort to. No—she would not admit that Dave's bull had ever met his match. She would say how he had killed a man, which Gwen had told her also; but to save the boy from too much commiseration for this man, she would lay stress upon the brutality of the latter to his wife, and even point out that Farmer Jones's Bull might be honestly unconscious of the consequences that too often result when one gores or tramples on an object of one's righteous indignation.

Strides Cottage played a very small part in the memories of the day. Some interest certainly attached to the older woman who had emerged from it to interview the carriage, but it was an interest apt to die down when once its object had been ascertained to resemble any other handsome old village octogenarian. Any peculiarity or deformity might have intensified it, or at least kept it alive; mere good looks and upright carriage, and strict conformity with the part of an ancient dependent of a great local potentate, neither fed nor quenched the mild fires of her rival granny's jealousy. Old Mrs. Picture had looked upon Granny Marrable, and was none the wiser. That Granny had at least seen her way to moralising on the way appearances might dupe us, and how sad it would be if, after all, such a respectable-looking old person should be an associate o£ thieves, a misleader of youth, and a fraud. But Mrs. Picture found little to say to herself, and nothing to say to anybody else, about Strides Cottage.

Rather, she fell back, as soon as Jones's Bull flagged, on her long record of an unforgotten past. That wind that was growing with the nightfall no longer moaned for her in the chimney, five centuries old, of the strange great house strange Fate had brought her to, but through the shrouds of a ship on the watch for what the light of sunrise might show at any moment. She could hear the rush and ripple of the cloven waters under the prow, just as a girl who leaned upon the gunwale, intent for the first sight of land, heard it in the dawn over fifty years ago. She could seem to look back at the girl—who was, if you please, herself—and a man who leaned on the same timber, some few feet away, intent on the horizon or his neighbour, as might be; for he stood aft, and her face was turned away from him. And she could seem to hear his words too, for all the time that came between:—"Say the word, mistress, and I'll be yours for life. I would give all I have to give, and all I may live to get, but to call you mine for an hour." And how his petition seemed empty sound, that she could answer with a curt denial, so bent was her heart on another man in the land she hoped to see so soon. Yet he was a nice fellow, too, thought old Mrs. Prichard as she sat before Mrs. Masham's fire at the Towers; and she forgave him the lawlessness of his impulse for its warmth, bred in the narrow limits of a ship on the seas for three long months!—how could he help it? Such a common story on shipboard, and ... such an uncommon ending! Ask the captains of passenger ships what they think, even now that ships steam twenty knots an hour. One's fellow-creatures are so human, you see.

Then a terrible dream of a second voyage, from Sydney to Port Macquarie, that almost made her wish she had accepted this man's offer to see her safe into the arms of her lawful owner, out on leave and growing prosperous in Van Diemen's Land. Need she have said him nay so firmly? Could she not have trusted to his chivalry? Or was the question she asked herself not rather, could she have trusted her own heart, if that chivalry had stood as gold in the furnace.

Back again to the throbbing wheel, and the ceaseless flow of the little river at the Essex mill, and childhood! Why should her waking dream hark back to the dear old time? The natural thing would have been to dream on into the years she spent out there with the man she loved, who at least, to all outward seeming, gave her back love for love, while he played the sly devil against her for his own ends. But she knew nothing of this: and, till his death revealed the non-legal character of their union, she could leave him on his pinnacle. So it was not because her mind shrank from these memories of her married life that it conjured back again the scent of the honeysuckles on the house-porch that looked on the garden with the sundial on the wall above it, its welcome to that of the June roses; its dissension with the flavour of the damp weeds that clung to the time-worn timbers of the water-wheel, or that of the grinding flour when the wind blew from the mill, and carried with it from the ventilators some of the cloud that could not help forward the whitening of the roof. She might almost have been breathing again the air that carried all these scents; and then, with them, the old mill itself was suddenly upon her; and she and Phoebe were there, in the shortest waists ever frockmaker dreamed of, and the deepest sunbonnets possible, with the largest possible ribbons, very pale yellow to harmonize—as canons then ruled—with the lilac of their dresses. They were there, they two, watching the inexhaustible resource of interest to their childish lives; the consignment of grain to storage in the loft above the whirling stones, and the dapple-grey horse that was called Mr. Pitt, and the dark one with the white mane that was Mr. Fox. She could remember their names well; but by some chance all those years of utter change had effaced that of the carman who slung the sacks on the fall-rope, which by some mysterious agency bore them up to a landing they vanished from into a doorway half-way to Heaven. What on earth was that man's name? Her mind became obsessed with the name Tattenhall, which was entirely wrong, and, moreover, stood terribly in the way of Muggeridge, which—you may remember?—was the name Dave had carried away so clearly from his inspection of the mill on Granny Marrable's chimney-piece.

---

Her memories of her old home had died away, and she was back in Sapps Court again, sympathizing with Dolly over an accident to Shockheaded Peter, the articulation of whose knee-joint had given way, causing his leg to come off promptly, from lack of integuments and tendons. She had pointed out to Dolly that it was still open to her, as The Authority, to hush Peter to sleep as before, his leg being carefully replaced in position, although without ligatures. Dolly had carried out this instruction in perfect good faith; but it had not led to a satisfactory result. It failed owing to the patient's restlessness. "He will tit in his s'eep, and he tums undone," said the little lady, hard to console. Oh dear—how soon Dolly would be four, and begin to lose her early versions of consonants!

Poor Susan Burr had then flashed across her recollection, provoked by the bread-and-butter Dolly baptized with the bitter tears she shed over Peter's leg. That naturally led to the household loaf, which was buttered before the slice was cut; sometimes the whole round, according to how many at tea. This led to a controversy of long standing between Dave and Dolly, as to which half should be took first; Dave having a preference for the underside, with the black left on. Students of the half-quartern household loaf will appreciate the niceties involved. In this connection, Susan Burr had come in naturally, like the officiating priest at Mass. Poor Susan! Suppose, after all, that Europe had been mistaken in what seemed to be its estimate of married nieces at Clapham! Suppose Susan was being neglected—how then? But marriage and Clapham, between them, soothed and reassured misgivings a mere unqualified niece might easily generate. By this time the waking dreamer was on the borderland of sleep, and Mrs. Burr's image crossed it with her and became a real dream, and whistled the tune the boy had whistled to Farmer Jones's Bull. And into that dream came, suddenly and unprovoked, her sister Phoebe of old, beautiful and fresh as violets in April, and ended a tale of how she would have none of Ralph Daverill, come what might, by saying, "Why, you are all in the dark, and the fire's going out!"

This resurrection of Phoebe, at this moment, may have been mere coincidence—a reflex action of Gwen's sudden reappearance; her first words creating, in her hearer's sleep-waking mind, the readiest image of a youth and beauty to match her own. As soon as the dream died, the dreamer was aware of the speaker's identity. "Oh, my dear!" she said, "I've been asleep almost ever since you went away."

"Mrs. Masham was quite right, for once, not to let them disturb you. Now they'll bring tea—it's never too late for tea—and then we can read your little friend's letter." Thus Gwen, and the old woman brightened up under a living interest.

"There now!" said she. "The many times I've told my boy that one day he would write my letters for me, instead of me for him! To think of his managing all by himself, spelling and all!"

"Well, we shall see what sort of a job the young man's made of it. Put the candles behind Mrs. Picture, Lupin, so as not to glare her eyes." Lupin obeyed, with a studied absence of protest on her face against having to wait upon an anomaly. Who could be sure this venerable person—from Sapps Court, think of it!—had never waited on anyone herself? It was the ambiguity that was so disgusting.

"Please may I see it, to look at?" said Mrs. Picture. "I may not be able to read it, quite, but you shall have it back, to read." She was eager to see the young scribe's progress, but was baffled by obscurities, as she anticipated. She was equal to:—"Dear Granny Marrable." No more!

"Hand it over!" said Gwen. "'Dear Granny Marrable.' That's all plain sailing; now what's this? 'This crorce is for Dolly's love.' There's a great big black cross to show it, and everything is spelt just as I say it. 'I give you my love itself!' Really, he's full of the most excellent differences, as Shakespeare says. I'll go on. 'Arnt M'riar she's took....' Oh dear! this is a word to make out! Whatever can it be? Let's see what comes after.... Oh, it goes on:—'because she is not here.' Really it looks as if Aunt Maria had gone to Kingdom Come. Is there anything she would have taken because she was 'not there,' that you know of? Is your tea all right?"

"It's very nice indeed, my dear. I think perhaps it might be the omnibus, because Aunt M'riar did take the omnibus that day she came to see me. She was to come again, without the children, to see all straight."

"H'm!—it may be the omnibus, spelt with an H. Suppose we accept homliburst, and see how it works out! '... because she is not here. She is going'—he's put a W in the middle of going—'to see Mrs.'—I know this word is Mrs., but he's put the S in the middle and the R at the end—'to see Mrs. Spicture tookted away by Dolly's lady to Towel.' That wants a little thinking out." Gwen stopped to think it over, and wondrous lovely she looked, thinking.

"Perhaps," said the old lady diffidently, "I can guess what it means, because I know Dave. Suppose Aunt M'riar came the day we came away, and found us gone! If she came up to say goodbye?..."

"No, that won't do! Because we came on Wednesday. This was written on Thursday. It's dated 'On Firsday.' Did he mean that Aunt Maria had come up to Sapps Court, but would not come to Cavendish Square because she knew you had come here? It's quite possible. I don't wonder Mrs. Marrable couldn't make it out." The old lady seemed to think the interpretation plausible, and Gwen read on:—"'I say we had an axdnt'—that really is beautifully spelt—'because the house forled over, and Mrs. Ber underneath and Me and Dolly are sory.'" Gwen stopped a moment to consider the first two words of this sentence, and decided that "I say" was an apostrophe. "I see," said she, "that the next sentence has your name in it again, only he's left out the U, and made you look something between Spider and Spectre."

"The dear boy! What does he say next about me?" The old lady was looking intensely happy; a reflex action of Dave.

"There's a dreadful hard word comes next ... Oh—I see what it is! 'Supposing.' Only he's made it 'sorsppposing'—such a lot of P's! I think it is only to show how diffidently he makes the suggestion. It doesn't matter. Let's get on. 'Supposing you was to show'—something I really cannot make head or tail of—'to Mrs. Spictre who is my other graney?' I wonder what on earth it can be!"

"I don't think it's any use my looking, my dear. What letters does it look most like?"

"Why!—here's an M, and a U, and a C, and an E, and an R, and an I, and a J. That's a word by itself. 'Mucerij.' But what word can he mean? It can't be mucilage; that's impossible! I thought it might be museum at first, as it was to be shown. But it's written too plain, in a big round hand—all in capitals. What can it be?" And Gwen sat there puzzling, turning the word this way and that, looking all the lovelier for the ripple of amusement on her face at the absurd penmanship of the neophyte.

Poor dear Dave! With the clearest possible perception of the name Muggeridge, when spoken, he could go no nearer to correct writing of it than this! He could hardly have known of the two G's, from the sound; but the omission of the cross-bar from the one that was de rigueur was certainly a lapsus calami, and a serious one. The last syllable was merely phonetic, and unrecognisable; but the G that looked like a C was fatal.

It was an odd chance indeed that brought this name, or its distortion, to challenge recognition at this moment, when the thought of its owner had just passed off the mind that might have recognised it, helped by a slight emendation. The story dwells on it from a kind of fascination, due to the almost incredible strangeness of these two sisters' utter unconsciousness of one another, and yet so near together! It was almost as though a mine were laid beneath their feet, and this memory of a name floated over it as a spark, and drifted away on a wind of chance to be lost in a space of oblivion. However, sparks drift back, now and again.

This conversation over Dave's letter had no peculiar interest for either speaker, over and above its mere face-value, which was of course far greater for the elder of the two. Gwen deciphered it to the end, laughing at the writer's conscientious efforts towards orthography. But when the end came, with an attestation of affectionate grandsonship that roused suspicions of help from seniors, so orthodox was the spelling, she consigned the missive to its envelope after very slight revision of points of interest. But she would talk a little about Dave too, in deference to his other granny's solicitude about him. That was the source of her own interest in what was otherwise a mere recollection of an attractive gamin with an even more attractive sister.

It was part of the embarrassment consequent on her own headstrong creation of an anomalous social position, that Gwen could not decide, nominally omnipotent as she was in her parents' absence, on telling the servants to serve her dinner in the room Mrs. Picture occupied. Had it not been for her suspicion of a hornet's nest at hand, she might have dared to ordain that Mrs. Picture should be her sole guest in her own section of the Towers, or at least that she herself should become the table-guest of the old lady in Francis Quarles; "might have," not "would have," because Mrs. Picture's own feelings had to be reckoned with. Might she not be embarrassed, and overweighted by too emphatic a change of circumstances? Indeed, had Gwen known it, she was only tranquil and contented with things as they were in the sense in which one who passes through a dream is tranquil and contented. It was the quietude of bewilderment, alive to gratitude.

Uncertainty on this point co-operated with the possible hornet's nest, and sent Gwen away to a lonely evening meal in her own rooms; for nothing short of a suite of apartments was allotted to any inmate of importance at the Towers. She had to submit to a banquet of a kind, if only as a measure of conciliation to the household. But, the banquet ended, she was free to return and take coffee with her protégée. She had no objection to talking about her lover to Mrs. Picture, rather welcoming the luxury of speaking of her marriage with him as a thing already guaranteed by Fate.

"When we are married," said she, "I mean to have that delicious old house we saw on the hill. That's why I wanted to show it to you. It's all nonsense about the ghost. I dare say the Roundheads murdered the ghost there—I mean the woman the ghost's the ghost of—but she wouldn't appear to me. Ghosts never do. Did you ever see one?... But you wouldn't be in the house. You would be at a sweet little cottage just close, which is simply one mass of roses. You and Dolly. And Mrs. Burr." Mrs. Burr was thrown into attend to the ménage.

Old Mrs. Picture did not quite know what to say. She had found out instinctively that perpetual gratitude had its drawbacks for the receiver as well as the giver. So she said, diffidently:—"Wouldn't it cost a great deal of money?"

"Cost nothing," said Gwen. "The place belongs to my father. It's all very well for people, that mind ghosts, not to live in it. But I don't see why that should apply to Mr. Torrens and me."

"Doesn't he mind ghosts?"

"Not the least." She was going to say more, but was stopped, by danger ahead. The chances of his seeing, or not seeing, a ghost, could hardly be discussed. The old lady probably felt this too, for she seemed to keep something back.

Her next words showed what it had been, in an odd way. "Is he not to see?" she said, speaking almost as if afraid of the sound of her own words.

Gwen's answer came in a hurried undertone:—"Oh, I dare not think so. He will see! He must see!" Her distress was in her fingers, that she could not keep still, as well as in her voice. She rose suddenly, crossed the room to the window, and stood looking out on the darkness.

Presently she turned round, esteeming herself mistress of her strength again, and hoping for the serenity of her companion's old face, and its still white hair, to help her. Old Maisie could not shed a tear now on her own behalf. But ... to think of the appalling sorrow of this glorious girl! Gwen did not return to her seat; but preferred a footstool, at the feet of the dear old lady, whose voice was heart-broken.

"Oh, my dear—my dear! That he should never see you!... never!... never!" The golden head with all its wealth was in her lap, and the silver of her own was white against it as she spoke. No such tears had yet fallen from Gwen's eyes as these that mixed with this old woman's, the convict's relict—the convict's mother—from Sapps Court.

An effort against herself, to choke them back, and an ignominious failure! A short breakdown, another effort, and a success! Gwen rose above herself, morally triumphant. The beautiful young face, when it looked up, assorted well with the words:—"This is all cowardice, dear Mrs. Picture. He has seen, though it was only a few seconds. The sight is there. And look what Dr. Merridew said. His eyes might be as strong as they had ever been in his life."

Then followed reflections on the pusillanimity of despair, the duty of hoping, and an attempt on Gwen's part to forestall a possible shock to the old lady should she ever come to the knowledge of Adrian's free opinions. She wanted her to think well of her lover. But she could not conscientiously give him a character for orthodoxy. She took refuge in a position which is often a great resource in like cases, ascribing to him an intrinsic devoutness, a hidden substantial sanctity compatible with the utmost latitudes of heterodoxy; a bedrock of devout gneiss or porphyry hidden under a mere alluvium of modern freethinking; a reality—if the truth were known—of St. Francis of Assisi behind a mask of Voltaire. Her hearer only half followed her reasoning, but that mattered little, as she was brimming with assent to anything Gwen advanced, with such beautiful and earnest eyes to back it.

"It's a great deal too far to drive you over to see him," said Gwen. "It would knock you to pieces—eighteen miles each way! It's over two hours and a half in the carriage, even when the roads are not muddy. The mare got me there in an hour and three-quarters the other day, but you couldn't stand that sort of thing. I'm going again in the gig to-morrow.... Oh no!—not till eleven o'clock. I shall come and sit with you and see all comfortable before I go. I shall get there at lunch. How do you get on with Masham?" This was asked with a pretence of absence of misgiving, and the response to it was a testimonial to Mrs. Masham, rather overdone. Gwen extenuated Mrs. Masham. She had known Masham all her life, and she really was a very good woman, in spite of her caps. As for her expanse, it was not her fault, but the hand of Nature; and her black jet ringlets were, Gwen believed, congenital.

But the next clock was going to say ten, however inaccurately. In fact, a little one, in a hurry, got its word in first, and was condemned by a reference to Gwen's repeater, which refused to go farther than nine. She, however, rang up Masham, of whose voice, inter alias, she had been half-conscious in the distance for some time past; and who gave the impression of having recently shown a proper spirit.

"She'll be better in bed, I think, Masham. She's had such a tiring day. It was my fault. I was rather afraid at the time. I suppose she'll be all right. She gets everything she wants, I suppose?"

"I beg your ladyship's pardon!"

"She gets everything she wants?"

"So far as comes to my knowledge, my lady. Touching wishes not expressed, I could not undertake to say." Mrs. Masham bridled somewhat, and showed signs of having a right to feel injured. "If your ladyship would make inquiry, and satisfy yourself...." Then something would be revealed in the service of Truth. Only she did not finish the sentence.

It was Gwen's way to accept every challenge. "Is her bed nice and warm?" said she, going straight to a point—the nearest in sight, for this took place within view of the bed in question, seen through a half-open door. Prudence would have waived investigation, but Gwen's prudence was never at home when wanted. She ought not to have accepted the housekeeper's suggestion that she could satisfy herself by an autopsy. The comfort of this couch, warm or cold, was already leagues above its occupant's wildest conception of luxury. What must her ladyship do but say:—"Yes, thank you, Masham, I'll feel for myself." And there, if that young hussy, Lupin, hadn't sent the hot bottle right down to the end!

This version of the incident, gathered from a subsequent communication of the housekeeper, will be at once intelligible to all but the very few to whom the hot bottle is a stranger. They have not had the experience so many of us are familiar with, of being too short to reach down all that way, and having either to wallow under the coverlids like a Kobold, or untuck the bed, and get at the remote bottle like a paper-knife.

Probably this bottle's prominence in the unpleasantness that germinated among the servants who remained at the Towers after the departure of the Earl and Countess was due to the extreme impalpability of other grievances. It was something you could lay hold of; and was laid hold of, for instance, by Miss Lutwyche, to flagellate Mrs. Masham. "At any rate," said that severe critic, "what I took charge of, that I would act up to. When I undertook the old party in Cavendish Square, she was kept warm, and no playing fast and loose with bottles. And she didn't give offence, that I see, but seemed"—here her love of new expressions came in, tending to wards superiority—"but seemed of an accommodating habit." This expression was far from unfortunate, and it was owing to the disposition so described that old Maisie, as soon as she was fully aware that she had been the unintentional cause of strained relations in the household, became very uncomfortable; and, much as she loved the beautiful but headstrong creature that had taken such a fancy to her, felt more than ever that the sooner she returned to her own proper surroundings the better.

Gwen returned to her own quarters after a certain amount of good-humoured fault-finding, having listened to and made light of many expressions of contrition from the old lady that she should have occasioned what Miss Lutwyche afterwards spoke of as just so much uncalled-for hot water. Gwen's youth and high spirits, and her supreme contempt for the petty animosities of the domestics, made it less easy for her to understand the feelings of her old guest, and the rather anomalous position in which she had placed her. She thought she had said all she need about it when she warned Mrs. Picture not to be put out by Mrs. Masham and Lutwyche's nonsense. Servants were always like that. Bother Mrs. Masham and Lutwyche!

The latter, however, when assisting her young mistress to retire for the night—an operation which takes two when a young lady of position is cast for the leading part—was eloquent about the hot water, which she said no doubt prevailed, but appeared to her entirely unwarranted. Her account of the position redounded to her own credit. Hers had been the part of a peace-maker. She had made the crooked straight, and the rough places plain. The substratum of everybody else's character was also excellent, but human weakness, to which all but the speaker were liable, stepped in and distorted the best intentions. If only Mrs. Masham did not give away to the sharpness of her tongue, a better heart did not exist. Mr. Norbury might frequently avoid misunderstandings if an acute sense of duty and an almost startling integrity of motive were the only things wanted to procure peace with honour in a disturbed household. But that was where it was. You must have Authority, and a vacillating disposition did not contribute to its exercise. In Mr. Norbury a fatal indecision in action and a too great sensitiveness of moral fibre paralysed latent energies of a high order which might otherwise have made him a leader among men. As for the girls, the dove-like innocence of inexperience, so far as it could exist among a lot of young monkeys, was responsible for their contribution to the hot water. A negligible quantity of a trivial ingredient! Young persons were young persons, and would always remain so—an enigmatical saying. As for the French Cook, Napoléon de Souchy, he was in bed and knew nothing about it. Besides, he went next day. He had, in fact, gone by the same train as the Earl, travelling first-class, and had been taken for his lordship at Euston, which hurt his vanity.

To this revelation Gwen listened with interest, hoping to hear more precisely what the row was about. Why hot water at all, if uncalled for? As she had not expected to hear much, she was very little surprised to hear nothing. She pictured the attitude in action of Miss Lutwyche, whom she knew well enough to know that she would coax history in her own favour. The best of lady's-maids cannot be at once a Tartar and an Angel. Gwen surmised that in the region of the servants' common-room and the kitchen Miss Lutwyche would show so much of the former as had been truly ascribed to her, whereas she herself would only see the latter. The worst of it was that her old lady, being within hearing, would know or suspect the dissensions she was the innocent cause of, and would be uncomfortable. She must say or do something, consolatory or reassuring, to-morrow. She fretted a little, till she fell asleep, over this matter, which was really a trifle. Think of the thing she had seen that day, that she was so profoundly unconscious of—the two sisters whose lips met last a lifetime ago; whose grief, each for each, had nearly died of time!—think of the two of them, then and there, face to face in the daylight! But they too slept, that night, old Maisie and old Phoebe, as calm as Gwen; and as safe, to all seeming, in their ignorance.

Would it not be better—thought thinks, involuntarily—that they should remain in this ignorance, through the little span of Time still left them, in a state which is a best decay? Would it not be best that the few hours left should run their course, and that the two should either pass away to nothingness and peace, as may be, or—as may be too, just as like as not—wake to a wonder none can comprehend, an inconceivable surprise, a sudden knowledge what the whole thing meant that must seem, if they come to comprehend it now, a needless cruelty? If they—and you and I, in our turn—are to be nothing, mere items of the past lost in Oblivion, why not spare them the hideous revelation of the many, many years of might-have-been, when the same sun shone unmoved on each, even marked the hours for them alike, each unseen by the other, each beyond the sound of the other's speech, the touch of the other's hand? Why should either now, at the eleventh hour, come to know of the audacious fraud that made them strangers?

But why—why anything, for that matter? Why the smallest pain, the greatest joy? What end does either serve, but to pass and be forgotten. What is left for us but the bald consolation of imaging a form for the Supreme Power—one like ourselves by preference—and a concession to it.... Fiat voluntas tua! It doesn't really matter what form, you see! The phantasmata vary, but the invisible what?—or who?—remains the same. Gloria in excelsis Deo, nomine quocunque!

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CHAPTER V

HOW MRS. PICTURE SPOILED OLD PHOEBE'S DREAM, BUT WAS A NICE OLD SOUL, TO LOOK AT. PARSON DUNAGE's MOTHER. A CLOCK THAT STRUCK, BETWEEN TWO TWINS. HOW TOBY DID NOT WAKE, AND KEZIAH SOLMES CAME NEXT DAY FOR HIM. THE WICKED MAN WHO DID IT AGAIN, AND HIS RESEMBLANCE TO TOBY. THE COATINGS OF THE LATTER'S STOMACH. MRS. LAMPREY. COLONEL WARRENDER AND THE PHEASANTS. HOW WIDOW THRALE AND KEZIAH WENT TO SEE AN OLD SOUL NEXT DAY. A RETROSPECULATION. SUPPOSE WIDOW THRALE HAD BEEN TOLD! ON IMPROBABILITY, IMPOSSIBILITY, INCREDIBILITY, AND MAISIE's PILGRIMAGE TO A GRAVE SHE NEVER FOUND. MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE, JOHN, AND THEIR IRRELEVANCE

"'Tis pity she could not stop!" said Granny Marrable in the course of evening chat with the niece, who was scarcely thought of as anything but a daughter, by even the oldest village gossips. Indeed, when we reflect that little Ruth Daverill, now Widow Thrale, was under four when her mother tore herself from her to rejoin her husband, it is little wonder that she should take the same view of her own parentage. For one thing, there was the twinship between the mother and aunt. The child under four can have seen little difference between them.

The pen almost shrinks from writing Widow Ruth's reply to old Phoebe, so plainly did it word her ignorance of who this was that she had seen two hours since. "Who, mother? Oh, the old person! Ay, but she has a kind heart, has Gwen." This was not disrespectful familiarity. All the villagers in those parts, talking among themselves, gave their christened names to the Earl's family. The moment an outsider came in, "The Family" consisted entirely of lordships and ladyships.

But how strange, that such a speech—actually the naming of a mother by a daughter—should be so slightly spoken, in an ignorance so complete!

Granny Marrable's thought, of the two, dwelt more on "the old person"; whose identity, as Dave's other Granny, had made its impression on her. Otherwise, for all she had seen of her, it might have passed from her mind. Also, she was grieved about that mutton-broth. The poor old soul had just looked worn to death, and all that way to drive! If she had only just swallowed half a cup, it would have made such a difference. It added to Granny Marrable's regret, that the mutton-broth had proved so good. The old soul had passed on unrefreshed even while Strides Cottage was endorsing that mutton-broth.

The Granny quite fretted over it, not even the beautiful fur tippet Sister Nora had sent her having power to expel it from her mind. And, quite late, nigh on to midnight, she woke with a start from a dream she had had; it set her off talking again about old Mrs. Picture. For it was one of this old lady's vices that she would sit up late and waste a deal of good sleep out of bed in that venerable arm-chair of hers.

"There now, Ruth," said she, "I was asleep again and dreaming." For she never would admit that this practice was an invariable one.

"What about, mother?" said Widow Thrale.

"That breaking of the glass set me a-dreaming over our old mill, and your mother, child, that died across the seas. We was both there, girls like, all over again. Only Dave's Mrs. Picture, she come across the dream, and spoilt it."

It was not necessary for Mrs. Ruth to take her attention off the pillow-lace she was at work upon. She remarked:—"I thought her a nice old soul, to look at." This was not quite uncoloured by the vague indictment against Mrs. Picture about Dave, who had, somehow, qualified for the receipt of forgiveness. Which implies some offence to condone.

Shadowy as the offence was, Granny Marrable could not ignore it altogether. "Good looks are skin-deep—so they say! But it's not for me to be setting up for judge. At her time of life, and she a-looking so worn out, too!" The memory of the mutton-broth rankled. Forgiveness was setting in.

"At her time of life, mother? Why, she's none so much older than you. What should you take her to be?" The subject was just worth spare attention not wanted for the lace-spools.

"Why, now—there's Parson Dunage's mother at the Rectory. She's ninety-four this Christmas. This old soul she might be half-way on, between me and Parson Dunage's mother at the Rectory."

Mrs. Ruth dropped the spools, to think arithmetically, with her fingers. "Eighty-six, eighty-seven, eighty-eight," she said, "Eighty-seven!... This one's nearer your own age than that, mother." She went on with her work.

"There now, Ruth, is not that just like you, all over? You will always be making me out older than I am. I am not turned of eighty-one, child, not till next year. My birthday comes the first day of the year."

"I thought you and my mother were both born at Christmas."

"Well, my dear, we always called it Christmas, for to have a birthday together on New Year's Eve. But the church-clock got time to strike the hour betwixt and between the two of us, so Maisie was my elder sister by just that, and no more. She would say ... Ah dearie me!—poor Maisie!... she would say by rights she should marry first, being the elder. And then I would tell her the clock was fast, and we were both of an age. 'Twas a many years sooner she married, as God would have it. All of three years before ever I met poor Nicholas." And then the old woman, who had hitherto kept back the story of her sister's marriage, made a slip of the tongue. "Maybe I was wrong, but I was a bit scared of men and marriage in those days."

It was no wonder Ruth connected this with the father she had never seen. "Why did my father go to Australia?" said she. It was asked entirely as a matter of history, for did it not happen before the speaker was born? The passive acceptance through a lifetime of such a fact can only be understood by persons who have experienced a similar sealed antecedent. Non-inquiry into such a one may be infused into a mother's milk.

Granny Marrable could be insensible to pressure after a life-time of silence. She had never thrown light on the mystery and she would not, now. Her answer even suggested a false solution. "He grew to be rich after your mother died. But I lost touch of him then, and when and where he came by his death is more than I can tell ye, child!" There was implication in this of a prosperous colonist, completely impatriated in the land of his wealth.

Ruth's father's vanished history was of less importance than the clock's statement that it was midnight. Her "Now, mother, we're later and later. It's striking to-morrow, now!" referred to present life and present bedtime, and her rapid adjustment of the spools meant business.

The old Granny showed no sense of having escaped an embarrassment. She did not shy off to another subject. On the contrary, she went back to the topic it had hinged on. "Eighty-one come January!" said she, lighting her own candle. "And please God I may see ninety, and only be the worse by the price of a new pair of glasses to read my Testament. Parson Dunage's mother at the Rectory, she's gone stone-deaf, and one may shout oneself hoarse. But everyone else than you, child, I can hear plain enough. There's naught to complain of in my hearing, yet a while."

Granny Marrable's conscience stung her yet again about Mrs. Picture's departure unrefreshed. "I would have been the happier for knowing that that old soul was none the worse," said she. But all the answer she got was:—"Be quiet, mother, you'll wake up Toby."

She harped on the same string next day, the immediate provocation to the subject being a visit from Keziah Solmes the old keeper's wife—you remember her connection Keziah; she who remonstrated with her husband about the use of fire-arms, and nearly saved Adrian Torrens's eyesight?—who had been driven over, in a carrier's cart that kept up a daily communication between the Towers and Chorlton, in pursuance of an arrangement suggested one day by Gwen. Why should not Widow Thrale's convalescents, when good, enjoy the coveted advantages of a visit to the Towers? Mrs. Keziah Solmes had welcomed the opportunity for her grandson Seth. Seth was young, but with well-marked proclivities and aspirations, one of which was a desire for male companionship, preferably of boys older than himself, whom he could incite to acts of lawlessness and destruction he was still too small to commit effectually. He despised little girls. He had been pleased with the account given of the convalescent Toby, and had consented to receive him on stated terms, having reference to the inequitable distribution of cake in his own favour. Hence this visit of his grandmamma to Strides Cottage, with the end in view that she should return with Toby, who for his part had undertaken to be good, with secret reservations in his own mind as to special opportunities to be bad, created by temporary withdrawals of control.

"He can be a very bad little boy indeed," said Widow Thrale, shaking her head solemnly, "when he's forgotten himself. Who was it broke a pane of glass Thursday morning before his breakfast, and very nearly had no sugar?"

Toby said, "Me!" and did not show a contrite heart; seemed too much like the wicked man that did it again.

Granny Marrable entered into undertakings for Toby's future conduct. "He's going to be a wonderful good little boy this time," said she, "and do just exactly whatever he's told, and nothing else." Toby looked very doubtful, but allowed the matter to drop.

"He's vary hearty to look at now, Aunt Phoebe," said Mrs. Keziah—Granny Marrable was always Aunt Phoebe to her husband's relations—when this youth had gone away to conduct himself unexceptionably elsewhere, on his own recognisances. "What has the little ma'an been ailing with?" Widow Thrale gave particulars of Toby's disaster, which had let him in for a long convalescence, the moral of which was that no little boy should drink lotions intended for external use only, however inquiring his disposition might be. Toby had nearly destroyed the coatings of his stomach, and his life had only been preserved by a miracle; which, however, had happened, so it didn't matter.

Mrs. Solmes was to await the return of the carrier's cart in a couple of hours, hence it was possible to review and report upon the little local world, deliberately. Granny Marrable began near home. How was the visitor's husband?

"He doan't get any yoonger, Aunt Phoebe," said Keziah. "But he has but a vary little to complain of, at his time of life. If and only he could just be off fretting! He's never been the same in heart since he went so nigh to killing Mr. Torrens o' Pensham, him that yoong Lady Gwen is ta'aking oop with. But a can't say a didn't forewarn him o' what cooms of a lwoaded gwun. And he doan't—so I'll do him fair justice."

"Young Torrens of Pensham, he can't complain," said a sharp, youngish woman who had come into the room just soon enough to catch the thread of the conversation. She was the housekeeper at Dr. Nash's, who supplied what he prescribed, and was always very obliging about sending. She came with a bottle.

"Why can't he complain, Mrs. Lamprey?" Widow Thrale asked this first, so the others only thought it.

"Where would he have been, Mrs. Thrale, but for the accident? Accident you may call it! A rare bit o' luck some'll think! Why—who would the young gentleman have got for a wife, if nobody had shot him? Answer me that! Some girl, I suppose!"

Yes, indeed! To marry Gwen o' the Towers! But how about the poor gentleman's eyesight? This crux was conjointly propounded. "Think what eyesight is to a man!" said Widow Thrale gravely and convincingly.

Mrs. Lamprey echoed back:—"His eyesight?" with a pounce on the first syllable. But seemed to reflect, saying with an abated emphasis:—"Only of course you wouldn't know that." Know what?—said inquiry. "Why—about his eyesight! And perhaps I've no call to tell you, seeing I had it in confidence, as you might say."

This was purely formal, in order to register a breach of confidence as an allotropic form of good faith. All pointed out their perfect trustworthiness; and Mrs. Lamprey, with very little further protest, narrated how she had been present when her master, Dr. Nash—whom you will remember as having attended Adrian after the accident—told how his colleague at Pensham Steynes had written to him an account of the curious momentary revival of Adrian's eyesight, or perhaps dream. But Dr. Nash had thrown doubt on the dream, and had predicted to his wife that other incidents of the same sort would follow, would become more frequent, and end in complete recovery.

A general expression of rejoicing—most emphatic on the part of Keziah, who had a strong personal interest at stake—was followed by a reaction. It was hardly possible to concede Gwen o' the Towers to any consort short of a monarch on his throne, or a coroneted lord of thousands of acres at least, except by virtue of some great sacrifice on the part of the fortunate man, that would average his lot with that of common humanity. It wasn't fair. Let Fate be reasonable! Adrian, blind for life, was one thing; but to call such a peerless creature wife, and have eyes to see her! A line must be drawn, somewhere!

"We must hope," said Granny Marrable, as soon as a working eyesight was fairly installed in each one's image of Mr. Torrens, "that he may prove himself worthy."

Said Widow Thrale:—"'Tis no ways hard to guess which her ladyship would choose. I would not have been happy to wed with a blind husband. Nor yourself, Cousin Keziah!"

Said Mrs. Keziah:—"I'm a-looking forward to the telling of my good man. But I lay he'll be for sayun' next, that he'll be all to blame if the wedding turn out ill."

"How can ye put that down to him, to lay it at his door? The fault is none of his, Cousin Keziah." Thus Widow Thrale.

"Truly the fault be none of his. But thou doesna knaw Ste'aphen Solmes as I do. He'll be for sayun'—if that g'woon had a been unlwoaded, Master Torrens had gone his way, and no harm done, nouther to him nor yet to Gwen. But who can say for certain that 'tis not God's will all along?"

Mrs. Lamprey interrupted. There was the child's medicine, to be taken regular, three times a day as directed on the bottle, and she had to take Farmer Jones his gout mixture. "But what I told you, that's all correct," said she, departing. "The gentleman will get his eyesight again, and Dr. Nash says so."

Keziah waited for Mrs. Lamprey to depart, and then went on:—"They do say marriages are made in Heaven, and 'tis not unlike to be true. 'Tis all one there whether we be high or low." This was a tribute to Omnipotence, acknowledging its independence of County Families. So august a family as the Earl's might wed as it would, without suffering disparagement. Anyway, there was her young ladyship driving off this very morning to Pensham, so there was every sign at present that the decrees of Providence would hold good. She, Keziah, had heard from her nephew, Tom Kettering, where he was to drive, the carrier's cart having called at the Towers after picking her up at the cottage. Moreover, she—having alighted to interchange greetings with the household—had chanced to overhear her young ladyship say where she was going and when she would be back. She was talking with an old person, a stranger, in black, with silver-white hair.

"That would be Dave's old Mrs. Picture, Ruth," said Granny Marrable, with apparent interest. She was not at all sorry to hear something of her having arrived safely at the Towers, none the worse for her long drive yesterday. Mrs. Keziah, however, showed a disposition to qualify her report, saying:—"Th' o'ald la'ady was ma'akin' but a power show, at that. She'll be a great age, shower-ly! Only they do say, creaking dowers ha'ang longest."

Said Widow Thrale then, explanatorily:—"Mother will be fretting by reason that the old soul would take no refreshment. But reckon you can't with Wills and Won'ts, do what you may! They just drove away, sharp, they did! I tell mother she took no harm, and if she did, t'was no fault of hers, or mine, I lay!"

Two days later, Widow Thrale went over by arrangement to Mrs. Solmes's cottage to recover her convalescent, Toby. She also travelled by the carrier's cart, accepting the hospitality of her cousin for the night, and returning next day with Toby. Granny Marrable was not going to be left alone at the cottage, as she was bidden to spend a day or two with her granddaughter, or more strictly grandniece, Maisie Costrell, to make up for her inability, owing to a bad cold six weeks since, to accompany Widow Thrale to the first celebration of the birthday of the latter's grandchild, at whose entry into the world you may remember the old lady was officiating when Dave visited Strides Cottage a year ago.

Said she, parting at the door from Widow Thrale:—"You'll keep it in mind what I said, Ruth."

Said Ruth, in reply,—"Touching the two yards of calico, or young Davy's London Granny?" For she had more than one mission to Keziah.

"If you name her so, child." This rather stiffly. "Anywise, her young ladyship's old soul that come in the carriage. 'Tis small concern of mine or none at all to be asking. But I would be the easier to be assured that all went well with her, looking so dazed as she did. At her time of life too! More like than not Keziah will be for taking you over to the Castle, and maybe you'll see Mrs.—Picture...."

"Picture's not her real name, only young Davy he's made it for her."

"Well, child, 'tis the same person bears it, whatever the name be! Maybe you'll see Mrs. Picture, and maybe she'll have something to tell of little Davy. I would have made some inquiry of him from her myself, but the time was not to spare." This Granny had not been at all disposed to admit that another Granny could give her any information about Dave. But curiosity rankled, and inquiry through an agent was another matter.

"Lawsey me, mother," said Widow Thrale. "I'll get Keziah to take me round, and I'll get some gossip with the old soul. I'll warrant she hasn't lost her tongue, even be she old as Parson Dunage's mother at the Rectory. Good-bye, mother dear! Take care of yourself on the road to Maisie's. Put on Sister Nora's fur tippet in the open cart, for the wind blows cold at sundown." Granny Marrable disallowed the fur tippet, with some scorn for the luxury of the Age.

If Brantock the carrier, who drove away with Widow Thrale, promising that she should be in time for sooper at Soalmes's, and a bit thrown in, had been told whose mother she would speak with next day, and when she saw her last, he would probably have said nothing—for carriers don't talk; they carry—but his manner would have betrayed his incredulity. And Brantock was no more of a Sadducee than his betters. Who could have believed that that afternoon Widow Thrale and Granny Marrable went away in opposite directions, the former to her own mother, the latter to Mrs. Picture's grandchild, amid the utter ignorance of all concerned? Yet the facts of the case were just as we have stated them, and no one of the incidents that brought them about was in itself incredible.

Brantock was not told anything at all about anything, and did not himself originate a single remark, except that the rain was holding off. It may have been. His horse appeared to have read the directions on all the parcels, choosing without instruction the most time-saving routes to their different destinations, and going on the moment they were paid for. In fact, Mr. Brantock had frequently to resume his seat on a cart in motion, at the risk of his life. When they arrived at the passenger's destination, the horse looked round to make quite sure she was safe on the ground, and then started promptly. His master showed his superiority to the mere brute creation, at this point, by saying, "Goodnight, mistress!" The horse said nothing.

Widow Thrale had only expected to hear a mixed report of the success of her convalescent's visit, so she was not disappointed. It gradually came out that Seth and Toby had at first glared suspiciously at one another; the former, as the host, refusing to shake hands; the latter denying his identity, saying to him explicitly:—"You ain't the woman's little boy!" They had then dissimulated their hostility, in order to mislead their introducers. They had even gone the length of affecting readiness to play together, in order that they might take advantage of the absence of authority to arrange a duel without seconds. This was interrupted, not because the unrestrained principals could injure each other—they were much too small and soft to do that—but in order to do justice to civilised usage, which defines the relations of host and guest; crossing fisticuffs, even pacifisticuffs, off their programme altogether, and only countenancing religion and politics with reservations. Being separated, each laid claim to having licked the other. In which they followed the time-honoured usage of embattled hosts, or at least of their respective war correspondents. They then became fast friends till death. Widow Thrale was grieved and shocked at the behaviour of a little boy to whom she had ascribed superhuman goodness. A fallen idol!

However, as both were too young to be troubled with consciences, and nothing appeared to overtax their powers of digestion, the visit was considered a great success. In fact, it competed with a previous visit last year, of our Dave Wardle, to the disadvantage of the latter; as Dave and Seth had been too far apart in age, and the only point in which Dave's visit scored was that he was big enough to carry Seth on his shoulders, and even this had been prohibited owing to his recent surgical experiences. The making of the comparison naturally led to the connection of Dave, whatever it was, with the old woman at the Towers, whom Lady Gwen had nigh lost her wits about—so folks said. "But tha knowas what o'or Gwen be!" said Mrs. Keziah. Gwen's reputation with all the countryside was that of waywardness and wilfulness carried to excess, but always with an unerring nobility of object.

Old Stephen had something to say about this, and preferred to put it as a contradiction to Keziah. "Na-ay, na-ay, wife! O'or Gwen can guess a lady, by tokens, as well as thou or I. Tha-at be the story of it. Some la-ady that's coom by ill-luck in her o'ald age, and no friend to hand. She'm gotten a friend now, and a good one!" The old boy did not seem nearly so depressed as his wife's account of him had led Strides Cottage to believe. But then, to be sure, the first thing she had told him when she reached home with the boy yesterday, was Mrs. Lamprey's story of Mr. Torrens's probable restoration of sight. Hope was Hope, and the cloud had lifted. His speculation about Mrs. Picture's possible social status was quite a talkative effort, for him.

Somehow it did not seem convincing to his hearers. Keziah shook her head in slow doubt. "If that were the right of it, husband, the housekeeper's rooms would be no place for her. Gwen would not put it on her to bide with Mrs. Masham."

Old Stephen did not acquiesce. "May happen the old soul would shrink shy of the great folk at the Towers," said he.

"Ay, but there be none!" said his wife. She went on to say that there was scarce a living soul now at the Castle, beyond Gwen and sundry domestics, making ready for the Colonel on Monday. This was a gentleman who scarcely comes into the story, a much younger brother of the Countess, who was allowed to bring friends down for the shooting every autumn to the Towers, and took full advantage of the permission. This year had been an exceptionally good year for the pheasants; in their sense, not the sportsman's. For all the Colonel's friends were in the Crimea, and the October shooting had been sadly neglected except by the poachers. He was now back from the Crimea, but was not good for much shooting or fox-hunting, having been himself shot through the lungs in September at the Battle of the Alma, and invalided home. But he was already equal to the duties of host to a shooting-party, and though he could kill nothing himself, he could hear others do so, and could smell the nice powder. The Earl hated this sort of thing, and was glad to get out of the way till the worst of it was over.

Widow Thrale kept modestly outside this review of the Castle's economies, but when they were exhausted referred again to her wish to get a sight of old Mrs. Picture, putting her anxiety to do so entirely on the shoulders of the Granny, of whose wish to know that the old woman had borne the rest of her journey she made the most. She was not prepared to confess to her own curiosity, so she used this device to absolve her of confession. Cousin Keziah also was really a little inquisitive, so an arrangement was easily made that these two should walk over to the Towers on the afternoon of next day, pledging old Stephen to the keeping of a careful eye on the pranks of the two young conspirators against the peace and well-being of maturity, whose business it is to know the exact amount of licence permissible to youth, and at what point the restraint of a firm enunciation of high moral principles becomes a necessity.

---

If Widow Thrale had been seized with a sudden mania for the improbable, and had set her wits to work their hardest on a carefully chosen typical example, could she have lighted on one that would have imposed a greater strain on human powers of belief than the presence, a mile off, of her mother, dead fifty years since? How improbable it would have seemed to her that her aunt and her kith and kin of that date should fall so easily dupes to a fraud! How improbable that folk should be so content without inquiry, on either side of the globe; that her own mother should remain so for years, and should even lack curiosity, when she returned to England, to seek out her sister's grave; an instinctive tribute, one would have said, almost certain to be paid by so loving a survivor! How improbable that no two lines of life of folk concerned should ever intersect thereafter, through nearly fifty years! And then, how about her father?—how about possible half-brothers and sisters of hers?—how improbable that they should remain quiescent and never seek to know anything about their own flesh and blood, surviving in England! What a tissue of improbabilities!

But then, supposing all facts known, would not old Maisie's daughter have admitted their possibility, even made concession as to probability? Had the tale been told to her then and there, at the Ranger's Lodge in the Park, the two forged letters shown her, and all the devil's cunning of their trickery, would it have seemed so strange that her simple old aunt should be caught in the snare, or others less concerned in the detection of the fraud? And had she then come to know this—that when her mother in the end, twenty years later, came back to her native land, her first act was to seek out the grave where she knew her father was buried, and to find his name alone upon it; that she was then misled by a confused statement of a witness speaking from hearsay; and that she went away thereupon, having kept a strict lock on her tongue as to her own name, and the marriage she now knew to have been no marriage—had Ruth Thrale been told all this, would it not have gone far to soften the harshness of the tale's incredibility?

That story was a strange one, nevertheless, of Maisie's visit to the little graveyard in Essex, where she thought to find the epitaph of Phoebe and of Phoebe's husband probably, and her father's to a certainty. For wherever her brother-in-law and his wife were interred, her father's remains must have been placed beside her mother's, in the grave she had known from her childhood. But nothing had been added to the inscription of her early recollections, except her father's name and appropriate Scriptural citations; with a date, as it chanced, near enough to the one she expected, to rouse no suspicion of the deceptions her husband had practised on her.

Her consciousness of her equivocal position had weighed upon her so strongly that she hesitated to make herself known to any of the older inhabitants of the village—indeed, she would have been at a loss whom to choose—and least of all to any of her husband's relatives, though it would have been easy to find them. No doubt also it made her speech obscure to the only person of whom she made any inquiry. This person, who may have been the parish clerk, saw her apparently looking for a particular grave, and asked if he could give any information. Instead of giving her sister's name, or her own, she answered:—"I am looking for my sister's grave. We were the daughters of Isaac Runciman." His reply:—"She went away. I could not tell you where" was evidently a confused idea, involving a recollection by a man well under forty of Maisie's own disappearance during a period of his boyhood just too early for vital interest in two young women in their twenties. He had taken her for Phoebe. But he must have felt the shakiness of his answer afterwards. For nothing can make it a coherent one, as a speech to Phoebe. On the other hand, it did not seem incoherent to Maisie. She connected it with the false story of her sister's departure to nurse her husband in Belgium, and the wreck of the steamer in which they recrossed the Channel. Her tentative question:—"Did you know of the shipwreck?" only confirmed this. His reply was:—"I was not here at the time, so I only knew that she was going abroad to her husband." He was speaking of Maisie's own voyage to Australia, and took her speech to mean that the ship she sailed in was wrecked. She was thinking of the forged letter.

---

Have you, who read this, ever chanced to have an experience of how vain it is to try to put oneself in touch with events of twenty or thirty years ago? How came Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to be so near of a tale if, as some fancy, they never put stylus to papyrus till Paul pointed out their duty to them? Did they compare notes? But if they did, why did they leave any work to be done by harmonizers?

However, this story has nothing to do with Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. Reflections suggest themselves, for all that, with unconscious Mrs. Ruth Thrale in charge of her cousin by marriage, Keziah Solmes, making her way by the road—because the short cut through the Park is too wet—to the great old Castle, with a room in it where an old, old woman with a sweet face and silver-white hair is watching the cold November sun that has done its best for the day and must die, and waiting patiently for the coming of a Guardian Angel with a golden head and a voice that rings like music. For that is what Gwen o' the Towers is to old Mrs. Prichard of Sapps Court, who came there from Skillicks.

What is that comely countrywoman on the road to old Mrs. Prichard? What was old Mrs. Prichard to her, fifty-odd years ago, before she drew breath? What, when that strong hand, a baby's then, tugged at those silver locks, then golden?

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CHAPTER VI

HOW OLD MAISIE RECEIVED A VISIT FROM HER DAUGHTER RUTH, AND REMADE HER ACQUAINTANCE. HOW RUTH STAYED TO TEA. OF HER RESEMBLANCE TO POMONA. OF DAVE'S CONFUSION, LAST YEAR, BETWEEN HIS TWO HONORARY GRANNIES. OF MAGIC MUSIC, AND HOW AGGRAVATED AN ANGEL MIGHT HAVE BEEN, WHO PLAYED, FOR DESTINY TO GUESS. HOW OLD MAISIE DIDN'T GO TO SLEEP, AND POMONA MADE TOAST. OF A LOG, AND SOME LICHENS. HOW A LITTLE BEETLE GOT BURNT ALIVE. AND POSSIBLY THE SERVANTS WERE NOT QUARRELLING. HOW OLD MAISIE HEARD HERSELF CALLED "A PLAGUY OLD CAT." MRS. MASHAM'S DUPLICITY. HOW OLD MAISIE WISHED FOR HER OWN DAUGHTER, UNAWARES

Old Maisie had a difficulty in walking, owing to rheumatism. But this had improved since her promotion from the diet of Sapps Court to that of Cavendish Square; and later, of the Towers. So much so, that she would often walk about the room, for change; and had even gone cautiously on the garden-terrace, keeping near the house; which was possible, as Francis Quarles had lodged on a ground-floor when he gave his name to the room she occupied.

So, this afternoon, after wondering for some time whose voices those were she heard, variously, in the several passages and antechambers of the servants' quarters, and deciding that one broad provincial accent was a native's, and the other, a softer and sweeter one, that of one of the inhabitants of Strides Cottage, she could not be sure which, she got up slowly from her chair by the fire, and made her way to the window, to see the better the little that was left of the sunlight.

Was that cold red disk, going oval in the colder grey of the mist that rose from the darkening land, the selfsame remorseless sun that, one Christmas Day that she remembered well, blazed so over Macquarie that the awkward well-handle, the work of a convict on ticket-of-leave, who had started a forge near by, grew so hot it all but singed the sheep's wool she wrapped round it to protect her hands? So hot that her husband, even when the sun was as low as this, could light his pipe with a burning-glass—a telescope lens whose tube had gone astray, to lead a useless life elsewhere. She remembered that shoeing-smith well; a good fellow, sentenced for life for a crime akin to Wat Tyler's, mercifully reprieved from death by King George in consideration of his provocation; for was he not, like Wat Tyler, the girl's father? She remembered what she accounted that man's only weakness—his dwelling with joy on the sound of the hammer-stroke of his swift, retributive justice—the concussion of the remorseless wrought iron on the split skull of a human beast. She remembered his words with a shudder:—"Ay, mistress, I can shut my eyes and listen for it now. And many was the time it gave me peace to think upon it. Ay!—in the worst of my twenty years, the nights in the cursed river-boat they called the hulks, I could bear them I was shut up with in the dark, and the vermin that crawled about us, and a'most laugh to be able to hear it again, and bless God that it sent him to Hell without time for a prayer!" The words came back to her mind like the hideous incident of a dream we cannot for shame repeat aloud, and made her flesh creep. But then, suppose the girl had been her Dolly Wardle, grown big, or her own little maid, whom she never saw again, who died near fifty years ago! Why—the sleeping face of that baby was fresh on her lips still; had never lost its freshness since she tore herself away to reach, at any cost, the man she loved!

Could not the sun have been content to set, without becoming a link with a past she shrank from, so many were the evil memories that clung about it? She was glad that someone should come into the room, to break through this one. There was nothing in this good-humoured villager—surely Pomona's self in a cotton print, somewhat older than is usual with that goddess—nothing but what served to banish these nightmares of her lonely recollection. Only, mind you, Sam Rendall—that was Wat Tyler's name, this time—was a good man, who deserved to have had that daughter's children on his knee. She, Maisie, had deserted hers.

"May happen you'll call me to mind, ma'am, me and my old mother, at the door of Strides Cottage, two days agone. I made bold to look in, hoping to see you better." Thus Pomona, and old Maisie was grateful for the wholesome voice. Still, she was puzzled, being unconscious that she had seemed so ill. Pomona thought her introduction of herself had not been clear, and repeated:—"Strides Cottage, just this side Chorlton, betwixt Farmer Jones and the Reedcroft—where her young ladyship bid stop the carriage...." She paused to let the old lady think. Perhaps she was going too fast.

But no—it was not that at all. Old Maisie was quite clear about the incident, and its whereabouts. "Oh yes!" said she. "I knew it was Strides Cottage, because I had the name from my little Davy, for the envelopes of his letters. And I knew Farmer Jones, because of his Bull. It was only a bit of fatigue, with the long ride." Then as the bald disclaimer of any need for solicitude seemed a chill return for Pomona's cordiality, old Maisie hastened to add a corollary:—"I did not find the time to thank your mother as I would have liked to do; but I get old and slow, and the coachman was a bit quick of his whip. I should be sorry for you to think me ungrateful, or your good mother."

It was as well that she added this, for there was a shade of wavering in Ruth Thrale's heart as to whether the interview was welcome. A trace of that jealousy about Dave just hung in Maisie's manner. And she rather stood committed, by not having accepted the mutton-broth. That corollary may have been Heaven-sent, to keep the mother and daughter in touch, in the dark—just for a chance of light!

And yet it only just served its turn. For the daughter's half-hesitating reply:—"But I thought I would look in," if expanded to explanation-point, would have been worded:—"I came to show good-will, more than from any grounded misgivings about your health, ma'am; and now, having shown it, it is time to go." And she might have departed, easily.

But Fate also showed good-will, and would not permit it. Old Mrs. Picture became suddenly alive to the presence of a well-wisher, and to her own reluctance to drive her away. "Oh, but you need not go yet," said she. "Or perhaps they want you?"

Oh dear no!—nobody wanted her. Her friend she came with, her Cousin Keziah, was talking to Mrs. Masham. The pleasant presence would remain, its owner said, and take a seat near the fire. The old lady was glad, for she had had but little talk with anyone that day. Her morning interview with Gwen had been a short one, for that young lady was longing to get away for a second visit to her lover.

Old Maisie, to encourage possible diffidence to believe that a quiet chat would really be welcome to her, made reference to the disappointment such a short allowance of her young ladyship had been, and resuming her high-backed chair, put on her spectacles to get a better view of her visitor—oh, how unconsciously!

Think of the last kiss she gave a sleeping baby, half a century ago!

There was, of course, a topic they could speak of—little Dave Wardle, dear to both. Widow Thrale, fond as she had been of the child, had not Granny Marrable's bias towards monopolizing him. That was the result of a grande passion, generated perhaps by the encouragement the young man had given to a second Granny, so very equivalent to his first. Moreover, there was that obscure reference in his letters to an accident—for axdnt was a mere clerical error. She worded an inquiry after Dave, tentatively.

"I have not seen the dear child for four weeks," said old Maisie. "Oh dear me, yes—four weeks and more! Let me see, when was the accident?... Oh dear!—how the time does slip away!..."

"Was that the accident Dave speaks of in his letter? We could not quite make out Dave's letter. Sometimes 'tis a little to seek, what the child means."

Old Maisie nodded assent. "But he'll soon be quite a scholar and write his own letters all through. I think her ladyship took this one to send it back. I can tell you about the accident. It was owing to the repairs." The old lady pursued the subject in the true spirit of a narrator, beginning at a wrong end, by preference one unintelligible to her hearer. In consequence, the actual fall of the house-wall was postponed, in favour of a description of its cause, which dealt specially with the blamelessness of Mr. Bartlett, and incidentally with the dishonesty of some colleagues of his, of whom he had spoken as "they," without particulars. Her leniency to Mr. Bartlett was entirely founded on the fact that she had conversed with him once on the subject, and had been mysteriously impressed with his simplicity and manliness. How did Mr. Bartlett manage it? A faint percentage of beer, like foreign matter in analyses, is not alone enough to establish integrity. Nor a flavour of clothes.

The wall fell in the end, and Widow Thrale saw a light on the story, after expressing more admiration and sympathy for Mr. Bartlett than was human, under the circumstances. She was much impressed. "And by the mercy of God you were all saved, ma'am," said she. "Her young ladyship and little Dave, and his sister, and yourself!" It really seemed quite a stroke of business, this, on the part of a Superior Power, which had left building materials and gravitation, after creating them, to their own wayward impulses.

Old Maisie admitted the beneficence of Providence, but rather as an act of courtesy. "For," said she, "we were never in any real danger, owing to the piece of timber Mr. Bartlett had thrown across to catch the floor-joists." She was of course repeating Mr. Bartlett's own words, without close analysis of their actual meaning. Her mind only just avoided associations of cricket. But poor Susan Burr—oh dear!—that was much worse. "She has done wonderfully well, though," continued the old lady, "and her case gave the greatest satisfaction to the Doctors at the Hospital. She has written to me herself since leaving. And she must be really better, because she has gone to her married niece at Clapham." It seemed a sort of destiny that this niece's wifehood should always be emphasized. It was almost implied that a less complete recovery would have resulted in a journey to a single niece, at Clapham; or possibly, only at Battersea. Widow Thrale was interested in the accident, but she wanted to get back to Dave Wardle. "Then no one could live in the house, ma'am," she said, "after it had fallen down?"

"Not in my rooms upstairs, nor his Aunt M'riar's underneath. Only his uncle stopped in, to keep the place. His room was all safe. It was like the front of two rooms, all down in the street as if it was an earthquake. And no forewarning, above a crack or two! But the children safe, God be thanked, and her young ladyship! Also her cousin, Miss Grahame, down below with Aunt M'riar."

"That lady we call Sister Nora?"

"That lady. But I was so stunned and dazed with the start it gave me, and the noise, that I had no measure of anything. They took me home with them. I can just call to mind moving in the carriage, and the lamplighter." Old Maisie recollected seeing the lamplighter, but she had forgotten how she was got into that carriage.

"Then you hardly saw the children?"

"I was all mazed. I heard my Dolly cry, poor little soul! Her ladyship says Dave took Dolly up very short for being such a coward. But he kissed her, for comfort, and to keep her in heart."

"He didn't cry!"

"Davy?—not he. Davy makes it a point to be afraid of nothing. His uncle has taught him so. He was"—here some hesitation—"he belonged to what they called the Prize Ring. A professional boxer." It sounded better than "prizefighter"—more restrained.

"Oh dear!" said Widow Thrale. "Yes. I had heard that."

"But he is a good man," said old Maisie, warming to the defence of Uncle Mo. "He is indeed! He won't let Dave fight, only a little now and then. But Dave says he told him, Uncle Mo did, that if ever he saw a boy hit a little girl, he was to hit that boy at once, without stopping to think how big he was. And he told him where! Is not that a good man?"

"Oh dear!" said Widow Thrale again, uneasily. "Won't Dave hit some boy that's too strong for him, and get hurt?"

"I think he may, ma'am. But then ... someone may take his part! I should pray." She went on to repeat an adventure of Dave's, when he behaved as directed to a young monster who was stuffing some abomination into a little girl's mouth. But it ended with the words:—"The boy ran away." Perhaps Uncle Mo had judged rightly of the class of boy that he had in mind, as almost sure to run away.

The Pomona in Widow Thrale had gone behind a cloud during her misgivings about Uncle Mo. The cloud passed, as the image of this boy fled from Nemesis. He was a London boy, evidently, and up to date. The Feudal System, as surviving at Chorlton, countenanced no such boys. The voice of Pomona was cheerful again as she resumed Dave:—"Where, then, is the boy, till he goes back home?"

"His aunt has got him at her mother's, at Ealing. His real grandmother's." Pomona had a subconsciousness that this made three; an outrageous allowance of grandmothers for any boy! But she would not say so, as this old lady might be sensitive about her own claims, which might be called in question if Dave's list was revised.

Ealing recalled an obscure passage in his letter, which was really an insertion, in the text, of the address of his haven of refuge. It read, transcribed literally:—"My grandMother is hEALing," and the recollection of it reinforced the laugh with which Pomona pleaded to misinterpretation. "Mother and I both thought she had cut herself," said she.

Old Maisie, amused at Dave, made answer:—"No!—it's where he is. Number Two, Penkover Terrace, Ealing. Penkover is very hard to recollect. So do write it down. Write it now. I shall very likely forget it directly; because when I get tired with talking, I swim, and the room goes round.... Oh no—I'm not tired yet, and you do me good to talk to."

But the old lady had talked to the full extent of her tether. But even in this short conversation the impression made upon her by this new acquaintance was so favourable that she felt loth to let her depart; to leave her, perhaps, to some memory of the past as painful as the one she had interrupted. If she had spoken her exact mind she would have said:—"No, don't go yet. I can't talk much, but it makes me happy to sit here in the growing dusk and hear about Dave. It brings the child back to me, and does my heart good." That was the upshot of her thought, but she felt that their acquaintance was too short to warrant it. She was bound to make an effort, if not to entertain, at least to bear her share of the conversation.

"Tell me more about Davy, when you had him at the Cottage. Did he talk about me?" This followed her declaration that she was "not tired yet" in a voice that lost force audibly. Her visitor chose a wiser course than to make a parade of her readiness to take a hint and begone. She chatted on about Dave's stay with her a year since, about little things the story knows already, while the old lady vouched at intervals—quite truly—that she heard every word, and that her closed eyes did not mean sleep. The incident of Dave's having persisted—when he awaked and found "mother" looking at him, the day after his first arrival—that it was old Mrs. Picture upstairs, and how they thought the child was still dreaming, was really worth the telling. Old Maisie showed her amusement, and felt bound to rouse herself to say:—"The name is not really Picture, but it doesn't matter. I like Dave's name—Mrs. Picture!" It was an effort, and when she added:—"The name is really Prichard," her voice lost strength, and her hearer lost the name. Fate seemed against Dave's pronunciation being corrected.

You know the game we used to call Magic Music—we oldsters, when we were children? You know how, from your seat at the piano, you watched your listener striving to take the hints you strove to give, and wandering aimlessly away from the fire-irons he should have shouldered—the book he should have read upside down—the little sister he should have kissed or tickled—what not? You remember the obdurate pertinacity with which he missed fire, and balked the triumphant outburst that should have greeted his success? Surely, if some well-wisher among the choir of Angels, harping with their harps, had been at Chorlton then and there, under contract to guide Destiny, by playing loud and soft—not giving unfair hints—to the reuniting of the long-lost sisters, that Angel would have been hard tried to see how near the spark went to fire the train, yet flickered down and died; how many a false scent crossed the true one, and threw the tracker out!

Old Maisie's powers of sustained attention were, of course, much less than she supposed, and her visitor's pleasant voice, rippling on in the growing dusk, was more an anodyne than a stimulant. She did not go to sleep—people don't! But something that very nearly resembled sleep must have come to her. Whatever it was, she got clear of it to find, with surprise, that Mrs. Thrale, with her bonnet off, was making toast at the glowing wood-embers; and that candles were burning and that, somehow tea had germinated.

"I thought I would make you some toast, more our sort.... Oh yes! What the young lady has brought is very nice, but this will be hotter." The real Pomona never looked about fifty—she was a goddess, you see!—but if she had, and had made toast, she must have resembled Ruth Thrale.

Then old Maisie became more vividly alive to her visitor, helped by the fact that she had been unconscious in her presence. That was human nature. The establishment of a common sympathy about Lupin, the tea-purveyor, was social nature. Pomona had called Miss Lupin "the young lady." This had placed Miss Lupin; she belonged to a superior class, and her ministrations were a condescension. It was strange indeed that such trivialities should have a force to span the huge gulf years had dug between these two, and yet never show a rift in the black cloud of their fraud-begotten ignorance. They did draw them nearer together, beyond a doubt; especially that recognition of Miss Lupin's position. Old Maisie had never felt comfortable with the household, while always oppressed with gratitude for its benevolences. She had felt that she had expressed it very imperfectly to her young ladyship, to cause her to say:—"They will get all you want, I dare say. But how do they behave? That's the point! Are they giving themselves airs, or being pretty to you?" For this downright young beauty never minced matters. But naturally old Maisie had felt that she could do nothing but show gratitude for the attention of the household, especially as she could not for the life of her define the sources of her discomfort in her relations with it.

This saddler's widow from Chorlton, with all her village life upon her, and her utter ignorance of the monstrous world of Maisie's own past experience, came like a breath of fresh air. Was it Pomona though?—or was it the tea? Reserve gave way to an impulse of informal speech:—"My dear, you have had babies of your own?"

Pomona's open-eyed smile seemed to spread to her very finger-tips. "Babies? Me?" she exclaimed. "Yes, indeed! But not so very many, if you count them. Five, all told! Two of my little girls I lost—'tis a many years agone now. My two boys are aboard ship, one in the Black Sea, one in the Baltic. My eldest on the Agamemnon. My second—he's but sixteen—on the Tithonus. But he's seen service—he was at Bomarsund in August. Please God, when the war is over, they'll come back with a many tales for their mother and their granny! I lie awake and pray for them, nights."

The old lady kept her thoughts to herself—even spoke with unwarranted confidence of these boys' return. She shied off the subject, nevertheless. How about the other little girl, the one that still remained undescribed?

"My married daughter? She is my youngest. She's married to John Costrell's son at Denby's farm. Maisie. Her first little boy is just over a year old."

Old Maisie brightened, interested, at the name. A young Maisie, so near at hand! "My own name!" she said. "To think of that!" Yet, after all, the name was a common one.

"Called after her grandmother," said Ruth Thrale, equably—chattily. "Mother has gone over to-day to make up for not going on his birthday." Of course the "grandmother" alluded to was her own proper mother, the young mother on whose head that old silver hair she was watching so unconsciously had been golden brown, fifty years ago. For all that, Ruth spoke of her aunt as "mother," automatically. What wonder that old Maisie accepted Granny Marrable's Christian name as the same as her own. "My name is the same as your mother's, then!" seemed worth saying, on the whole, though it put nothing very uncommon on record.

How near the spark was to the tinder!—how loud that Angel would have had to play! For Ruth Thrale might easily have chanced to say:—"Yes, the same that my mother's was." And that past tense might have spoken a volume.

But Destiny was at fault, and the Angel would have had to play pianissimo. Miss Lupin came in, bearing a log that had taken twenty years to grow and one to dry. The glowing embers were getting spent, and the open hearth called for reimbursement. It seemed a shame those sweet fresh lichens should burn; but then, it would never do to let the fire out! Miss Lupin contrived to indicate condescension in her attitude, while dealing with its reconstruction. No conversation could have survived such an inroad, and by the time Miss Lupin had asked if she should remove the tea etceteras, the review of Pomona's family was forgotten, and Destiny was baffled.

Another floating spark went even nearer to the tinder, when, going back to Dave and Dolly, old Maisie talked of the pleasure of having the little girl at home, now that Dave was so much away at school. She was getting dim in thought and irresponsible when she gave Widow Thrale this chance insight into her early days. It was a sort of slip of the mind that betrayed her into saying:—"Ah, my dear, the little one makes me think of my own little child I left behind me, that died—oh, such a many years ago!..." Her voice broke into such audible distress that her hearer could not pry behind her meaning; could only murmur a sympathetic nothing. The old lady's words that followed seemed to revoke her lapse:—"Long and long ago, before ever you were born, I should say. But she was my only little girl, and I keep her in mind, even now." Had not Widow Thrale hesitated, it might have come out that her mother had fled from her at the very time, and that her own name was Ruth. How could suspicion have passed tiptoe over such a running stream of possible surmise, and landed dryfoot?

But nothing came of it. There was nothing in a child that died before she was born, to provoke comparison of her own dim impressions of her mother's departure—for old Phoebe had kept much of the tale in abeyance—and her comments hung fire in a sympathetic murmur. She felt, though, that the way she had appeased her thirst for infancy might be told, appropriately; dwelling particularly on the pleasures of nourishing convalescents up to kissing-point, as the ogress we have compared her to might have done up to readiness for the table. Old Maisie was quite ready to endorse all her views and experiences, enjoying especially the account of Dave's rapid recovery, and his neglected Ariadne.

A conclusive sound crept into the conversation of Mrs. Solmes and the housekeeper, always audible without. "I think I hear my Cousin Keziah going," said Mrs. Thrale. "I must not keep her."

"Thank you, my dear! I mean—thank you for coming to see me!" It was the second time old Maisie had said "my dear" to this acquaintance of an hour. But then, her face, that youth's comeliness still clung to, invited it.

"'Tis I should be the one to thank, ma'am, both for the pleasure, and for the hearing tell of little Davy. Mother will be very content to get a little news of the child. Oh, I can tell you she grudges her share of Dave to anyone! If mother should take it into her head to come over and hear some more, for herself, you will not take it amiss? It will be for love of the child." Then, as a correction to what might have seemed a stint of courtesy:—"And for the pleasure of a visit to you, ma'am." Said old Maisie absently:—"I hope she will." And then Widow Thrale saw that all this talking had been quite enough, and took her leave.

This was the second time these two had parted, in half a century. They shook hands, this time, and there was no glimmer in the mind of either, of who or what the other was. Each remained as unconscious of the other's identity as that sleeping child in her crib had been, fifty years ago, of her mother's heart-broken beauty as she tore herself away, with the kiss on her lips that dwelt there still.

They shook hands, with affectionate cordiality, and the old lady, hoping again that the visitor's "mother" would pay her a visit, settled back to watching the fire creep along the lichens, one by one, on that beechen log the squirrels had to themselves a year ago.

Unconscious Widow Thrale had much to say of the pretty old lady as she and Mrs. Solmes walked back to the Ranger's Cottage through the nightfall. Fancy mother taking it into her head that Dave would be the worse by such a nice old extra Granny as that! She must be very much alone in the world though, to judge by what little she had told of her life in Sapps Court. No single hint of kith and kin! Had Keziah not heard a word about her antecedents? Well—nothing to ma'ak a stowery on't! Housekeeper Masham had expressed herself ambiguously, saying that her yoong la'adyship had lighted down upon the old lady in stra'ange coompany; concerning which she, Masham, not being called upon to deliver judgment, preferred to keep her mowuth shoot. Keziah contrived to convey that this shutting of Mrs. Masham's mouth had carried all the weight of speech, all tending to throw doubt on Mrs. Picture, without any clue to the special causes of offence against her.

Whatever misgivings about the old lady Widow Thrale allowed to re-enter her mind were dispersed on arriving at the Cottage. For Toby and Seth, being sought for to wash themselves and have their suppers, were not forthcoming. They had vanished. They were found in the Verderer's Hall, where they had concealed themselves with ingenuity, unnoticed by old Stephen, whom they had followed in and allowed to depart, locking the door after him and so locking them in. It was sheer original sin on their part—the corruption of Man's heart. The joy of occasioning so much anxiety more than compensated for delayed supper; and penalties lapsed, owing to the satisfaction of finding that they had not both tumbled into a well two hundred feet deep. Old Stephen's remark that, had he been guilty of such conduct in his early youth, he would have been all over wales, had an historical interest, but nothing further. They seemed flattered by his opinion that they were a promussin' yoong couple. However, the turmoil they created drove the previous events of the day out of Widow Thrale's head. She slept very sound and—forgot all about her interview with the old visitor at the Towers!

---

Old Maisie, alone in Francis Quarles as she had been so often in the garret at Sapps Court, became again the mere silver-headed relic of the past, waiting patiently, one would have said, for Death; content to live, content to die; ready to love still; not strong enough to hate, and ill-provided with an object now. Not for the former—no, indeed! Were there not her Dave and her Dolly to go back to? She had not lost them much, for they, too, were away from poor, half-ruined Sapps Court. She would go back soon. But then, how about her Guardian Angel? She would lose her—must lose her, some time! Why not now?

What had she, old Maisie, done to deserve such a guardianship?—friendship was hardly the word to use. An overpresumption in one so humble! Who could have foreseen all this bewilderment of Chance six weeks ago, when her great event of the day was a visit of the two children. She resented a half-thought she could not help, that called her gain in question. Was not Sapps Court her proper place? Was she not too much out of keeping with her surroundings? Could she even find comfort, when she returned to her old quarters, in wearing these clothes her young ladyship had had made for her; so unlike her own old wardrobe, scarcely a rag of it newer than Skillicks? She fought against the ungenerous thought—the malice of some passing imp, surely!—and welcomed another that had strength to banish it, the image of her visitor of to-day.

There she was again—at least, all that memory supplied! What was her dress? Old Maisie could not recall this. The image supplied a greeny-blue sort of plaid, but memory wavered over that. Her testimony was clear about the hair; plenty of it, packed close with a ripple on the suspicion of grey over the forehead, that seemed to have halted there, unconfirmed. At any rate, there would be no more inside those knot-twists behind, that still showed an autumnal golden brown, Pomona-like. Yes, she had had abundance in the summer of her life, and that was not so long ago. How old was she?—old Maisie asked herself. Scarcely fifty yet, seemed a reasonable answer. She had forgotten to ask her christened name, but she could make a guess at it—could fit her with one to her liking. Margaret—Mary?—No, not exactly. Try Bertha.... Yes—Bertha might do.... But she could think about her so much better in the half-dark. She rose and blew the candles out, then went back to her chair and the line of thought that had pleased her.

How fortunate this good woman had been to hit upon the convalescent idea! She, herself, when her worst loneliness clouded her horizon, might have devised some such modus vivendi—as between herself and her enemy, Solitude; not as mere means to live. But, indeed, Solitude had intruded upon her first, disguised as a friend. The irksomeness of life had come upon her later, when the sting of her son's wickedness began to die away. Moreover, her delicacy of health had disqualified her for active responsibilities. This Mrs. Marrable's antecedents had made no inroads on her constitution, evidently.

See where the fire had crept over these lichens and devoured them! The log would soon be black, when once the heat got a fair hold of it. Now, the pent-up steam from some secret core, that had kept its moisture through the warmth of a summer, hissed out in an angry jet, stung by the conquering flame. There, see!—from some concealment in the bark, mysteriously safe till now, a six-legged beetle, panic-struck and doomed. Cosmic fires were at work upon his world—that world he thought so safe! It was the end of the Universe for him—his Universe! Old Maisie would gladly have played the part of a merciful Divinity, and worked a miraculous salvation. But alas!—the poor little fugitive was too swift to his own combustion in the deadly fires below. Would it be like that for us, when our world comes to an end? Old Maisie was sorry for that little beetle, and would have liked to save him.

She sat on, watching the tongues of flame creep up and up on the log that seemed to defy ignition. The little beetle's fate had taken her mind off her retrospect; off Dave and Dolly, and the pleasant image of Pomona. She was glad of any sign of life, and the voices that reached her from the kitchen or the servants' hall were welcome; and perhaps ... perhaps they were not quarrelling. But appearances were against them. Nevertheless, the lull that followed made her sorry for the silence. A wrangle toned down by distance and intervening doors is soothingly suggestive of company—soothingly, because it fosters the distant hearer's satisfaction at not being concerned in it. Old Maisie hoped they would go on again soon, because she had blown those lights out rashly, without being sure she could relight them. She could tear a piece off the newspaper and light it at the fire of course. But—the idea of tearing a newspaper! This, you see, was in fifty-four, and tearing a number of the Times was like tearing a book. No spills offered themselves. She made an excursion into her bedroom for the matchbox and felt her way to it. But it was empty! The futility of an empty matchbox is as the effrontery of the celebrated misplaced milestone. Expeditions for scraps of waste-paper in the dark, with her eyesight, might end in burning somebody's will, or a cheque for pounds. That was her feeling, at least. Never mind!—she could wait. She had been told always to ring the bell when she wanted anything, but she had never presumed on the permission. A lordly act, not for a denizen of Sapps Court! Roxalana or Dejanira might pull bells. Very likely the log would blaze directly, and she would come on a scrap of real waste-paper.

Stop!... Was not that someone coming along the passage, from the kitchen. Perhaps someone she could ask? She would not go back to her chair till she heard who it was. She set the door "on the jar" timidly, and listened. Yes—she knew the voices. It was Miss Lutwyche and one of the housemaids. Not Lupin—the other one, Mary Anne, who seldom came this way, and whom she hardly knew by sight. But what was it that they were saying?

Said Miss Lutwyche:—"Well, I call her a plaguy old cat.... No, I don't care if she does hear me." However, she lowered her voice to finish her speech, and much that followed was inaudible to old Maisie. Who of course supposed she was the plaguy old cat!

Then Mary Anne became audible again, confirming this view:—"Is that her room?" For the subject of the conversation had changed in that inaudible phase—changed from Mrs. Masham to the queer old soul her young ladyship had pitchforked down in the middle of the household.

"That's her room now. Old Mashey has been turned out. She's next door. She's supposed to look after her and see she wants for nothing.... I don't know. Perhaps she does. I wash my hands." At this point the poor old listener heard no more. What she had heard was a great shock to her; really almost as great a shock as the crash at Sapps Court. She found her way back to her chair and sat and cried, in the darkened room. She was a plaguy old cat, and Miss Lutwyche, with whom she had been on very good terms in Cavendish Square, had washed her hands of her! Then, when the servants here were attentive to her—and they were all right, as far as that went—it was mere deceptiousness, and they were wishing her at Jericho.

She was conscious that the lady's-maid and Mary Anne came back, still talking. But she had closed the door, and was glad she could not hear what they were saying. A few minutes after, Mrs. Masham appeared from her own room close by, having apparently recovered her temper. But, said old Maisie to herself, all this was sheer hypocrisy; a mere timeserver's assumption of civility towards a plaguy old cat!

"You'll be feeling ready for your bit of supper, Mrs. Pilcher," said the housekeeper; who, having been snubbed by Miss Lutwyche for saying "Pilchard," had made compromise. She could not be expected to accept "Picture." The bit of supper was behind her on a tray, borne by Lupin. "Why—you're all in the dark!" She rebuked the servant-girl because there were no matches, and on production of a box from the latter's pocket, magnanimously lit the candles with her own hands, continuing the while to reproach her subordinate for neglect of the guest entrusted to her charge. That guest's thought being, meanwhile, what a shocking hypocrite this woman was. Probably Mrs. Masham was no more a hypocrite than old Maisie was an old cat. That is to say, if the latter designation meant a termagant or scold. There must be now and again, in Nature, a person without a hall-mark of either Heaven or Hell, and Mrs. Masham may have had none. In that recent encounter in the kitchen which old Maisie had been conscious of, she had lost her temper with Miss Lutwyche; but so might anyone, if you came to that. Cook had come to that, after Miss Lutwyche left the room, and her designation of that young lady as a provocation, and a hussy, had done much to pacify Mrs. Masham.

Anyhow, Mrs. Masham was on even terms with herself, if not in a treacle-jar, when she sat down by the fire to do—as she thought—her duty by her young ladyship's protégée. She was that taken up, she said, every minute of the day, that she did not get the opportunities her heart longed for of cultivating the acquaintance of her guest. But she was thankful to hear that Mrs. Pilcher had not been any the worse for her talk with her visitor an hour since. Widow Thrale, living like she did over at Chorlton, was a sort of stranger at the Towers. But only a subacute stranger, as her husband, when living, was frequently in evidence there, in connection with the stables.

Old Maisie was interested to hear anything about her pleasant visitor. What sort of aged woman did Mrs. Masham take her to be? Her voice, said the old lady, was that of a much younger person than she seemed, to look at.

"How old would she be?" said the housekeeper. "Well—she might be a child of twelve or thirteen when her mother came to Strides Cottage, and married Farmer Marrable there...."

"Then her name was never Marrable at all," said old Maisie.

"No. Granny Marrable, she'd been married before, in Sussex. Now what was her first husband's name?... Well—I ought to be able to recollect that! Ruth—Ruth—Ruth what?" She was trying to remember the name by which she had known Widow Thrale in her childhood. Her effort to do so, had it succeeded, would have made a complete disclosure almost inevitable, owing to the peculiarity of Granny Marrable's first husband's name. "I ought to be able to recollect, but there!—I can't. I suppose it would be because we always heard her spoken of as Mrs. Marrable's Ruth. I saw but very little of her; only when I was a child...." She paused a moment, arrested by old Maisie's expression, and then said:—"Yes ... why?" ... and stopped.

"Because if I had known she was Ruth I would have told her that my little girl that died was Ruth. Just a fanciful idea!" But the speaker's supper was getting cold. The housekeeper departed, telling Lupin to get some scrapwood to make a blaze under that log, and make it show what a real capacity it had as fuel, if only justice was done to its combustibility.

This chance passage of conversation between old Maisie and the housekeeper ran near to sounding the one note needed to force the truth of an incredible tale on the blank unsuspicion of its actors. A many other little things may have gone as near. If so, none left any one of its audience, or witnesses, more absolutely in the dark about it than the solitary old woman who that evening watched that log, stimulated by the scrapwood during her very perfunctory supper; first till it became a roaring flame that laughed at those two candles, then till the flame died down and left it all aglow; then till the fire reached its heart and broke it, and it fell, and flickered up again and died, and slowly resolved itself into a hillock of red ember and creeping incandescence, a treasury still of memories of the woodlands and the coming of the spring, and the growth of the leaves that perished.

At about nine o'clock, Lupin, acting officially, came to offer her services to see the old lady to bed. No!—if she might do so she would rather sit up till her ladyship came in. She could shift for herself; in fact, like most old people who have never been waited on, she greatly preferred it. Only, of course, she did not say so. But Lupin was sitting up for her ladyship, with Miss Lutwyche, and would purvey hot water then, in place of this, which would be cold. She brought a couple of young loglets to keep a little life in the fire, and went away to contribute to an everlasting wrangle in the servants' hall.

The wind roared in the chimney and made old Maisie's thoughts go back to the awful sea. Think of the wrecks this wind would cause! Of course she was all wrong; one always is, indoors, with a huge chimney which is a treasure-house of sound. Gwen was just saying at that moment, to Adrian and his sister, what a delicious night it was to be out of doors! And the grey mare, in a hurry to go, was undertaking through an interpreter to be back in an hour and three-quarters easy. And then they were off, Gwen laughing to scorn Irene's reproaches to her for not staying the night. All that was part of Gwen's minimisation of her guilt in this postponement of the separation test. The stars seemed to flash the clearer in the heavens for such laughter as hers, in such a voice. But all the while old Maisie was haunted with images of a chaise blown into ditches and over bridges, and colliding with blown-down elms, in league for mischief with blown-out lamps. Be advised, and never fidget about the absent!

She would rather have gone on doing so than that the recollection should come back to her of Lutwyche's odious designation that she had taken to herself, so warrantably to all appearance. A plaguy old cat! What had she ever done or said to Miss Lutwyche, or any of them, to deserve such a name? And then that girl who was with her had seemed to accept it so easily—certainly without any protest. She was ready to admit, though, that her vituperators had concealed their animus well, the hypocrites that they were! Look how amiable Mrs. Masham had made believe to be, an hour ago! A shade of graciousness—an infinitesimal condescension—certainly nothing worse than that! But the hypocrisy of it! She had never been quite comfortable in her ill-assigned position of guest undefined—dear, beautiful Gwen's fault! Never, since the housekeeper on first introduction had jumped at her reluctance to taint the servants' hall with Sapps Court, interpreting it as a personal desire to be alone. But she had never suspected that she was a plaguy old cat, and did not feel like her idea of one.

Conceive the position of a lonely octogenarian, injudiciously thrust into a community where she was not welcome—by a Guardian Angel surely, but one who had never known the meaning of the word "obstacle." Conceive that her poverty had never meant pauperisation, and that graciousness and condescension are always tainted with benevolence, to the indigent. She had done nothing to deserve having anything bestowed on her, and the wing of a chicken she had supped upon would have stuck in her throat with that qualification. Understand, too, that when this thought crossed her mind, she recoiled from it and cried out upon her petty pride that would call anything in question that had been visé and endorsed by that dear Guardian Angel. Use these helps towards a glimpse into her heart as she watched the new wood go the way of the old, and say if you wonder that she cried silently over it. Now if only that nice person that came to-day could have stayed on, to pass the time with her until the welcome sound should come of the chaise's homeward wheels and the grey mare's splendid pace, bringing her what she knew would come if Gwen was in it, a happy farewell interview with her idol before she went to bed. Yes—how nice it would have been to have her here! Ruth Thrale—yes, Ruth—her own little daughter's name of long ago!

This Ruth was her own daughter. But how to know it!

---

CHAPTER VII

HOW GWEN CAME BACK, AND FOUND THE "OLD CAT" ASLEEP. AND TOOK OFF HER SABLES. A CANDLE-LIGHT JOURNEY THROUGH AN ANCIENT HOUSE, AND A TELEGRAPHIC SUMMONS. HOW GWEN RUSHED AWAY BY A NIGHT-TRAIN, BECAUSE HER COUSIN CLOTILDA SAID DON'T COME. HOW SHE LEFT A LETTER FOR WIDOW THRALE AT THE RANGER'S LODGE

Just as the watched pot never boils, so the thing one waits for never comes, so long as one waits hard. The harder one waits the longer it is postponed. When one sits up to open the door to the latchkeyless, there is only one sure way of bringing about his return, and that is to drop asleep à contre coeur, and sleep too sound for furious knocks and rings, gravel thrown at windows, and intemperate language, to arouse you. Then he will come back, and be obliged to say he has only knocked once, and you will say you had only just closed your eyes.

Old Maisie was quite sure she had just closed hers, when of a sudden the voice she longed for filled Heaven and Earth, and said:—"Oh, what a shame to come and wake you out of such a beautiful sleep! But you mustn't sleep all night in the arm-chair. Poor dear old Mrs. Picture! What would Dave say! What would Mrs. Burr say!" And then old Maisie waked from a dream about unmanageable shrimps, to utter the correct formula with a conviction of its truth, this time. She had only just closed her eyes. Only just!

Miss Lutwyche, in attendance, ventured on sympathetic familiarity. Mrs. Picture would not get any beauty-sleep to-night, that was certain. For it is well known that only sleep in bed deserves the name, and a clock was putting its convictions about midnight on record, dogmatically.

Gwen's laugh rang out soon enough to quash its last ipse dixits. "Then the mischief's done, Lutwyche, and another five minutes doesn't matter. Mrs. Picture's going to tell me all her news. Here—get this thing off! Then you can go till I ring." The thing, or most of it, was an unanswerable challenge to the coldest wind of night—the cast-off raiment of full fifty little sables, that scoured the Russian woods in times gone by. Surely the breezes had drenched it with the very soul of the night air in that ride beneath the stars, and the foam of them was shaken out of it as it released its owner.

Then old Maisie was fully aware of her Guardian Angel, back again—no dream, like those shrimps! And her voice was saying:—"So you had company, Mrs. Picture dear. Lutwyche told me. The widow-woman from Chorlton, wasn't it? How did you find her? Nice?"

Yes, the widow-woman was very nice. She had stayed quite a long time, and had tea. "I liked her very much," said old Maisie. "She was easy." Then—said inference—somebody is difficult. Maisie did not catch this remark, made by one of the most inaudible of speakers. "Yes," she said, "she stayed quite a long time, and had tea. She is a very good young woman"—for, naturally, eighty sees fifty-odd as youth, especially when fifty-odd seems ten years less—"and we could talk about Dave. It was like being home again." She used, without a trace of arrière pensée, a phrase she could not have bettered had she tried to convey to Gwen her distress at hearing she was a plaguy old cat. Then she suddenly saw its possible import, and would have liked to withdraw it. "Only I would not seek to be home again, my dear, when I am near you." She trembled in her eagerness to get this said, and not to say it wrong.

Gwen saw in an instant all she had overlooked, and indeed she had overlooked many things. It was, however, much too late at night to go into the subject. She could only soothe it away now, but with intention to amend matters next day; or, rather, next daylight. So she said:—"The plaster will very soon be dry now in Sapps Court, dear Mrs. Picture, and then you shall go back to Dave and Dolly, and I will come and see you there. You must go to bed now. So must I—I suppose? I will come to you to-morrow morning, and you will tell me a great deal more. Now good-night!" That was what she said aloud. To herself she thought a thought without words, that could only have been rendered, to do it justice:—"The Devil fly away with Mrs. Masham, that she couldn't contrive to make this dear old soul comfortable for a few weeks, just long enough for some plaster to dry." She went near adding:—"And myself, too, not to have foreseen what would happen!" But she bit this into her underlip, and cancelled it.

She rang the bell for Lutwyche, now the sole survivor in the kitchen region. Who appeared, bearing hot water—some for the plaguy old cat. Gwen said good-night again, kissing the old lady affectionately when Lutwyche was not looking. Mistress and maid then, when the cat at her own request was left to get herself into sleeping trim, started on the long journey through corridors and state-rooms through which her young ladyship's own quarters had to be reached. Corridors on whose floors one walked up and down hill; great chambers full of memories, and here and there indulging in a ghost. Tudor rooms with Holbeins between the windows, invisible to man; Jacobean rooms with Van Dycks, nearly as regrettably invisible; Lelys and Knellers, much more regrettably visible. Across the landing the great staircase, where the Reynolds hangs, which your cicerone of this twentieth century will tell you was the famous beauty of her time, and the grandmother of another famous Victorian beauty, dead not a decade since. And on this staircase Gwen, half pausing to glance at her departed prototype, started suddenly, and exclaimed:—"What's that?"

For a bell had broken the silence of the night—a bell that had enjoyed doing so, and was slow to stop. Now a bell after midnight in a house that stands alone in a great Park, two miles from the nearest village, has to be accounted for, somehow. Not by Miss Lutwyche, who merely noted that the household would hear and answer the summons.

Her young ladyship was not so indifferent to human affairs as her attendant. She said:—"I must know what that is. They won't send to tell me. Come back!" She had said it, and started, before that bell gave in and retired from public life.

Past the Knellers and Lelys, among the Van Dycks, a scared figure, bearing a missive. Miss Lupin, and no ghost—as she might have been—in the farther door as her ladyship passes into the room. She has run quickly with it, and is out of breath. "A telegraph for your ladyship!" is all she can manage. She would have said "telegram" a few years later.

A rapid vision, in Gwen's mind, of her father's remains, crushed by a locomotive, itself pulverised by another—for these days were rich in railway accidents—then a hope! It may be the fall of Sebastopol; a military cousin had promised she should know it as soon as the Queen. Give her the paper and end the doubt!... It is neither.

It is serious, for all that. Who brought this?—that's the first question, from Gwen. Lupin gives a hurried account. It is Mr. Sandys, the station-master at Grantley Thorpe, who has galloped over himself to make sure of delivery. Is he gone? No—he has taken his horse round to Archibald at the Stables to refit for a quieter ride back. Very well. Gwen must see him, and Tom Kettering must be stopped going to bed, and must be ready to drive her over to Grantley, if there is still a chance to catch the up-train for Euston. Lutwyche may get things ready at once, on the chance, and not lose a minute. Lupin is off, hotfoot, to the Stables, to catch Mr. Sandys, and bring him round.

White and determined, after reading the message, Gwen retraces her steps. Outside old Mrs. Picture's door comes a moment of irresolution, but she quashes it and goes on. Old Maisie is not in bed yet—has not really left that tempting fireside. She becomes conscious of a stir in the house, following on a bell that she had supposed to be only a belated absentee. She opens her door furtively and listens.

That is Gwen's voice surely, beyond the servants' quarter, speaking with a respectful man. The scraps of speech that reach the listener's ear go to show that he assents to do something out of the common, to oblige her ladyship. Something is to happen at three-fifteen, which he will abet, and be responsible for. Only it must be three-fifteen sharp, because something—probably a train—is liable to punctuality.

Then a sound of an interview wound up, a completed compact. And that is Gwen, returning. Old Maisie will not intrude on the event, whatever it be. She must wait to hear to-morrow. So she closes her door, furtively, as she opened it; and listens still, for the silences of the night to reassert themselves. No more words are audible, but she is conscious that voices continue, and that her Guardian Angel's is one. Then footsteps, and a hand on the door. Then Gwen, white and determined still, but speaking gently, to forestall alarm, and reassure misgiving.

"Dear Mrs. Picture, it's nothing—nothing to be alarmed about. But I have to go up to London by the night train. See!—I will tell you what it is. I have had this telegraphic message. Is it not wonderful that this should be sent from London, a hundred miles off, two hours ago, and that I should have it here to read now? It is from my cousin, Miss Grahame. I am afraid she is dangerously ill, and I must go to her because she is alone.... Yes—Maggie is very good, and so is Dr. Dalrymple. But some friend should be with her or near her. So I must go." She did not read the message, or show it.

"But my dear—my dear—is it right for you to go alone, in the dark.... Oh, if I were only young!..."

"I shall be all right. I shall have Lutwyche, you know. Don't trouble about me. It is you I am thinking of—leaving you here. I am afraid I may be away some days, and you may not be comfortable.... No—I can't possibly take you with me. I have to get ready to go at once. The trap will only just take me and Lutwyche, and our boxes. It must be Tom Kettering and the trap. The carriage could not do it in the time. The Scotch express passes Grantley Thorpe at three-fifteen—the station-master can stop it for me.... What!—go beside the driver! Dear old Mrs. Picture, the boxes have to go beside the driver, and Lutwyche and I have to hold tight behind.... No, no!—you must stay here a day or two—at least till we know the plaster's dry in Sapps Court. As soon as I have been to see myself, one of the maids shall bring you back, and you shall have Dave and Dolly—there! Now go to bed, that's an old dear, and don't fret about me. I shall be all right. Now, go I must! Good-bye!" She was hurrying from the room, leaving the old lady in a great bewilderment, when she paused a moment to say:—"Stop a minute!—I've an idea.... No, I haven't.... Yes, I have.... All right!—nothing—never mind!" Then she was gone, and old Maisie felt dreadfully alone.

Arrived in her own room, where Lutwyche, rather gratified with her own importance in this new freak of Circumstance, was endeavouring to make a portmanteau hold double its contents, Gwen immediately sat down to write a letter. It required five minutes for thought and eight minutes to write; so that in thirteen minutes it was ready for its envelope. Gwen re-read it, considered it, crossed a t and dotted an i, folded it, directed it, took it out to re-re-read, said thoughtfully:—"Can't do any possible harm," concluded it past recall, and added "By bearer" on the outside. It ran thus:

"Widow Thrale,

"I want you to do something for me, and I know you will do it. To-morrow morning go to my old Mrs. Picture whom you saw to-day, and make her go back with you and your boy to Strides Cottage, and keep her there and take great care of her, till you hear from me. She is a dear old thing and will give no trouble at all. Ask anyone for anything you want for her—money or things—and I will settle all the bills. Show this letter. She knows my address in London. I am going there by the night express.

"Gwendolen Rivers."

She slipped this letter into her pocket, and made a descent on Miss Lutwyche for her packing, which she criticized severely. But packing, unlike controversy, always ends; and in less than half an hour, both were in their places behind Tom Kettering and the grey mare, who had accepted the prospect of another fifteen miles without emotion; and Mrs. Masham and Lupin were watching them off, and thinking how nice it would be when they could get to bed.

"Now you think the mare can do it, Tom Kettering?"

"Twice and again, my lady, and a little over. And never be any the worse to-morrow!" Thus Tom Kettering, with immovable confidence. The mare as good as endorsed his words, swinging her head round to see, and striking the crust of the earth a heavy blow with her off hind-hoof.

"And we shall have time for you to get down at your Aunt Solmes's to leave my letter?"

"I count upon it, my lady, quite easy. We'll be at the Thorpe by three, all told, without stepping out." And then the mare is on the road again, doing her forty-first mile, quite happily.

They stopped at the bridle-path to the Ranger's Cottage, and Tom walked across with the letter—an unearthly hour for a visit!—and came back within ten minutes. All right! Her ladyship's wishes should be attended to! Then on through the starlight night, with the cold crisp air growing colder and crisper towards morning. Then the railway-station where Feudal tradition could still stop a train by signal, but only one or two in the day ever stopped of their own accord, in the fifties. Now, as you know, every train stops, and Spiers and Pond are there, and you can lunch and have Bovril and Oxo. Then, the shoddy-mills were undreamed of, where your old clothes are carefully sterilised before they are turned into new wool; and the small-arms factory, where Cain buys an outfit cheap; and the colour-works, that makes aniline dyes that last, if you settle monthly, until you pay for them. Nothing was there then, and the train that stopped by signal came through a smokeless night, with red eyes and green that gazed up or down the line to please the Company; and started surlily, in protest at the stoppage, but picked its spirits slowly up, and got quite exhilarated before it was out of hearing, perhaps because it was carrying Gwen to London.

The dejection of its first start might have persevered and made its full-fledged rapidity joyless, had it known the errand of its beautiful first-class passenger. For the telegram Gwen had received, that had sent her off on this wild journey to London in the small hours of the morning, was this that follows, neither more nor less:

"On no account come. Why run risks? You will not be admitted. Never mind what Dr. Dalrymple says.—Clotilda."

Just conceive this young lady off in such a mad way when it was perfectly clear what had happened! She might at least have waited until she received the letter this message had so manifestly outraced; Dr. Dalrymple's letter, certain to come by the first post in the morning. And she would have waited, no doubt, if she had not been Gwen. Being Gwen, her first instinct was to get away before that letter came, enjoining caution, and deprecating panic, and laying stress on this, that, and the other—a parcel of nonsense all with one object, to counsel pusillanimousness, to inspire trepidation. She knew that would be the upshot. She knew also that Dr. Dalrymple would play double, frightening her from coming, while assuring the patient that he had vouched for the entire absence of danger and the mildness of the type of the disorder, whatever it was. It would never do for Clotilda to know that she—Gwen—was being kept away, for safety's sake. That was the sum and substance of her reflections. And the inference was clear:—Push her way on to Cavendish Square, and push her way in, if necessary!

A thought crossed her mind as the train whirled away from Grantley Station. Suppose it was smallpox, and she should catch it and have her beauty spoiled! Well—in that case an ill wind would blow somebody good! Her darling blind man would never see it. Let us be grateful for middle-sized mercies!

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CHAPTER VIII

HOW THAT WIDOW GOT THE "OLD CAT" AWAY TO STRIDES COTTAGE. MR. BRANTOCK'S HORSE. ELIZABETH-NEXT-DOOR, AND THE BIT OF FIRE SHE MADE. HOW TOFT THE GIPSY SPOTTED A LIKENESS, AND REPAIRED THE GLASS TOBY HAD AIMED AT. HOW OLD MAISIE'S ACQUAINTANCE WITH HER DAUGHTER GREW TO FRIENDSHIP. AND HER DAUGHTER SHOWED HER GRANDFATHER'S MILL. HOW COULD THIS MILL BE YOUR GRANDFATHER'S, WHEN IT WAS MY FATHER'S? BUT SEE HOW SMALL IT WAS! TWO ARMS LONG, FIFTY YEARS AGO! AND NOW!... A RESTLESS WAKING AND A DARING EXCURSION. ONLY THE HOUSE-DOG ABOUT! ON THE FENDER! SEE THERE—AN ARM AND A HALF LONG ONLY—IN FACT, LESS!

Old Maisie waked late, and no wonder! Or, more properly, she slept late, and had to be waked. Mrs. Masham did it, saying at the same time to a person in her company:—"Oh no, Mrs. Thrale—she's all right!—we've no call to be frightened yet a while." She added, as signs of life began to return:—"She'll be talking directly, you'll see."

Then the sleeper became conscious, and roused herself, to the point of exclaiming:—"Oh dear, what is it?" A second effort made her aware that her agreeable visitor of yesterday was at her bed's foot, and that her awakener was saying at her side:—"Now you tell her. She'll hear you now." Mrs. Masham seemed to assume official rights as a go-between, with special powers of interpretation.

Widow Thrale looked more Pomona-like than ever in the bright sunshine that was just getting the better of the hoar-frost. She held in her hand a letter, to which she seemed to cling as a credential—a sort of letter of marque, so to speak. "'Tis a bidding from her young ladyship," said the interpreter collaterally. She herself said, in the soothing voice of yesterday:—"From her young ladyship, who has gone to away London unforetold, last night. She will have me get you to my mother's, to make a stay with us for a while. And my mother will make you kindly welcome, for the little boy Dave's sake, and for her ladyship's satisfaction." She read the letter of marque, as far as "take great care of her, till you hear from me."

"I will get up and go," said the old lady. Then she appeared disconcerted at her own alacrity, saying to the housekeeper:—"But you have been so kind to me!"

"What her young ladyship decides," said Mrs. Masham, "it is for us to abide by." She referred to this as a sort of superseding truth, to which all personal feelings—gratitude, ingratitude, resentment, forgiveness—should be subordinated. It left open a claim to magnanimity, on her part, somehow. Further, she said she would tell Lupin to bring some breakfast for Mrs. Pilcher.

The task of getting the old lady up to take it seemed to devolve naturally on Widow Thrale, who accepted it discreetly and skilfully, explaining that Mr. Brantock's cart would wait an hour to oblige, and would go very easy along the road, not to shake. Old Maisie did not seem alarmed, on that score.

She had lain awake in the night in some terror of the day to come, alone with a household which appeared to have decided, though without open declaration, that she was a plaguy old cat. She had been roused from a final deep sleep to find that her Guardian Angel's last benediction to her had been to make the very arrangement she would have chosen for herself had she been put to it to make choice. That her mind had never mooted the point was a detail, which retrospect corrected. She was ashamed to find she was so glad to fly from Mrs. Masham and Company, and already began to be uneasy lest she had misjudged them. But then—a plaguy old cat!

However, the decision of this at present did not arise from the circumstances. What did was that, in less than the hour Mr. Brantock's cart could concede, she was seated therein, comfortably wrapped up, beside this really very nice and congenial saddler's relict, having been somehow dressed, breakfasted, and generally adjusted by hands which no doubt had acquired the sort of skill a hospital nurse gets—without the trenchant official demeanour which makes the patient shake in his shoes, if any—by her considerable experience of convalescents of all sorts and the smaller sizes.

Mr. Brantock's cart jogged steadily on by cross-cuts and by-roads at the dictation of parcels whose destinations Mr. Brantock's horse bore in mind, and chose the nearest way to, allowing his so-called driver to deliver them on condition that the consignees paid cash. His harness stood in the way of his doing so himself. Think what it was that was concealed from old Maisie and Widow Thrale respectively, as they travelled in Mr. Brantock's cart. The intensity of this mother's and daughter's ignorance of one another outwent the powers of mere language to tell.

To the mother the daughter was the very nice young—relatively young—woman who had taken such good care of Dave last year, who was now so very kind and civil as to take charge of an old encumbrance at the bidding of a glorious Guardian Angel, who had dawned on these last days suddenly, inexplicably! An encumbrance at least, and no doubt plaguy, or she never would have been called an old cat.

To the daughter the mother was a good old soul, to be made much of and fostered; nursed if ill, entertained if well; borne with if, as might be, she developed into a trial—turned peevish, irritable, what not! Had not Gwen o' the Towers spoken, and was not the taint of Feudalism still strong in Rocestershire half a century back? Gwen o' the Towers had spoken, and that ended the matter.

Otherwise they were no more conscious of each other's blood in their own veins than was the convalescent Toby, who enlivened the dulness of the journey by dwelling on the menus he preferred for breakfast, dinner, and supper respectively. He elicited information about Dave, and was anxious to be informed which would lick. He put the question in this ungarnished form, not supplying detailed conditions. When told that Dave would, certainly, being nearly two years older, he threw doubt on the good faith of his informant.

But the journey came to an end, and though Widow Thrale had locked up the Cottage when she came away yesterday, she had left the key with Elizabeth-next-door—whoever she was; it does not matter—asking her to look in about eleven and light a bit of fire against her, Widow Thrale's, return. So next-door was applied to for the key, and the bit of fire—a very large bit of a small fire, or a small bit of a very large one—was found blazing on the hearth, and the cloth laid for dinner and everything.

According to Elizabeth-next-door, absolutely nothing had happened since Mrs. Marrable went away yesterday. Routine does not happen; it flows in a steady current which Event, the fidget, may interrupt for a while, but seldom dams outright. Elizabeth's memory, however, admitted on reconsideration that Toft the glazier had come to see for a job, and that she had sought for broken windows in Strides Cottage and found none. Toft was quite willing to mend any pane on his own responsibility, neither appealing to the County Court to obtain payment, nor smashing the pane in default of a cash settlement; a practice congenial to his gipsy blood, although he was the loser by the price of the glass. Toft had greatly desired to repair the glass front of the little case or cabinet on the mantelshelf, but Elizabeth had not dared to sanction interference with an heirloom. That was quite right, said Widow Thrale. What would mother have said if any harm had been done to her model? Besides, it did not matter! Because Toft would look in again to-day or to-morrow, when he had finished on the conservatories at the Vicarage.

None of this conversation reached old Maisie's ears at the time; only as facts referred to afterwards. As soon as the key was produced by Elizabeth-next-door, the old lady, treated as an invalid in the face of her own remonstrance, was inducted through the big kitchen or sitting-room, which she was sorry not to stop in, to a bedroom beyond, and made to lie down and rest and drink fresh milk. When she got up to join Widow Thrale's and Toby's midday meal, all reference to glass-mending was at an end, and Toby was making such a noise about the relative merits of brown potatoes in their skins, and potatoes per se potatoes, that you could not hear yourself speak.

In spite of her separation from her beautiful new Guardian Angel, and her uneasiness about the nature of that dangerous illness—for were not people dying of cholera every day?—she felt happier at Strides Cottage than in the ancient quarters Francis Quarles had occupied, where her position had been too anomalous to be endurable. Gwen's scheme had been that Mrs. Masham should play the part Widow Thrale seemed to fill so easily. It had failed. The fact is that nothing but sympathy with vulgarity gives what is called tact, and in this case the Guardian Angel's scorn of the stupid reservations and distinctions of the servantry at the Towers had quite prevented her stocking the article.

Perhaps Mrs. Thrale fell so easily into the task of making old Maisie happy and at ease because she was furnished with a means of explaining her and accounting for her, by the popularity Dave Wardle had achieved with the neighbours a year ago. Thus she had said to Elizabeth-next-door:—"You'll call to mind our little Davy Wardle, a twelvemonth back?—he that was nigh to being killed by the fire-engine? Well—there then!—this old soul belongs with him. 'Tis she he called his London Granny, and old Mrs. Picture. I would not speak to her exact name, never having been told it—'tis something like Picture. Her young ladyship at the Towers has given me the charge of her. She's a gentle old soul, and sweet-spoken, to my thinking." So that when Elizabeth-next-door came to converse with old Maisie, they had a topic in common. Dave's blue eyes and courteous demeanour having left a strong impression on next-door, and on all who came within his radius. Perhaps if such a lubricant had existed at the Towers, the social machinery would have worked easier, and heated bearings would have been avoided.

It was the same with one or two others of the neighbours, who really came in to learn something of the aged person with such silvery-white hair, whom Widow Thrale had brought to the Cottage. Little memories of Dave were a passport to her heart. What strikes us, who know the facts, as strange, is that no one of these good women—all familiar with the face of Granny Marrable—were alive to the resemblance between the two sisters. And the more strange, that this likeness was actually detected even in the half-dark, by an incomer much less habituated to her face than many of them.

This casual incomer was Toft, the vagrant glazier, and—so said chance report, lacking confirmation—larcenous vagrant. His Assyrian appearance may have been responsible for this. It gave rise to the belief that he was either Hebrew or Egyptian. And, of course, no Jew or gipsy could be an honest man. That saw itself, in a primitive English village.

Toft had made his appearance at Strides Cottage just after dusk, earnestly entreating to be allowed to replace the glass Toby's chestnut-shot had broken, for nothing—yes, for nothing!—if Widow Thrale was not inclined to go to fourpence for it. The reply was:—"'Tis not the matter of the money, Master Toft. 'Tis because I grudge the touching of a thing my mother sets store by, when she is not here herself to overlook it." Now this was just after old Maisie had quitted the room, to lie down and rest again before supper, having been led into much talk about Dave. Toft had seen her. His answer to Widow Thrale was:—"Will not the old wife come back, if I bide a bit for her coming?" His mistake being explained to him, his comment was:—"Zookers! I'm all in the wrong. But I tell ye true, mistress, I did think her hair was gone white, against what I see on her head three months agone. And I was of the mind she'd fell away a bit." Widow Thrale in the end consented to allow the damage to be made good, she herself carefully removing the precious treasure from its case, and locking it into a cupboard while Toft replaced the broken glass. This done, under her unflagging supervision, the model was replaced; fourpence changed hands, and the glazier went his way, saying, as he made his exit:—"That was a chouse, mistress."

But Toft was the only person who saw the likeness; or, at any rate, who confessed to seeing it. It is, of course, not at loggerheads with human nature, that others saw it too, but kept the discovery to themselves. It was so out of the question that the resemblance should exist, that the fact that it did stood condemned on its merits. Therefore, silence! Another possibility is that the intensely white hair, and the seeming greater age, of old Maisie, had more than their due weight in heading off speculation. Old Phoebe's teeth, too, made a much better show than her sister's.

One thing is certain, that the person most concerned, Ruth Thrale herself, remained absolutely blind to a fact which might have struck her had she not been intensely familiar with her reputed mother's face. The features of every day were things per se, not capable of comparison with casual extramural samples. They never are, within family walls.

That this was no mere inertness of observation, but a good strong opacity of vision, was clear when, after leaving the convalescent Toby to dreams of indulgence in the pleasures of the table, and victorious encounters, she roused her old visitor to bring her into supper.

"There now!—it is strange that I should have company tonight. I never thought to have the luck, yesterday, when you were giving me my tea, Mrs...." She stopped on the name, and supplied a cup thereof—supper was a mixed meal at Strides Cottage—then continued:—"That brings to mind to ask you, whether little Davy is in the right of it when he writes your name 'Picture'?... Is he not, mayhap, calling you out of your name, childlike?"

"But of course he is, bless his little heart! My name is Prichard. P-r-i-c-h—Prich." She spelt the first syllable, to make sure no t got in. "The Lady, Gwen, has taken it of him, to humour him and Dolly, just as their young mouths speak it—Picture! But it isn't Picture; it's Prichard." Old Maisie felt quite mendacious. She seldom had to state so roundly that her assumed name was authentic. Widow Thrale made no comment, only saying:—"I thought the child had made 'Picture' out of his own head." The talk scarcely turned on the name for more than a minute, as she went on to say:—"Now you must eat some supper, Mrs. Prichard, because you hardly took anything for dinner. And see what a ride you had!" She went on to make appeals on behalf of bacon, eggs, bloaters, cold mutton and so on, with only a very small response from the old lady, who seemed to live on nothing. A compromise was effected, the latter promising to take some gruel just before going to bed.

Two influences were at work to keep the antecedents of either out of the conversation. Old Maisie fought shy of inquiries, which might have produced counter-inquiry she could scarcely have met by silence; and Mrs. Thrale shrank, with a true instinctive delicacy, from prying into a record which had the word poverty so legible on its title-page, and signs of a former well-being so visible on its subject. Besides, how about Sapps Court and Dave's uncle, the prizefighter?

She felt curiosity, all the same. However, information might come, unsought, as the ground thawed. A springlike mildness was in the atmosphere of their acquaintance, and it began to tell on the ice, very markedly, as they sat enjoying the firelight; candles blown out, and the flicker of the wood-blaze making sport with visibility on the walls and dresser—on the dominant willow-pattern of the latter, with its occurrences of polished metal, and precious incidents of Worcester or Bristol porcelain; or the pictorial wealth of the former, the portrait of Lord Nelson, and the British Lion, and all the flags of all the world in one frame; to say nothing of some rather woebegone Bible prints, doing full justice to the beards of Susannah's elders, and the biceps of Samson. On all these, and prominently on the sampler worked by Hephzibah Marrable, 1672, a ship-of-war in full sail, with cannons firing off wool in the same direction, and defeating the Dutch Fleet, presumably. Perhaps the Duke of York's flagship.

The two had talked of many things. Of the great bull-dog who was such a safeguard against thieves that they never felt insecure at night, and were very careless in consequence about bolts and bars; and who had investigated the visitor very carefully on her first arrival, suspiciously, but seemed now to have given her his complete sanction. Of the cat on the hearth and the Family at the Towers—small things and large; but with a great satisfaction for old Maisie, when the statement was made with absolute confidence that Mr. Torrens, who was said to be the man of her young ladyship's choice, would recover his eyesight. Mrs. Lamprey's version of Dr. Nash's pronouncement was conclusive, and was conscientiously repeated, without exaggeration; causing heartfelt joy to old Maisie, with a tendency to consider how far Mr. Torrens deserved his good fortune, the moment his image was endowed with eyesight. That, you remember, was the effect of Mrs. Lamprey's first communication yesterday. Then Widow Thrale had read a letter from her son on the Agamemnon, in the Black Sea, cheerfully forecasting an early collapse of Russia before the prowess of the Allies, and an early triumphant return of the Fleet with unlimited prize-money. Old Maisie had to envy perforce this mother's pride in this son, his daring and his chivalry, his invincibility by foes, his generosity to the poor and weak. Her envy was forced from her—how could it have been otherwise?—but her love came with it. All her heart went out to the sweet, proud, contented face as the firelight played on it, and made the treasured letter visible to its reader. Then she had listened to particulars of the other son, in the Baltic, of whom his mother was temperately proud, not rising to her previous enthusiasm. He had, however, been in action; that was his strong point, at present. By that time Mrs. Thrale's domestic record only needed a word or two about her daughter, Mrs. Costrell, to be complete for its purpose, a tentative enlightenment of its hearer, which might induce counter-revelation. But the old lady did not respond, clinging rather to inquiry about her informant's affairs. For which the latter did not blame her, for who could say what reasons she might have for her reticence. At any rate, she would not try to break through it.

All this talk, by the comfortable fireside, was nourishment to the growing germ of old Maisie's affection for this chance acquaintance of a day. Her faith in all her surroundings—her Guardian Angel apart—had been sadly shaken by the expression "plaguy old cat." This woman could be relied upon, she was sure. She could not be disappointed in her—how could she doubt it? Whether their unknown kinship was a mysterious help to this confidence is a question easy to ask. The story makes no attempt to answer it.

A bad disappointment was pending, however. After some chance references to "mother," her great vigour in spite of her eighty years, the distances she could walk, and so on—and some notes about neighbours—Farmer Jones's Bull, mentioned as a local celebrity, naturally led back to Dave.

"The dear boy was never tired of telling about that Bull," said old Maisie. "I thought perhaps he made up a little as he went, for children will. Was it all true he told me about how he wasn't afraid to go up close, and the Bull was good and quiet?"

"Quite true," answered Mrs. Thrale. "Only we would never have given permission, me and mother, only we knew the animal by his character. He cannot abide grown men, and he's not to be trusted with women and little girls. But little boys may pat him, and no offence given. It was all quite true."

"Well, now!—that is very nice to know. Was it true, too, all about the horses and the wheelsacks, and the water-cart?"

"Of course!—oh yes, of course it was! That was our model. Only it should not have been wheelsacks. Wheat sacks! And water-cart!—he meant water-wheel. Bless the child!—he'd got it all topsy-turned. There's the model on the mantel-shelf, with the cloth over it. I'll take it off to show you. That won't do any harm. I only covered it so that no one should touch the glass. Because Ben Toft said the putty would be soft for a few days." A small bead-worked tablecloth, thick and protective, had been wrapped round the model.

Widow Thrale relighted the candles, which had been out of employment. They did not give a very good light. The old lady was just beginning to feel exhausted with so much talk. But she was bound to see this—Dave's model, his presentment of which had been a source of speculation in Sapps Court! Just fancy! Widow Thrale lifted it bodily from the chimney-shelf, and placed it on the table.

"Mother ought to tell you about it," said she, disengaging the covering, "because she knows so much more about it than I do. You see, when the water is poured in at the top and the clockwork is wound up, the mill works and the sacks go up and down, and one has to pretend they are taking grist up into the loft. It was working quite beautiful when mother put the water in for Dave to see. And it doesn't go out of order by standing; for, the last time before that, when mother set it going, was for the sake of little Robert that we lost when he was little older than Dave. Such a many years it seems since then!... What?"

For as she chatted on about what she conceived would be her visitor's interest in the model—Dave's interest, to wit—she had failed to hear her question, asked in a tremulous and almost inaudible voice:—"Where was it, the mill?... Whose mill?" A repetition of it, made with an effort, caused her to look round.

And then she saw that old Maisie's breath was coming fast, and that her words caught in it and became gasps. Her conclusion was immediate, disconnecting this agitation entirely from the subject of her speech. The old lady had got upset with so much excitement, that was all. Just think of all that perturbation last night, and the journey to-day! At her time of life! Besides, she had eaten nothing.

Evidently the proper course now was to induce her to go to bed, and get her that gruel, which she had promised to take. "I am sure you would be better in bed, Mrs. Prichard," said Mrs. Thrale. "Suppose you was to go now, and I'll get you your gruel."

Old Maisie gave way at once to the guidance of a persuasive hand, but held to her question. "Whose mill was it?"

"My grandfather's. Take care of the little step ... you shall see it again to-morrow by daylight. Bed's the place for you, dear Mrs. Prichard. Why—see!—you are shaking all over."

So she was, but not to such an extent as to retard operations. The old white head was soon on its pillow, but the old white face was unusually flushed. And the voice was quite tremulous that said, inexplicably:—"How came your grandfather to be the owner of that mill?"

Even a younger and stronger person than old Maisie might have lost head to the extent of not seeing that the best thing to say was:—"I have seen this model before. I knew it in my childhood." But so dumfoundered was she by what had been so suddenly sprung upon her that she could not have thought of any right thing to say, to save her life.

And how could Widow Thrale discern anything in what she did say but the effect of fatigue, excitement, and underfeeding on an octogenarian; probably older, and certainly weaker, than her mother? How came her grandfather to be the owner of Darenth Mill, indeed! Well!—she could get Dr. Nash round at half an hour's notice; that was one consolation. Meanwhile, could she seriously answer such an inquiry? Indeed she scarcely recognised that it was an inquiry. It was a symptom.

She spoke to the old head on the pillow, with eyes closed now. "Would you dislike it very much, ma'am, if I was to put one spoonful of brandy in the gruel? There is brandy without sending for it, because of invalids."

"Thank you, I think no brandy. It isn't good for me.... But I like to have the gruel, you know." She would not unsay the gruel, because she was sure this kind-hearted woman would take pleasure in getting it for her. Not that she wanted it.

Widow Thrale went back to the kitchen to see to the gruel. She was absolutely free from any thought of the model, in relation to the old lady's indisposition, or collapse, whichever it was. Lord Nelson himself, on the wall, was not more completely detached from it. While the gruel was arriving at maturity, she wrapped the covering again carefully over the mill and the wheelsacks and the water-cart, and Muggeridge, and replaced it on the chimney-shelf.

Left alone, old Maisie, no longer seeing the model before her, began to waver about the reality of the whole occurrence. Might it not have been a dream, a delusion; at least, an exaggeration? There was a model, with horses, and a waggon—yes! But was she quite sure it was her old mill—her father's? How could she be sure of anything, when it was all so long ago? Especially when her pulse was thumping, like this. Besides, there was a distinct fact that told against the identity of this model and the one it was so bewilderingly like; to wit—the size of it. That old model of sixty years ago was twice the size of this. She knew that, because she could remember her own hand on it, flat at the top. Her hand and Phoebe's together!—she remembered the incident plainly.

Here was Mrs. Thrale back with the gruel. How dear and kind she was! But a horrible thought kept creeping into old Maisie's mind. Was she—a liar? Had she not said that it was her grandfather's mill? Now that could not be true. If she had said great-uncle.... Well!—would that have made it any better? On reflection, certainly not! For her father had had neither brother nor sister. It was a relief to put speculation aside and accept the gruel.

She made one or two slight attempts to recur to the mill. But her hostess made no response; merely discouraged conversation on every topic. Mrs. Prichard had better not talk any more. The thing for her to do was to take her gruel and go to sleep. Perhaps it was. A reaction of fatigue added powerful arguments on the same side, and she was fain to surrender at discretion.

She must have slept for over six hours, for when the sudden sound of an early bird awakened her the dawn was creeping into the house. The window of her own room was shuttered and curtained, but she saw a line of daylight under the door. No one was moving yet. She instantly remembered all the events she had gone to sleep upon; the recollection of the mill-model in particular rushing at her aggressively, almost producing physical pain, like a blow. She knew there was another pain to come behind it, as soon as her ideas became collected. Yes—there it was! This dear lovable woman whom she had been so glad of, after the duplicity of those servants at the Towers, was as untrustworthy as they, and the whole world was a cheat! How else could it be, when she had heard her with her own ears say that that mill had belonged to her grandfather?

She lay and chafed, a helpless nervous system dominated by a cruel idea. Was there no way out? Only one—that she herself had been duped by her own imagination. But then, how was that possible? Unless, indeed, she was taking leave of her senses. Because, even supposing that she could fancy that another model of another mill could deceive her by a chance likeness; how about those two tiny figures of little girls in white bonnets and lilac frocks? Oh, that she could but prove them phantoms of an imagination stimulated by the first seeming identity of the building and the water-wheel! After all, all water-mills were much alike. Yes, the chances were large that she had cheated herself. But certainty—certainty—that was what she wanted. She felt sick with the intensity of her longing for firm ground.

Was it absolutely impossible that she should see for herself now—now? She sat up in bed, looking longingly at the growing light of the doorslip. After all, the model was but six paces beyond it, at the very most. She would be back in bed in three minutes, and no harm done. No need for a candle, with the light.

The bird outside said again the thing he had said before, and it seemed to her like: "Yes—do it." She got out of bed and found her slippers easily; then a warm overall of Gwen's providing. Never since her impoverishment had she worn such good clothes.

Her feet might fail her—they had done so before now. But she would soon find out, and would keep near the bed till she felt confidence.... Oh yes—they would be all right!

The door-hasp shrieked like a mandrake—as door-hasps do, in silence—but waked no one, apparently. There was the kitchen-door at the end of the brick-paved lobby, letting through dawn's first decision about the beginning of the day. Old Maisie went cautiously over the herring-boned pavement, with a hand against the wall for steadiness. This door before her had an old-fashioned latch. It would not shriek, but it might clicket.

Only a very little more, and then she was in the kitchen!

There was more light than she had expected, for one of the windows was not only shutterless, but without either blind or curtain. She was not surprised, for she remembered what her hostess had said about the housedog, and security from thieves. That was a source of alarm, for one short moment. Might he not hear her, and bark? Then a touch of a cold nose, exploring her feet, answered the question. He had heard her, and he would not bark. He seemed to decide that there was no cause for active intervention, and returned to his quarters, wherever they were.

But where was the sought-for model? Not on the table where she saw it yesterday; the table was blank, but for the chrysanthemums in a pot of water in the middle. On the chimney-piece then, back in its place, rather high up—there it was, to be sure! But such a disappointment! She could have seen it there, though it was rather out of reach for her eyesight. But alas!—it was wrapped up again in that cloth. It was a grievous disappointment.

Perhaps she might contrive to see a little behind it, by pulling it aside. Yes—there!—she could reach it, at any rate. But to pull it aside was quite another matter. Its texture was prohibitive. Fancy a strip of cocoanut matting, with an uncompromising selvage, wrapped round a box of its own width, with its free end under the box! Then compare the rigidity of beadwork and cocoanut matting. The position was hopeless. It was quite beyond her strength to reach it down, and she would have been afraid to do so in the most favourable circumstances imaginable.

Quite hopeless! But there was one thing she might satisfy herself of—the relative sizes of her own hand and the case. Yes—by just standing on the secure steel fender to gain the requisite four inches, she could lay her two hands over the top, length for length, and the finger-tips would not meet, any more than hers met Phoebe's when their frock-cuffs were flush with the edge of her father's old model, all those years and years ago. Because her mind was striving to discredit the authenticity of this one.

Slowly and cautiously, for rheumatism had its say in the matter, she got a safe foothold on the fender and her hands up to the top, measuring. See there! Exactly as she had foretold—half the size! She knew she could not be mistaken about the frock-cuffs, and so far from the finger-tips meeting, with the two middle fingers bickering a little about their rights, there was an overlap as far as the second joint. The hands had grown a little since those days, no doubt, but not to that extent. She tried them both ways to make sure, left on right, and right on left, lest she should be deceiving herself. She was quite unnerved with self-mistrust, but so taken up with avoiding a mismeasurement now, that she could not sift that question of the hands' growth.

Probably everyone has detected outrageous errors in his own answers to his own question:—How old was I when this, that, or the other happened?—errors always in the direction of exaggeration of age. The idea in old Maisie's mind, that she and Phoebe were at least grown girls, was an utter delusion. Mere six-year-olds at the best! The two hands, that she remembered, were the hands of babies, and the incident had happened over seventy years ago.

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CHAPTER IX

A QUIET RAILWAY-STATION. ONE PASSENGER, AND A SHAKEDOWN AT MOORE'S. THE CONVICT DAVERILL'S SEARCH FOR HIS MOTHER. GRANNY MARRABLE'S READING OF "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS." A MAN ON A STILE. SOME MEMORIES OF NORFOLK ISLAND. A FINGER-JOINT. AN OATH ADMINISTERED BY AN AMATEUR, WITHOUT A TESTAMENT. HOW DAVERILL SPOKE HIS NAME TWICE, AND THE FIRST TIME UNDID THE SECOND. OFF THROUGH A HEDGE, FOLLOWED BY A RESPECTABLE MAN. HOW OLD PHOEBE FOUND AN ENIGMA IN HER POCKET

In those days the great main lines of railway were liable to long silences in the night. At the smaller stations particularly, after the last train up and the last train down had passed without killing somebody at a level crossing, or leaving you behind because you thought it was sure to be late, and presumed upon that certainty, an almost holy calm would reign for hours, and those really ill-used things, the sleepers, seemed to have a chance at last. For after being baffled all day by intermittent rushing fiends, and unwarrantable shuntings to and fro, and droppings of sudden red-hot clinkers on their counterpanes, an inexplicable click or two—apparently due to fidgety bull's-eyes desirous of change—could scarcely be accounted a disturbance.

No station in the world was more primevally still than Grantley Thorpe, after the down three-thirty express—the train that crossed the three-fifteen that carried Gwen to London—had stopped, that the word of Bradshaw should be fulfilled; had deposited the smallest conceivable number of passengers, and wondered, perhaps, why remaindermen in the carriages always put their heads out to ask what station this was. On this particular occasion, Bradshaw scored, for the down train entered the station three minutes after the up train departed, twelve minutes behind. Then the little station turned off lights, locked up doors of offices and lids of boxes, and went to bed. All but a signalman, in a box on a pole.

There was one passenger, not a prepossessing one, who seemed morose. His only luggage was a small handbag, and that was against him. It is not an indictable offence to have no luggage, but if a referendum were taken from railway-porters, it would be. However, this man was, after all, a third-class passenger, so perhaps he was excusable for carrying that bag.

"I suppose," said he, surrendering his ticket, "it's no part of your duty to tell a cove where he can get a sleep for half a night. You ain't paid for it." Whether this was churlishness, or a sort of humour, was not clear, from the tone.

Sandys, the station-master, one of the most good-humoured of mortals, preferred the latter interpretation. "It don't add to our salary, but it ought to. Very obliging we are, in these parts! How much do you look to pay?"

The man drew from his pocket, presumably, the fund he had to rely upon, and appeared to count it, with dissatisfaction. "Two and a kick!" said he. "I'll go to the tizzy, for sheets." This meant he would lay out the tizzy, or kick, provided that his bed was furnished with sheets. He added, with a growl, that he was not going to be put off with a horserug, this time. The adjective he used to qualify the previous rug showed that his experiences had been peculiar, and disagreeable.

"You might ask at Moore's, along on your left where you see yonder light. Show your money first, and offer to pay in advance. Cash first, sleep afterwards. There's someone sitting up, or they wouldn't show a light.... Here, Tommy, you're going that way. You p'int him out Moore's." Thus the station-master, who then departed along a gravel path, through a wicket-gate. It led to his private residence, which was keeping up its spirits behind a small grove of sunflowers which were not keeping up theirs. They had been once the admiration of passing trains, with a bank of greensward below them with "Grantley Thorpe" on it in flints, in very large caps. and now they were on the brink of their graves in the earth so chilly, and didn't seem resigned.

Tommy the porter did not relish his companion, evidently, as he walked on, a pace ahead, along the road that led to the village. He never said a word, and seemed justified in outstripping that slow, lurching, indescribable pace, which was not lameness, in order to stimulate it by example.

"Yarnder's Mower's," said Tommy, nodding towards a small pothouse down a blind alley. "You wo'ant find nowat to steal there, at Mower's."

"What the Hell do you mean by that?"

"What do I me'an—is that what you're asking?" Raised voice.

"Ah—what do you mean by 'steal'?"

"Just what a sa'ay! What do they me'an in London?"

"London's a large place—too large for this time o' night. You come along there one o' these days, and you'll find out what they mean." He sketched the behaviour of Londoners towards rustic visitors untruthfully—if our experience can be relied on—and in terms open to censure; ending up:—"You'll find what they'll do, fast enough! Just you show up there, one o' these fine days." He had only warped the subject thus in order to introduce the idea of a humiliating and degrading chastisement, as an insult to his hearer.

He vanishes from the story at this point, in a discharge of Parthian shafts by Tommy the young railwayman, not very energetically returned, as if he thought the contest not worth prolonging. Vanishes, that is to say, unless he was the same man who spoke with Mrs. Keziah Solmes at about eleven o'clock the next morning, in the road close by the Ranger's Cottage, close to where the grey mare started on her forty-first mile, yesterday. If this person spoke truth when he said he had come from a station much farther off than Grantley Thorpe, he was not the same man. Otherwise, the witnesses agreed in their description of him.

Mrs. Solmes's testimony was that a man in rough grey suit—frieze or homespun—addressed her while she was looking out for the mail-cart, with possible letters, and asked to be directed to Ancester Towers; which is, at this point, invisible from the road. She suspected him at first of being a vagrant of some new sort—then of mere eccentricity. For plenty of eccentrics came to get a sight of the Towers. She had surmised that his object was to do so, and had told him, that as the family were away, strangers could be admitted by orders obtainable of Kiffin and Clewby, his lordship the Earl's agents at Grantley. He then told her that he had walked over from Bridgport, where the Earl had no agent. He did not wish to go over the Towers, but to inquire for a party he was anxious to see; an old party by the name of Prichard. That was, he said, his own name, and she was a relation of his—in fact, his mother. He had not seen her for many a long year, and his coming would be a bit of a surprise. He had been away in the Colonies, and had not been able to play the part of a dutiful son, but by no choice of his own. Coming back to England, his first thought had been to seek out the old lady, "at the old address." But there he found the house had fallen down, and she was gone away temporary, only she could be heard of at Ancester Towers in Rocestershire.

Mrs. Keziah was so touched by this tale of filial affection, that she nipped in the bud a sprouting conviction that the man was no better than he—and others—should be. She interested herself at once. "You wo'ant need to ask at the Towers, master," said she. "I can tell you all they can, up there. And very like a bit more. The old dame she's gone away with my cousin, maybe an hour ago—may be more. She'll ta'ak she to her mother's at Chorlton, and if ye keep along the straight road for Grantley till ye come to sign-po'ast, sayun' 'To Dessington and Chorlton,' then another three-qua'arters of an 'oor 'll ta'ak ye there, easy."

The dutiful son looked disappointed, but did not lose his equable and not unpleasant manner. "I thought I was nigher my journey's end than that, marm," said he. "I was looking forward to the old lady giving me a snack of breakfast.... But don't you mind me! I'll do all right. I got a bit of bread coming along from Gridgport.... Ah!—Bridgport I should have said." For he had begun to say Grantley.

Even if Mrs. Solmes had not been on the point of offering rest and refreshment, this disclaimer of the need of it would have suggested that she should do so. After all, was he not the son of that nice old soul her cousin Ruth Thrale had taken such a fancy to? If she came across the old lady herself, how should she look her in the face, after letting her toil-worn son add five miles to seven, on an all but empty stomach. Of course, she immediately asked him in, going on ahead of him to explain him to her husband, who looked rather narrowly at the newcomer, but could not interpose upon a slice of cold beef and a glass of ale, especially as it seemed to be unasked for, however welcome.

"'Tis a tidy step afoot from Bridgport Ra'aby, afower breakfast," said old Stephen, keeping his eye, nevertheless, on the man's face, with only a half-welcome on his own. "But come ye in, and the missus 'll cast an eye round the larder for ye. You be a stra-anger in these parts, I take it."

The beef and ale seemed very welcome, and the man was talkative. Did his hosts know Mrs. Prichard personally? Only just seen her—was that it? She must be gone very grey by now; why—she was going that way when he saw her last, years ago. He never said how many years. He couldn't say her age to a nicety, but she must be well on towards eighty. However did she come to be at the country seat of the great Earl of Ancester?—that was what puzzled him.

Mrs. Solmes could not tell him everything, but she had a good deal to tell. The old lady she had seen was very grey certainly, but had seemed to her cousin Ruth Thrale, who had tea with her yesterday, quite in possession of her faculties, and—oh dear yes!—able to get about, but suffering from rheumatism. But then just think—nearly eighty! As for how she came to be at the Towers, all that Mrs. Solmes knew was that it was through a sort of fancy of her young ladyship, Lady Gwen Rivers, reputed one of the most beautiful young ladies in England, who had brought her from London after the accident already referred to, and who had gone away by the night-train, leaving a request to her cousin Ruth to take charge of her till her return. She could have repeated all she had heard from Mrs. Thrale, but scarcely felt authorised to do so.

One untoward incident happened. The infant Seth, summoned to show himself, stood in a corner and pouted, turned red, and became intransigeant; finally, when peremptorily told to go and speak to the gentleman, shrank from and glared at him; only allowed his hand to be taken under compulsion, and rushed away when released, roaring with anger or terror, or both, and wiping the touch of the stranger off his offended hand. This was entirely unlike Seth, whose defects of character, disobedience to Law and Order, and love of destruction for its own sake, were qualified by an impassioned affection for the human race, causing him to attach himself to that race, as a sort of rock-limpet, and even to supersede kisses by licks. His aversion to this man was a new departure.

He, for his part, expressed his surprise at Seth's attitude. He was noted in his part of the world for his tenderness towards young children. His circle of acquaintances suffered the little ones to come unto him contrary to what you might have thought, he being but an ugly customer to look at. But his heart was good—a rough diamond! When he had expressed his gratitude and tramped away down the road, after carefully writing down the address "Strides Cottage, Chorlton" and the names of its occupants, old Stephen and Keziah looked each at the other, as though seeking help towards a good opinion of this man, and seemed to get none.

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Old Granny Marrable always found a difficulty in getting away from her granddaughter Maisie's, because her presence there was so very much appreciated. Her great-grandson also, whose charms were developing more rapidly than is ever the case in after-life, was becoming a strong attraction to her. Moreover, a very old friend of hers, Mrs. Naunton, residing a short mile away, at Dessington, had just pulled through rheumatic fever, and was getting well enough to be read to out of "Pilgrim's Progress."

This afternoon, however, Mrs. Naunton did not prove well enough to keep awake when read to, even for Mr. Greatheart to slay Giant Despair. In fact, Mrs. Marrable caught her snoring, and read the rest to herself. It was too good to lose. When the Giant was disposed of past all recrudescence, she departed for her return journey instead of waiting for her granddaughter's brother-in-law, a schoolboy with a holiday, to come and see her home. She knew he would come by the short cut, across the fields, so she took that way to intercept him, in spite of the stiles. As a rule she preferred the highroad.

The fields were very lonely, but what did that matter? How little one feels the loneliness of an old familiar pathway! No one ever had been murdered in these fields, and no one ever would be. Granny Marrable walked on with confidence. Nevertheless, had she had her choice, she would have preferred the loneliness unalloyed by the presence of the man on the stile, at the end of Farmer Naunton's twelve-acre pasture, if only because she anticipated having to ask him to let her pass. For he seemed to have made up his mind to wait to be asked; if approached from behind, at any rate. She could not see his face or hands, only his outline against the cold, purple distance, with a red ball that had been the sun all day. "Might I trouble you, master?" she said.

The man turned his head just as far as was necessary for his eyes, under tension, to see the speaker; then got down, more deliberately than courteously, on his own side of the stile. "Come along, missus," he said. "Never mind legs. Yours ain't my sort. Over you go!"

Safe in the next field, Granny Marrable turned to thank him. But not before she had put three or four yards between them. Not that she anticipated violence, but from mere dislike of what she would have called sauciness in a boy, but which was, in a man of his time of life, sheer brutal rudeness. "Thank you very kindly, master!" said she. "Sorry to disturb you!"

He ought to have said that she was kindly welcome, or that he was very happy, but he said neither, only looking steadily at her. So she simply turned to go away.

She walked as far as the middle of the next field, not sorry to be out of this man's reach; and rather glad that, when she was within it, she was not a young girl, unprotected. That shows the impression he had given her. Also that his steady look was concentrating to a glare as she lost sight of his face, and that she would be glad when she was sure she had seen the last of it. She walked a little quicker as soon as she thought her doing so would attract no notice.

"Hi—missus!" She quickened her pace as the words—a hoarse call—caught her up. She even hoped she might be mistaken—had made a false interpretation of some entirely different sound; not the cawing of one of those rooks—that was against reason. But it might have been a dog's bark at a distance, warped by imagination. She had known that to happen. If so, it would come again. She stood and waited quietly.

It came again, distinctly. "Hi—missus!" No dog's bark that, but that man's voice, to a certainty, nearer. Then again "Hi—missus!" nearer still—almost close—and the sound of his feet. A halting, dot-and-go-one pace; not lame, but irregular.

She was a courageous old woman, was old Granny Marrable. But the place was a very lonely one, and.... Well—she did not mind about her money! It was her treasured old gold watch, that her first husband gave her, that she was thinking of....

There!—what a fool she was, to get into such a taking when, ten to one, she had only dropped something, and he was running after her to restore it. She faced about, and looked full at him.

"Ah!" said he. "Take a good look! You've seen me afore. No hurry—easy does it!" His voice showed such entire conviction, and at the same time such a complete freedom from anything threatening or aggressive, that all her fear left her at once. It was a mistake—nothing worse!

But was she absolutely sure, without her glasses? All she could see was that the face was that of a hard man, close-cropped and close-shaved, square and firm in the jaw. Not an ugly face, but certainly not an attractive one. "I think, sir," she said conciliatorily, "you have mistook me for someone else. I am sure."

"Maybe, mother," said he, "you'll know me through your glasses. Got 'em on you?... Ah—that's right! Fish 'em out of your pocket! Now!" As the old lady fitted on her spectacles, which she only used for near objects and reading, the man removed his hat and stood facing her, and repeated the word "Now!"

So absolutely convinced was she that he was merely under a misconception, that she was really only putting on her glasses to humour him, and give him time to find out his mistake. The fact that he had addressed her as "mother" counted for absolutely nothing. Any man in the village would address her as "mother," as often as not. It was affectionate, respectful, conciliatory, but by no means a claim of kinship. The word, moreover, had a distinct tendency to remove her dislike of the speaker, which had not vanished with her fear of him, now quite in abeyance.

"Indeed, sir," said she, after looking carefully at his face, "I cannot call you to mind. I cannot doubt but you have taken me for some other person." Then she fancied that something the man said, half to himself, was:—"That cock won't fight."

But he seemed, she thought, to waver a little, too. And his voice had not its first confidence, as it said:—"Do you mean to say, mother, that you've forgotten my face? My face!"

The familiar word "mother" still meant nothing to her—a mere epithet! Just consider the discrepancies whose reconciliation alone would have made it applicable! When she answered, some renewal of trepidation in her voice was due to the man's earnestness, not to any apprehension of his claim. "I am telling God's own truth, master," she said. "I have never set eyes upon ye in my life, and if I had, I would have known it. There be some mistake, indeed." Then timorously:—"Whom—whom—might ye take me for?"

The man raised his voice, more excitably than angrily. "What did I say just now?—mother!—that's English, ain't it?" But his words had no meaning to her; there was nothing in their structure to change her acceptation of the word "mother," as an apostrophe. Then, in response to the blank unrecognition of her face, he continued:—"What—still? I'm not kidding myself, by God, am I?... No—don't you try it on! I ain't going to have you running away. Not yet a while.... Ah—would you!"

He caught her by the wrist to check her half-shown tendency to turn and run; not, as she thought, from a malefactor, but a madman. A cry for help was stopped by a change in his tone—possibly even by the way his hand caught her wrist; for, though strong, it was not rough or ungentle. Little enough force was needed to detain her, and no more was used. He was mad, clearly, but not ferocious. "I'm not going to hurt ye, mother," said he. "But you leave your eyes on me a minute, and see if I'm a liar." He remained with his own fixed on hers, as one who waits impatiently for what he knows must come.

But no recognition followed. In vain did the old lady attempt—and perfectly honestly—to detect some reminder of some face seen and hitherto forgotten, in the hard cold eyes and thick-set jaw, the mouth-disfiguring twist which flawed features, which, handsome enough in themselves, would have otherwise gone near to compensate a repellent countenance. The effort was the more hopeless from the fact that it was a face that, once seen, might have been hard to forget. After complying to the full with his suggestion of a thorough examination, she was forced to acknowledge failure. "Indeed and indeed, sir," she said, "my memory is all at fault. If ever I saw ye in my life, 'tis so long ago I've forgotten it."

"Ah—you may say long ago!" The madman—for to her he was one; some lunatic at large—seemed to choke a moment over what he had to say, and then it came. "Twenty years and more—ay!—twenty years, and five over—and most of the time in Hell! Ah—run away, if you like—run away from your own son!" He released her arm; but though the terror had come back twofold, she would not run; for the most terrible maniac is pitiful as well as terrible, and her pity for him put her thoughts on calming and conciliating him. He went on, his speech breaking through something that choked it back and made it half a cry in the end. "Fourteen years of quod—fourteen years of prison-food—fourteen years of such a life that * * * prayers, Sundays, and the * * * parson that read 'em was as good as a holiday! Why—I tell you! It was so bad the lifers would try it on again and again, to kill themselves, and were only kept off of doing it by the cat, if they missed their tip." This was all the jargon of delirium to the terror-stricken old woman; it may be clear enough to the ordinary reader, with what followed. "I tell you I saw the man that got away over the cliff, and shattered every bone in his body. I saw him carried out o' hospital and tied up and flogged, for a caution, till the blood run down and the doctor gave the word stop." He went on in a voluble and disjointed way to tell how this man was "still there! There where your son, mother, spent fourteen out of these twenty-five long years past!"

But the more he said, the more clear was it to Granny Marrable that he was an escaped lunatic. There was, however, in all this sheer raving—as she counted it—an entire absence of any note of personal danger to herself. Her horror of him, and the condition of mind that his words made plain, remained; her apprehension of violence, or intimidation to make her surrender valuables, had given place to pity for his miserable condition. His repeated use of the word "mother" had a reassuring effect almost, while she accounted that of the word "son" as sheer distemperature of the brain. But why should she not make use of it to divert his mind from the terrible current of thought, whether delusion or memory, into which he had fallen? "I never had but one son, sir," she said, "and he has been dead twenty-three years this Christmas, and lies buried beside his father in Chorlton church."

The fugitive convict—for the story need not see him any longer from old Phoebe's point of view only—face to face with such a quiet and forcible disclaimer of identity, could not but be staggered, for all that this old woman's face was his mother's; or rather, was the face he had imaged to himself as hers, all due allowance being made—so he thought—for change from sixty-five to eighty. Probably, had he seen the two old sisters side by side, he would have chosen this one as his mother. Her eighty was much nearer to her sixty than old Maisie's. She was no beautiful old shadow, with that strange plenty of perfectly white hair. Time's hand had left hers merely grey, as a set off against the lesser quantity he had spared her. As Dave Wardle had noticed, her teeth had suffered much less than his London Granny's. Altogether, she was marvellously close to what the convict's preconception of "Mrs. Prichard" had been.

It is easy to see how this meeting came about. After he left the hospitable cottage of the Solmes's, he had walked on in a leisurely way, stopping at "The Old Truepenny, J. Hancock," to add another half-pint to the rather short allowance he had consumed at the cottage. This was a long half-pint, and took an hour; so that it was well on towards the early November sunset before he started again for Chorlton. J. Hancock had warned him not to go rowund by t' roo'ad, but to avail himself of the cross-cut over the fields to Dessington. When old Phoebe overtook him, he was beginning to wonder, as he sat on the stile, how he should introduce himself at Strides Cottage. There might be men there. Then, of a sudden, he had seen that the old woman who had disturbed his cogitations, must be his mother! How could there be another old woman so like her, so close at hand?

Her placid, resolute, convincing denial checkmated his powers of thought. As is often the case, details achieved what mere bald asseveration of fact would have failed in. The circumstantial statement that her son lay buried beside his father in Chorlton Churchyard corroborated the denial past reasonable dispute. But nothing could convince his eyesight, while his reason stood aghast at the way it was deceiving him.

"Give me hold of your fin, missus," he said. "I won't call you 'mother.' Left-hand.... No—I'm not going for to hurt you. Don't you be frightened!" He took the hand that, not without renewed trepidation and misgiving, was stretched out to him, and did not do with it what its owner expected. For her mind, following his action, was assigning it to some craze of Cheiromancy—what she would have called Fortune-telling. It was no such thing.

He did not take his eyes from her face, but holding her hand in his, without roughness, felt over the fingers one by one, resting chiefly on the middle finger. He took his time, saying nothing. At last he relinquished the hand abruptly, and spoke. "No—missus—you're about right. You're not my mother." Then he said:—"You'll excuse me—half a minute more! Same hand, please!" Then went again through the same operation of feeling, and dropped it. He seemed bewildered, and saner in bewilderment than in assurance.

Old Phoebe was greatly relieved at his recognition of his mistake. "Was it something in the hand ye knew by, master?" she said timidly. For she did not feel quite safe yet. She began walking on, tentatively.

He followed, but a pace behind—not close at her side. "Something in the hand," said he. "That was it. Belike you may have seen, one time or other, a finger cut through to the bone?"

"Yes, indeed," said she, "and the more's the pity for it! My young grandson shut his finger into his new knife. But he's in the Crimea now."

"Did the finger heal up linable, or a crotch in it?"

"It's a bit crooked still. Only they say it won't last on to old age, being so young a boy at the time."

"Ah!—that's where it was. My mother was well on to fifty when I gave her that chop, and she got her hooky finger for life. All the ten years I knew it, it never gave out." Old Phoebe said nothing. Why the man should be so satisfied with this finger evidence she did not see. But she was not going to revive his doubts. She kept moving on, gradually to reach the road, but not to run from him. He kept near her, but always hanging in the rear; so that she could not go quick without seeming to do so.

If she showed willingness to talk with him, he might follow quicker, and they would reach the road sooner. "I'm rarely puzzled, master," she said, "to think how you should take me for another person. But I would not be prying to know...."

"You would like to know who I mistook ye for, mayhap? Well—I'll tell you as soon as not. I took you for my mother—just what I told you! She's somewhere down in these parts—goes by the name of Prichard." Old Phoebe wanted to know why she "went by" the name—was it not hers?—but she checked a mere curiosity. "Maybe you can tell me where 'Strides Cottage' is? That's where she got took in. So I understand."

"Oh no!—you have the name wrong, for certain. My house where I live is called Strides Cottage. There be no Mrs. Prichard there, to my knowledge."

"That's the name told to me, anyhow. Mrs. Prichard, of Sapps Court, London."

"Now who ever told ye such a tale as that? I know now who ye mean, master. But she's not at Strides Cottage. She's up at the Towers"—rather a hushed voice here—"by the wish and permission of her young ladyship, Lady Gwendolen, and well cared for. Ye will only be losing your time, master, to be looking for her at Strides."

The convict looked at her fixedly. "Now which on ye is telling the truth?—you or t'other old goody? That's the point." He spoke half to himself, but then raised his voice, speaking direct to her. "I was there a few hours back, nigh midday, afore I come on here. She ain't there—so they told me."

"At the Towers—the Castle?"

"I saw no Castle. My sort ain't welcome in Castles. The party at the house off the road—name of Keziah—she said Mrs. Prichard had been took off to Chorlton by her cousin, Widow—Widow Thrale."

"Yes, that is my daughter. Then Keziah Solmes knew?"

"She talked like it. She said her cousin and Mrs. Prichard had gone away better than two hours, in the carrier's cart. So it was no use me inquiring for her at the Towers." He then produced the scrap of paper on which he had scribbled the address. A little more talk showed Granny Marrable all the story knows—that this sudden translation of her old rival in the affections of Dave Wardle, from the Towers to her own home, had been prompted by the sudden departure of her young ladyship for London. The fact that the whole thing had come about at the bidding of "Gwen o' the Towers" was absolute, final, decisive as to its entire rectitude and expediency. But she could see that this strange son who had not seen his mother for so long had identified her in the first plausible octogenarian whom he chanced upon as soon as he was sure he was getting close to the object of his search, and that he was not known to her ladyship at all, while his proximity was probably unsuspected by "old Mrs. Picture" herself. Besides, her faith in her daughter's judgment was all-sufficient. She was quite satisfied about what she would find on her return home. Nevertheless, this man was of unsound mind. But he might be harmless. They often were, in spite of a terrifying manner.

His manner, however, had ceased to be terrifying by the time a short interchange of explanations and inquiries had made Granny Marrable cognisant of the facts. She was not the least alarmed that she should have that curious rolling gait alongside of her. She was uneasy, for all that, as to how a sudden visit of this man to Strides Cottage would work, and cast about in her mind how she should best dissuade him from making his presence known to his mother before she herself had had an opportunity of sounding a note of preparation. She had not intended to go home for a day or two, but she could get her son-in-law to drive her over, and return the same day. His insanity, or what she had taken for insanity, had given her such a shock that she was anxious to spare her daughter a like experience.

"I think, sir," she began diffidently, "that if I might make so bold as to say so...."

"Cut along, missis! If you was to make so bold as to say what?"

"It did come across my mind that your good mother—not being hearty like myself, but a bit frail and delicate—might easy feel your coming as an upset. Now a word beforehand...."

"What sort of a word?" said he, taking her meaning at once. "What'll you say? No palavering won't make it any better. She'll do best to see me first, and square me up after. What'll you make of the job?"

Now the fact was that the offer to prepare the way for his proposed visit which she had been on the point of making had been quite as much in her daughter's interest as in his mother's. She found his question difficult. All she could answer was:—"I could try."

He shook his head doubtfully, walking beside her in silence. Then an idea seemed to occur to him, and he said:—"Hold hard a minute!" causing her to stop, as she took him literally. He also paused. "Strike a bargain!" said he. "You do me a good turn, and I'll say yes. You give me your word—your word afore God and the Bible—not to split upon me to one other soul but the old woman herself, and I'll give you a free ticket to say whatever you please to her when no one else is eavesdropping. Afore God and the Bible!"

Granny Marrable's fear of him began to revive. He might be mad after all, with that manner on him, although his tale about Mrs. Prichard might be correct. But there could be no reason for withholding a promise to keep silence about things said to her under a false impression that she was his mother. Her doubt would rather have been as to whether she had any right to repeat them under any circumstances. "I will promise you, sir, as you wish it, to say nothing of this only to Mrs. Prichard herself. I promise."

"Afore God and the Bible? The same as if there was a Bible handy?"

"Surely, indeed! I would not tell a falsehood."

"Atop of a Testament, like enough! But how when there's none, and no Parson?" He looked at her with ugly suspicion on his face. And then an idea seemed to strike him. "Look ye here, missus!" said he. "You say Jesus Christ!"

"Say what?—Oh why?" For blind obedience seemed to her irreverent.

"No—you don't get out that way, by God! I hold you to that. You say Jesus Christ!" He seemed to congratulate himself on his idea.

Old Phoebe could not refuse. "Before Jesus Christ," she said reverently, at the same time bending slightly, as she would have done in Chorlton Church.

The convict seemed gratified. He had got his security. "That warn't bad!" said he. "The bob in partic'lar. Now I reckon you're made safe."

"Indeed, you may rely on me. But would you kindly do one thing—just this one! Give me your name and address, and wait to hear from me before you come to the Cottage. 'Tis only for a short time—a day or two at most."

"Supposin' you don't write—how then?... Ah, well!—you look sharp about it, and I'll be good for a day or two. Give you three days, if you want 'em."

"I want your mother's leave...."

"Leave for me to come? If she don't send it, it'll be took. Just you tell her that! Now here's my name di-rected on this envelope. You can tell me of a quiet pub where I can find a gaff, and you send me word there. See? Quiet pub, a bit outside the village! Or stop a bit!—I'll go to J. Hancock—the Old Truepenny, on the road I come here by. Rather better than a mile along." Of course the old lady knew the Old Truepenny. Everyone did, in those parts. She took the envelope with the name, and as the twilight was now closing in to darkness, made no attempt to read it, but slipped it carefully in her pocket. Then a thought occurred to her, and she hesitated visibly on an inquiry. He anticipated it, saying:—"Hay?—what's that?"

"If Mrs. Prichard should seem not to know—not to recognise...." She meant, suppose that Mrs. Prichard denies your claim to be her son, what proof shall I produce? For any man could assume any name.

The convict probably saw the need for some clear token of his identity. "If the old woman kicks," said he, "just you remember this one or two little things from me to tell her, to fetch her round. Tell her, I'm her son Ralph, got away from Australia, where he's been on a visit these twenty-five years past. Tell her.... Yes, you may tell her the girl's name was Drax—Emma Drax. Got it?"

"I can remember Emma Drax."

"She'll remember Emma Drax, and something to spare. She was a little devil we had some words about. She'll remember her, and she'll know me by her. Then you can tell her, just to top up—only she won't want any more—that her name ain't Prichard at all, but Daverill.... What!—Well, of course I meant making allowance for marrying again. Right you are, missus! How the Hell should I have known, out there?" For he had mistaken Granny Marrable's natural start at the too well-remembered name she had scarcely heard for fifty years, for a prompt recognition of his own rashness in assuming it had been intentionally discarded.

She, for her part, although her hearing was good considering her age, could not have been sure she had heard the name right, and was on the edge of asking him to repeat it when his unfortunate allusion to Hell—the merest colloquialism with him—struck her recovered equanimity amidships, and made her hesitate. Only, however, for a moment, for her curiosity about that name was uncontrollable. She found voice against a beating heart to say:—"Would you, sir, say the name again for me? My hearing is a bit old."

"Her name, same as mine, Daver-hill." He made the mistake, fatal to clear speech, of overdoing articulation. All the more that it caused a false aspirate; not a frequent error with him, in spite of his long association with defective speakers. It relieved her mind. Clearly a surname and a prefix. She had not got it right yet, though. She forgot she had it written down, already.

"I did not hear the first name clear, sir. Would you mind saying it again?"

He did not answer at once. He was looking fixedly ahead, as though something had caught his attention in the coppice they were approaching. A moment later, without looking round, he answered rapidly:—"Same name as mine—you've got it written down, on the paper I gave you." And then, without another word, he turned and ran. He was so quick afoot, in spite of the halting gait he had shown in walking, that he was through the hedge he made for, across the grassland, and half-way over the stubble-field that lay between it and a plantation, before she knew the cause of his sudden scare. Then voices came from the coppice ahead—a godsend to the poor old lady, whose courage had been sorely tried by the interview—and she quickened her pace to meet them. She did not see the fugitive vanish, but pressed on.

Yes—just as she thought! One of the voices was that of Harry Costrell, her grandson-in-law; another that of a stranger to her, a respectable-looking man she was too upset to receive any other impression of, at the moment; and the third that of her granddaughter. Such a relief it was, to hear the cheerful ring of her greeting.

"Why, Granny, we thought you strayed and we would have to look for ye in Chorlton Pound.... Why, Granny darling, whatever is the matter? There—I declare you're shaking all over!"

Old Phoebe showed splendid discipline. It was impossible to conceal her agitation, but she could make light of it. She had a motive. Remember that that great grandchild of hers had been born over a twelvemonth ago! "My dear," she said, "I've been just fritted out of my five wits by a man with a limp, that took me for his mother and I never saw him in my life." It did not seem to her that this was "splitting upon" the man. After all, she would have to account for him somehow, and it was safest to ascribe insanity to him.

But the respectable-looking man had suddenly become an energy with a purpose. "Which way's the man with the limp gone?" said he; adding to himself, in the moment required for indicating accurately the fugitive's vanishing-point in the plantation:—"He's my man!" Granny Marrable's pointing finger sent him off in pursuit before either of the others could ask a question or say a word. Harry, the grandson, wavered a moment between grandfilial duty and the pleasures of the chase, and chose the latter, utilising public spirit as an excuse for doing so.

Maisie junior was not going to allow her grandmother to stay to see the matter out, nor indeed did the old lady feel that her own strength could bear any further trial. On the way home to the cottage at Dessington she gave a reserved version of her strange interview, always laying stress on the insanity she confidently ascribed to her terrifying companion. As soon as he had died out of the immediate present, she began to find commiseration for him.

But then, how about the mission of the respectable man, who had, it appeared, represented himself as a police-officer on the track of an atrocious criminal, about the charges against whom he had almost kept silence, merely saying that he was a returned convict, and liable to arrest on that ground alone, but that he was "wanted" on several accounts? He had followed his quarry to Grantley Thorpe, arriving by an early train, to find that a man answering to his description had started on foot a couple of hours previously, having asked his way to Ancester Towers. He had followed him there in a hired gig; and, of course, found the connecting clue at Solmes's cottage, and followed him on to Dessington, calling at "T. Hancock's Old Truepenny" by the way, and being guided by T. Hancock's information to run the gig round by the road and intercept his man at the end of the short cut. The younger Maisie and her young brother-in-law, coming by in search of her overdue grandmother, had entered into conversation with him; and he had accompanied them as far as the other side of the coppice wood, and given them the particulars of his errand above stated.

It was all very exciting, and rather horrible. But old Phoebe kept back all her horrors, and even the man's claim to be the son of an old person who had gone to Strides Cottage. Mrs. Prichard she said never a word of, much as she longed to tell the whole story. But she was greatly consoled for this by the succulence of her year-old great-grandson, whose grip, even during sleep, was so powerful as to elicit a forecast of a distinguished future for him, as a thieftaker.

She never got that envelope out of her pocket, conceiving it to be included in her pledge of secrecy. She would look at it before she went to bed. But was it any wonder that she did not, and that her granddaughter had to undress her and put her to bed like a tired child? The last sound of which she was conscious was the voice of Harry Costrell, returning after a long and futile chase, immensely excited and pleased, and quite ready to submit to any sort of fragmentary supper.

Then deep, deep sleep. Then an awakening to daylight, and all the memories of yestereven crowding in upon her—among them an address and a name in the pocket of the gown by the bedside. She could reach it easily.

There it was. She lay back in bed uncrumpling it, expecting nothing....

This was the fag-end of a dream, surely! But no—there the words were, staring her in the face:—"Ralph Thornton Daverill!" And her mind staggered back fifty years.

---

CHAPTER X

A WORD FOR TYPHUS. DR. DALRYMPLE'S PECULIAR INTEREST IN THE CASE. THE NURSE'S FRONT TOOTH. AN INVALID WHO MEANT BUSINESS. SAPPS COURT AGAIN. HOW DAVE AND DOLLY LEFT THINGS BE IN MRS. PRICHARD'S ROOM. DOLLY JUNIOR'S LEGS. QUEEN VICTORIA AND PRINCE ALBERT. MRS. BURR'S RETURN. BUT SHE COULD GIVE AUNT M'RIAR A LIFT, IN SPITE OF HER INSTEP. HOW THE WRITING-TABLE HAD LOST A LEG. WHAT IT WOULD COME TO TO MAKE A SOUND JOB OF IT. BUT ONLY BY EMPTYING OUT THE THINGS INSIDE OF THE DRAWER. WHO WOULD ACT AS BAILEE? HOW A VISION VOLUNTEERED. HOW THE LOCK CAME OPEN QUITE EASY, AND MRS. BURR MADE A NEAT PACKET OF WHAT IT RELEASED, TO BE TOOK CHARGE OF BY THE VISION

It had got wind in Cavendish Square that Typhus had broken out at Number One-hundred-and-two. That was the first form rumour gave to the result of a challenge to gaol-fever, recklessly delivered by Miss Grahame in a top-attic in Drury Lane. It was unfair to Typhus, who, if not disqualified from saying a word on his own behalf, might have replied:—"I am within my rights. I know my place, I hope. I never break out in the homes of the Well-to-do. But if the Well-to-do come fussing round in the homes of the Ill-to-be, they must just take their chance of catching me. I wash my hands of all responsibility."

And no doubt the excuse would have been allowed by all fair-minded Nosologists. For although Typhus—many years before this—had laid sacrilegious hands on a High Court of Justice, giving rise to what came to be known as the "Black Assizes," all that had happened on that occasion was in a fair way of business; good, straightforward, old-fashioned contagion. If prison-warders did not sterilise persons who had been awaiting their trial for weeks in Houses of Detention—Pest-houses of Detention—you could not expect a putrid fever to adopt new rules merely to accommodate legal prejudice. And in the same way if Cavendish Square came sniffing up pestilential effluvia in Drury Lane, it was The Square's look out, not Typhus's.

Nevertheless, the Lares and Penates of The Square, who varied as individuals but remained the same as inherent principles—its Policeman, its Milk, its Wash, its Crossing-Sweeper—even after the germ of contagion had been identified beyond a doubt as a resident in Drury Lane, held fast to a belief that Typhus had been dormant at the corner house since the days of the Regency, and had seized an opportunity when nothing antiseptic was looking, to break out and send temperatures up to 106° F. For, said they, when was the windows of that house opened last? Just you keep your house shut up—said they—the best part of a century, and see if something don't happen! But the person addressed always admitted everything, and never entered on the suggested experiment.

Persons of Condition—all the real Residents, that is—did not allow themselves to be needlessly alarmed, and refused to rush away into the country. There was no occasion for panic, but they would take every reasonable precaution, and give the children a little citrate of magnesia, as it was just as well to be on the safe side. And they had the drains properly seen to. Also they would be very careful not to let themselves down. That was most important. They felt quite reassured when Sir Polgey Bobson, for instance, told them that there was no risk whatever three feet from the bedside of the patient. "And upwards, I presume?" said a Wag. But Sir Polgey did not see the Wag's point. He was one of your—and other people's—solemn men.

Said Dr. Dalrymple—he whose name Dave Wardle had misremembered as Damned Tinker—to Lady Gwen, arriving at Cavendish Square in the early hours of the morning—still early, though she had been nearly four hours on the road:—"I wish now I had told you positively not to come.... But stop a minute!—you can't have got my letter?"

"Never mind that now. How is she?"

"Impossible to say anything yet, except that it is unmistakable typhus, and that there is nothing specially unfavourable. The fever won't be at its height for the best part of a week. We can say nothing about a case of this sort till the fever subsides. But you can't have got my letter—there has been no time."

"Exactly. It may have arrived by now. Sometimes the post comes at eight. I came because she telegraphed. Here's the paper."

The doctor read it. "I see," said he. "She said don't come, so you came. Creditable to your ladyship, but—excuse me!—quite mad. You are better out of the way."

"She has no friend with her."

"Well—no—she hasn't! At least—yes—she has! I shall not leave her except for special cases. They can do very well without me at the Hospital. There are plenty of young fellows at the Hospital."

Gwen appeared to apprehend something suddenly. "I see," she said. "I quite understand. I had never guessed."

He replied:—"How did you guess? I said nothing. However, I won't contradict you. Only understand right. This is all on my side. Miss Grahame knows nothing about it—isn't in it."

"Oh!" said Gwen incredulously. "Now suppose you tell me what your letter said!"

"You are sure you understand?"

"Oh dear, yes! It doesn't want much understanding. What did your letter say?"

Dr. Dalrymple's reply was substantially that it said what Gwen had anticipated. The patient was in no danger whatever, at present, and with reasonable precautions would infect nobody. He knew that her ladyship's impulse to come to her friend would be very strong, but she could do no good by coming. The wisest course would be for her to keep away, and rely on his seeing to it that the patient received the utmost care that skill and experience could provide. "I knew that if I said I should not allow you to see her, you would come by the next train. Excuse my having taken the liberty to interpret your character on a very slight acquaintance."

"Quite correct. Your interpretation did you credit. I should have come immediately. The letter you did write might have made me hesitate. Now I want to see her."

The doctor acquiesced in the inevitable. "It's rash," he said, "and unnecessary. But I suppose it's no use remonstrating?"

"Not the slightest!" said Gwen. And, indeed, the supposition was a forlorn hope, and a very spiritless one. Also, other agencies were at work. A tap at the door, that was told to come in, revealed itself as an obliging nurse whose upper front tooth was lifting her lip to look out under it at the public. Her mission was to say that Miss Grahame had heard the visitor's voice and she might speak to her through the door, but on no account come into the room. A little more nonsense of this sort, and Gwen was talking with her cousin at a respectful distance, to comply with existing prejudices; but without the slightest belief that her doing so would make any difference, one way or the other. The dreadful flavour of fever was in everything, and lemons and hothouse grapes were making believe they were cooling, and bottles that they contained sedatives, and disinfectants that they were purifying the atmosphere. It was all their gammon, and the fiend Typhus, invisible, was chuckling over their preposterous claims, and looking forward to a happy fortnight, with a favourable outcome from his point of view; or, at least, the consolation of sequelæ, and a retarded convalescence.

There is a stage of fever when lassitude and uncertainty of movement and eyesight have prostrated the patient and compelled him to surrender at discretion to his nurses and medical advisers, but before the Valkyrie of Delirium are scouring the fields of his understanding, to pounce on the corpses of ideas their Odin had slain. That time was not due for many hours yet, when Gwen got speech of her cousin. She immediately appreciated that the patient was anxious to impress bystanders that this illness was all in the way of business. Also, that she was watching the development of her own symptoms as from a height apart, in the interest of Science.

"I knew I should catch it. But somebody had to, and I thought it might as well be me. I caught it from a child. A mild case. That would not make much difference. Being a woman is good. More men die than women. It's only within the last few years that typhus has been distinguished from typhoid...." After a few more useful particulars, she said:—"It was very bad of you to come. I telegraphed to you not to come, last week.... Wasn't it last week?... Well then—yesterday.... They ought never to have let you in.... There!—I get muddled when I talk...." She did, but it did not amount to wandering.

Gwen made very fair essays towards the correct thing to say; the usual exhortations to the patient to rely upon everything; acquiesce in periodical doses; absorb nourishment, however distasteful it might be on the palate, and place blind faith in everyone else, especially nurses. It was very good for a beginner; indeed, her experience of this sort of thing was almost nil. But all she got for it was:—"Don't be irritating, Gwen dear! Sit down there, where you are. Yes, that far off, because I've something to say I want to say.... No—more in front, so that I needn't move my head to see you.... Oh no—my head's all right in itself; only, when I move it, the pain won't move with it, and it drags.... Suppose I shuffle off this mortal coil?"

Gwen immediately felt it her duty to point out the improbability of anyone dying, but was a little handicapped by the circumstances attendant on Typhus Fever. She had to be concise in unreason. "Don't talk nonsense, Clo dear." The patient ignored the interruption. "Oh dear!—give me another grape to suck without having to open my eyes.... Ta!—now I can talk a little more." The obliging nurse headed Gwen off to a proper distance, and herself supplied the grape. In doing this she smiled so hard that the tooth got a good long look at Gwen, who looked another way. The patient resumed, speaking very much from her lofty position of lecturer by her own bedside.

"You see, a percentage of cases recovers, but this one may not be in it. However, the constitution is good.... No, Gwen dear, you know perfectly well I may die, so where is the use of pretending?" Whereupon Gwen conceded the possibility of Death, and the patient seemed to be easier in her mind; saying, as one who leaves trivialities, to settle down to matters of business:—"I want to talk to you about my small boy, Dave Wardle."

"Shall I go and see him at Sapps Court?"

"Yes—that's what I want. And then come back here and tell me ... promise!" She was getting very indeterminate in speech, and the nurse was signalling for the interview to close. So Gwen cut it short. But she felt she had made a binding promise. She must go to Sapps Court.

Said Gwen to Dr. Dalrymple, a few minutes later, in the sitting-room:—"I hope she hasn't talked too much." The doctor appeared to have taken temporary possession, and to have several letters to write.

"It makes very little difference," he said. "At present the decks are only being cleared for action. In a few days we shall be in the thick of it—pulse over a hundred—temperature a hundred and four—then a crisis. When it's all over, we shall be able to see how many ships are sunk."

---

Sapps Court had resumed its tranquil routine of everyday life, and the accident had nearly become a thing of the past. Not entirely, for Mrs. Prichard's portion of No. 7 still remained unoccupied, even Susan Burr remaining absent at her married niece's at Clapham. Aunt M'riar had charge, and kept a bit of fire going in the front-room, so the plaster should get a chance to dry out. Also she stood the front and back windows wide to let through a good draught of air, except, of course, it was pouring rain, and then it was no good. The front-room was a great convenience to Aunt M'riar, who now and then was embarrassed with linen to dry, relieving her from the necessity of rendering the kitchen impassable with it in the morning till she came down and took it off of the lines ready for ironing, and removed the cords on which she had hung it overnight.

Dave and Dolly were allowed upstairs during operations, on stringent conditions; or, rather, it should be said, on a stringent condition. They were to leave things be. This was honourably observed, especially by Dave, who was the soul of honour when once he gave his word. As for Dolly, she was still young, and if she did claw hold of a chemise and bring down the whole line, why, it was only that once, and we was children once ourselves. This was Uncle Mo, of course; he was that easy-going.

But whenever Aunt M'riar was not handicapping the desiccation of the walls by overcharging the atmosphere with moisture of the very wettest possible sort, Dolly and Dave could have the room to themselves, so long as they kep' their hands off the clean wallpaper; which was included in leaving be, obviously—not an intrusion of a new stipulation. They would then, being alone, go great lengths in picturing to themselves and each other the pending reappearance of Mrs. Picture and Mrs. Burr, and the delights of resuming halcyon days of old. For this strangely compounded clay, Man, scarcely waits to be quite sure he is landed in existence, before he inaugurates a glorious fiction, the golden Past, which never has been; between which and its resurrection into an equally golden Future—which never will be—he sandwiches the pewter Present, which always is, and which it is idle to pretend is worth twopence, by comparison.

"When old Mrs. Spicture comes back"—thus Dolly—"she shall set in her own chair wiv scushions, and she shall set in her own chair wiv a 'igh hup bact, and she shall set in her own chair wiv...." Here came a pause, due to inanition of distinctive features. Dolly's style was disfigured by vain repetitions, beyond a doubt.

"When old Mrs. Spicture comes back"—thus Dave, accepting the offered formula, somewhat in the spirit of the true ballad writer—"she's a-going to set in her own chair with cushions, just here!" He sat down with violence on a spot immediately below the proposed centre of gravity of the chair. "And then oy shall bring her her tea."

"No, you s'arn't! Mrs. Spicture shall set in her chair wiv scushions, and me and dolly shall tite her her tea."

Dave sat on the floor fixing two intelligent blue eyes on dolly junior's unintelligent violet ones, and holding his toes. "Dorly carn't!" said he contemptuously. "Her legs gives. Besides, she's no inside, only brand." This was a new dolly, who had replaced Struvvel Peter, who perished in the accident. His legs had been wooden, and swung several ways. This one's calves were wax, and one had come off, like a shoe. But the legs only bent one way.

Dolly the mother did not reply to Dave's insinuations against his niece, preferring the refrain of her thesis:—"When Mrs. Spicture comes back and sets in her chair wiv scushions and an Aunt-Emma-Care-Saw, Mrs. Burr she'll paw out the tea with only one lump of shoogy, and me and dolly shall cally it acrost wivout a jop spilt, and me and dolly shall stand it down on the little mognytoyble, and Mrs. Spicture she'll set in her chair wiv scushions, and dolly hand her up the stoast."

"Let me kitch her at it!" said Dave, with offensive male assumption. "Oy shall see to Mrs. Spicture's toast, and see she gets it hot. And Mrs. Burr she'll give leave to butter it, and say how much, and the soyde edge trimmed round toydy with a knoyf." All these details, safely based on items of past experience, were practically historical.

Dolly always accepted Dave's masculine airisomeness with meek equanimity, but invariably took no notice of it. This is nearly common form in well-organized households. She went on to refer to other gratifying revivals that would come about on Mrs. Picture's return. The sofy should be stood back against the wall, for dolly to be put to sleep on. And Queen Victoria she should go up on one nail, and Prince Halbert on the other. These were beautiful coloured prints, smiling fixedly across a full complement of stars and garters. The red piece of carpet would go down against the fender, and the blue piece near the window, as of yore. Dave looked forward with interest to the resurrection of Mrs. Picture's wroyting toyble with a ployce for her Boyble to lie on, and to the letters to his Granny Marrowbone in the country which would certainly be wrote at it, directly or by dictation, in the blessed revival of the past which was to come. Mrs. Burr's cat, who had travelled by request in a hamper to her married niece's at Clapham, in charge of Michael Ragstroar, would return and would then promptly have kittens in spite of doubtful sex-qualifications suggested by the name of Tommy; which kittens would belong to Dave and Dolly respectively, choice being made as soon as ever it was seen what colour they meant to be.

These speculations, which had made pleasant material for castles-in-the-air in the undisturbed hours when the children were in sole possession of the apartment, seemed to be within a measurable distance of realisation when Aunt M'riar, acting on a communication from Mrs. Burr at Clapham, proceeded to unearth the hidden furniture from the bedroom where Mr. Bartlett's careful men had interred it, and where it hadn't been getting any good, you might be sure. At least, so said Mrs. Ragstroar, who was so obliging as to lend a hand getting the things back in their places, and giving them a dust over to get the worst of the mess off. And Uncle Mo he was able to make himself useful, with a screw here and a tack there, and a glue-pot with quite a professional smell to it, so that you might easy have took him for a carpenter and joiner. For Mr. Bartlett's men, while doubtless justifying their reputation for handling everything with care due to casualties with compound fractures, had stultified their own efforts by shoving the heavy goods right atop of the light ones, and lying things down on their sides that should have been stood upright, and committing other errors of judgment. It was a singular and unaccountable thing that these men seemed to share the mantle of their employer and somehow to claim forgiveness, and get it, on the score of the inner excellence of their hearts and purity of their motives.

So that within a day or two after her young ladyship's sudden appearance at the fever-stricken mansion in Cavendish Square, Mrs. Burr put in her first appearance at Sapps Court since she went away to the Hospital. She was able to walk upon her foot, while convinced that a more rapid recovery would have taken place but for the backward state of surgical knowledge. She was confident they might have given her something at the Hospital to bring it forward, and make some local application—"put something on" was the expression. She seemed to have based an unreasonable faith in bread poultices on their successful employment in entirely different cases.

"Now what, you, got, to, lay out for, the way I look at it, ma'am,"—thus Mrs. Ragstroar, departing and bearing away the hand she had lent, to get supper ready for her own inmates—"is to do no more than you can 'elp, and eat as much as you can get." The good woman then vanished, leaving the united company's chorus to her remarks still unfinished when she reached her own door at the top of the Court. For Uncle Mo, Mr. Alibone, Aunt M'riar, and Dolly and Dave as claqueurs, were unanimous that Mrs. Burr should lie still for six months or so, relying on her capital, if any; if none, on manna from Heaven.

However, there was little likelihood of Mrs. Burr being in want of a crust, which is the theoretical minimum needed to sustain life, so long as Sapps Court recognised its liabilities when any component portion of it, considered as a residential district, fell on and crushed one of its residents' insteps. If Mr. Bartlett's repairs had come down on Mrs. Burr in the fullest sense of the expression, she would certainly—unless she outlived the impact of two hundred new stocks and three thousand old bats and closures, deceptively arranged to seem like a wall—have had the advantage, whatever it is, of decent burial, even if she had not had a married niece at Clapham, or any other relative elsewhere. So she was able to abstain without imprudence from immediate efforts to reinstate her dressmaking connection; and was able, without overtaxing her instep, to give substantial assistance to Aunt M'riar, who would have had to refuse a good deal of work just at that time except for her opportune assistance.

It was a natural corollary of this that Mrs. Prichard's tenancy should be utilised as a workshop, as Mrs. Burr was now its only occupant; and that she herself should take her meals below, with Aunt M'riar and the family. So the red and the blue carpet were not put down just yet a while, and Uncle Mo he did what he could with the screw here and the tack there, while Aunt M'riar and Mrs. Burr exercised mysterious functions, with tucks and frills and gimpings and pinkings and gaufferings, which it is beyond the powers of this story to describe accurately.

One mishap had occurred with the furniture which did not come within the scope of Uncle Mo's skill to remedy. The treasured mahogany writing-table that had so faithfully accompanied old Mrs. Picture through all her misfortunes had lost a leg. A leg, but not a foot. For the brass foot, which belonged, was found shoved away in the chest of drawers, which was enough, and more than enough, to contain the whole of the owner's scanty wardrobe. It was a cabinet-maker's job, and rather a nice one at that, to provide a new and suitable leg and attach it securely in the place of the old one. And it would come to nineteen-and-sixpence to make a job of it. The exactness of this sum will suggest the facts, that a young man in the trade, an acquaintance of Uncle Mo at The Sun, he come round to oblige, and undertook to give in a price as soon as he had the opportunity to mention it to his governor. The opportunity occurred immediately he went back to the shop. The sum was for a new leg, involving superhuman ingenuity in connecting it firmly with the pelvis; but a reg'lar sound job. Of course, there was another way of doing it, by tonguing on a new limb below the knee, and inserting a dowell for to stiffen it up. But that would come to every penny of fifteen shillings, and would be a reg'lar poor job, and would show. Nothing like doing a thing while you were about it! It saved expense in the end, and it was a fine old bit of furniture. Bit of old Gillow's!

But there was a point to be considered. The things must be took out of the drawers and the attached desk, or the governor he'd never have it at the shop. He was a person of the most delicate sensibility, who shrank from making himself responsible for anything whatever. Them drawers must be emptied out, or nothing could be done. Why—you'd only got to shake the table to hear there was papers inside!

This was a serious difficulty. It would, of course, be easy enough to write to Mrs. Prichard for the key; which, said testimony, was very small and always lived in her purse. But then all the milk would be out of the cocoanut; that metaphorical fruit being, in this case, the pleasure of surprising Mrs. Prichard with a writing-table as good as new. Open it, of course, you could! It was a locksmith's job, but the governor would send the shop's locksmith, who would do that for you while you counted half-a-dozen. The counting was optional, and in no sense necessary, nor even contributory, to the operation.

The real crux of the difficulty was not one of mechanism, but of responsibility. Who was qualified to decide on opening the desk and drawers? Who would be answerable for the safety of those papers? The only person who volunteered was Dolly, and Dolly's idea of taking care of things was to carry them about with her everywhere, and if they were in a parcel, to unpack it frequently at short intervals to make sure the contents were still in evidence. Her offer was declined.

The young man in the trade had numerous and absorbing engagements to plead as a reason for his inability to 'ang about all day for parties to make up their minds—the usurper's plea, by-the-by, for a coup d'état—so perhaps some emissary might be found, to drop round to the shop to leave word. This young man was anxious to oblige, but altruism had its limits. Just then a knock at the door below led to Dave receiving instructions to sift it and make sure it wasn't a mistake, before a senior should descend to take it up seriously. It was not a mistake, but a lady, reported by Dave, returning out of breath, to be "one of Our Ladies,"—making the Church of Rome seem ill-off by comparison. He was seeking for an intelligent distinction between Sister Nora and Gwen, in reply to the question "Which?", when the dazzling appearance of the latter answered it for him.

"I thought I might come up without waiting to ask," said the vision—which is what she seemed, for a moment, to Sapps Court. "So I didn't ask. Is that Mrs. Picture's writing-table where Dave gets his letters written?"

Never was a more unhesitating plunge made in medias res. It had a magical effect in setting Sapps Court at its ease, and everyone saw a way to contribute to an answer, the substance of which was that the table was Mrs. Prichard's, but had lost its leg. The exact force of the but was not so clear as it might have been; this, however, was unimportant. Gwen was immediately interested in the repair of the table. Why shouldn't it be done while Mrs. Picture was away, before she came back?

A momentary frenzy of irrelevance seized Sapps Court, and a feverish desire to fix the exact date when the table-leg was disintegrated. "It wasn't broke, when it came from Skillicks," said Mrs. Burr. "That's all I know! And if you was to promise me a guinea I could say no more." Said Aunt M'riar:—"It's been stood up against the wall ever since I remembered it, and Mr. Bartlett's men assured me every care was took in moving." A murmur of testimony to Mr. Bartlett's unvarying sobriety and that of his men threatened to undermine the coherency of the conversation, but the position was saved by Uncle Mo, who seemed less infatuated than others about them. "Bartlett's ain't neither here or there," said he. "What I look at's like this,—the leg's off, and we've got to clap on a new un. Here's a young man'll see to that, and it'll come to nineteen-and-sixpence. Only who's going to take care of the letters and odd belongings of the old lady the whilst? That's a point to consider. I'd rather not, myself, if you ask me. Not without she sends the key, and that won't work, as I see it."

"I see," said Gwen. "You want to make Mrs. Picture a new table-leg, and you can't do it without opening her desk. And you can't get the key from her without saying why you want it. Isn't that it?" Universal assent. "Very well, then! You get the lock opened, and I'll take everything out with my own hands, and keep it safe for Mrs. Picture when she comes back."

This proposal was welcomed with only one reservation. None but a real live locksmith could open a lock, any more than one who is not born a turncock can release the waters that are under the earth through an unexplained hole in the road. It was, however, all within the province of the young man in the trade, who had not vanished when the vision appeared, in spite of those pressing appointments. He would go back to the shop, and send, or bring, a properly qualified operative.

Pending which, an adjournment to the little parlour below, out of all this mess, seemed desirable. Dave and Dolly were, of course, part of this, but Mrs. Burr remained upstairs after answering inquiries about her own health, and Mr. Alibone went away with the young man in search of the locksmith.

Gwen had to account for her sudden appearance. "I'm sorry to have bad news to tell you about my cousin, Miss Grahame," said she, so seriously that both her grown-up hearers spoke under their breaths to begin asking:—"She's not...?"—the rest being easily understood. Gwen replied:—"Oh no, she's not dead. But she's in the doctor's hands." Uncle Mo looked as though he thought this was nearly as bad, and Aunt M'riar was so expressive in sympathy without words that both the children became appalled, and Dolly looked inclined to cry. Gwen continued:—"She has caught a horrible fever in a dreadful place where she went to see poor people, and nobody can say yet a while what will happen. It is Typhus Fever, I'm afraid."

As Gwen uttered the deadly syllables, Uncle Mo turned away to the window, leaving some exclamation truncated. Aunt M'riar's voice became tremulous on the beginning of an unfinished sentence, and Dolly concealed a disposition to weep, because she was afraid of what Dave would say after. That young man remained stoical, but did not speak.

Presently Uncle Mo turned from the window, and said, somewhat huskily:—"I wish some of these here poor people, as they call themselves, would either go away to Aymericay, or keep their premises a bit cleaner; nobody wants 'em here that ever I've heard tell of, only Phlarnthropists."

Aunt M'riar's unfinished sentence had begun with "Gracious mercy!..." Its sequel:—"Well now—to think of a lady like that! My word! And Typhus Fever, too!"—was dependent on it, and contained an element of resignation to Destiny.

Dave struck in with irrelevant matter; as he frequently did, to throw side-lights on obscurities. "The boy at the School had fever, and came out sported all over with sports he was. You couldn't have told him from any other boy." That the other boy would be similarly spotted was, of course, understood.

Having broken the news, Gwen went on to minimise its seriousness; a time-honoured method, perhaps the best one. "Dr. Dalrymple is cheerful enough about her at present, so we mustn't be frightened. He says only very old persons never recover, and that a young woman like my cousin is quite as likely to live as to die...."

Uncle Mo caught her up with sudden shrewdness. "Then she's quite as likely to die as to live?" said he.

"Oh, Mo—Mo—don't ye say the word! Please God, Sister Nora may live for many a long day yet!" Thus Aunt M'riar, true to the traditional attitude of Life towards Death—denial of the Arch-fear to the very threshold of the tomb.

"So she may, M'riar, and many another on to that. But there's a good plenty o' things would please us that don't please God, and He's got it all His own way."

Uncle Mo, after moving about the room in an unsettled fashion, as though weighed upon by the news he had just heard, had come to an anchor at the table opposite Gwen—obsessed by Dolly, but acquiescent. As he sat there, she saw in his grizzled head against the light; in the strong hand resting on the table, moving now and then as though keeping time to some slow tune; in the other, motionless upon his knee, an image that made her ask herself the question:—"What would Samuel Johnson have been as a prizefighter?" She was not properly shocked, but perhaps that was because she was quick-witted enough to perceive that Uncle Mo had only said, in the blunt tongue of the secular world, what would have sounded an impressive utterance, in another form, from the lips of the sage of whom he had reminded her. She felt she ought to say that the Lord would assuredly—a solemn word that!—do what He liked with His own, supplying capitals. She gave it up as out of her line, and went on to business.

"Any of us may die, at any minute, Mr. Wardle," said she. "But my cousin is twenty times as likely to die as you or I, because she's got Typhus Fever, and half the cases are fatal, more or less.... They told me how many; I've forgotten.... What's that?—is it the locksmith man?" For a knock had come at the street-door, and the sound was as the sound of an operative who had to be back in half an hour or his Governor would cut up rough. He was therefore directed to go upstairs and cast his eye on the job, and the lady would come up in five minutes to see the things took out of the drawer.

"Stop a minute, Aunt M'riar," said the lady. "He mustn't make a mistake and open it, till I come. Please tell him, to make sure!" And Aunt M'riar would have started on her errand if she had not been stopped by what followed. "Or—look here! Let Dave go. You go up, Dave, and say he mustn't touch the lock till I come. Run along, and stop there to see that he does as you tell him." Whereupon, off went Dave, shouting his instructions as soon as he got to the second landing. He felt like a Police-Inspector, or a Warden of the Marches.

As soon as Dave had left tranquillity behind, Gwen set herself to anticipate an anxiety she saw Aunt M'riar wanted to express, but was hanging fire over. "You needn't be afraid about this chick, Aunt M'riar," she said. "It isn't really infectious, only contagious. You can only get it from the patient. Dr. Dalrymple says so. Like the thing you can only buy of the maker. Besides, I've hardly been in the room; they make such a fuss, and won't allow me. And I'm not living in the house at all, but at my father's in Park Lane. And I've been there to-day since Cavendish Square, so anyhow, if I give it to Dolly, my father and mother will have it too.... Oh no—she's not rumpling me at all! I like it." It was satisfactory to know that an Earl and Countess were pledged to have Typhus if Dolly caught it. Dolly evidently thought the combination of circumstances as good as a play, and a sprightly one.

Gwen was not sorry when the young ambassador came rushing back, shouting:—"The Man says—the Man says—the Man says it wouldn't take above half a minute to do, and is the loydy a-coming up? Because—because—because if the loydy oyn't a-coming up he—has—to—get back to the shop." This last was so draconically delivered that Gwen exclaimed:—"Come along, Dolly, we've got our orders!" And she actually carried that great child up all those stairs, and she going to be four next birthday!

Upstairs, the lock-expert was apologetic. "Ye see, miss," he explained, "our governor he's the sort of man it don't do to disappynt him, not however small the job may be. I don't reckon he can wait above a half an hour for anything, 'cos it gets on his narves. So we studies not puttin' of him out, at our shop." At which Gwen interrupted him, sacrificing her own interest in the well-marked character of this governor, to the business in hand; and the prospect, for him, of an early release from his anxiety.

As for the achievement which had been postponed, it really seemed a'most ridiculous when you come to think of it. Such a fuss, and those two men standing about the best part of an hour! At least, so Mrs. Burr said afterwards.

For the operation, all told, was merely this—that the young man inserted a bent wire into the lock, thereby becoming aware of its vitals. Withdrawing it, he slightly modified the prejudices of its tip; after which its reinsertion caused the lock to spring open as by magic. He wished to know, on receipt of a consideration from Gwen, whether she hadn't anything smaller, because it only came to eighteenpence for his time and his mate's, and he had no change in his pocket. Gwen explained that none was needed owing to the proximity of Christmas, and obtained thereby the good opinion of both. They expressed their feelings and departed.

And then—there was old Mrs. Picture's writing-table drawer, stood open! But only a little way, to show. For the lady's hands alone were to open it clear out, to remove the contents. Gwen felt that perhaps she had undertaken this responsibility rashly. It is rather a ticklish matter to tamper unbidden with locks.

So confident was she that old Mrs. Picture would forgive her anything, that she made no scruple of examining and reading whatever was visible. There was little beyond pens and writing-paper in the drawer, but in a desk which formed part of the table were some warrants held by the old lady as a life-annuitant, and two or three packets of letters, one carefully tied and apparently of considerable age. There was also a packet marked "Hair," and a small cardboard box. Little enough to take charge of, and soon made into a neat parcel by Mrs. Burr for Gwen to carry away in her reticule, a receptacle which in those days was almost invariably a portion of every lady's paraphernalia, high and low, rich and poor.

The desk opened with the drawer—or rather unrolled itself—a flexible wood-flap running back when it was opened, and releasing a lid that made one-half of the writing-pad when turned back. The letters were under the other half, the old packet being in a small drawer with the parcel marked "Hair." These were evidently precious. Never mind! Gwen would keep them safe.

Dave and Dolly were so delighted with the performance of opening and shutting the drawer, and seeing the cylindrical sheath slip backwards and forwards in its grooves, that they could scarcely drag themselves away to accompany their Lady to the carriage that, it appeared, was waiting for her in the beyond, outside Sapps Court.

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CHAPTER XI

AN INTERVIEW AT THE TOP OF A HOUSE IN PARK LANE. THE COLOSSEUM. PACTOLUS. KENSINGTON, AS NINEVEH. DERRY'S. TOMS'S. HELEN OF TROY. THE PELLEWS. RECONSIDERATION, AND JILTING. GWEN'S LOVE OF METHOD, AND HOW SHE WOULD GO TO VIENNA. A STARTLING LETTER. HOW HER FATHER READ IT ALOUD. MRS. THRALE'S REPORT OF A BRAIN CASE. HER DOG. HOW REASON REELED BEFORE THE OLD LADY'S ACCURACIES. GWEN'S GREAT-AUNT EILEEN AND THE LORD CHANCELLOR. HOW THE EARL STRUCK THE SCENT. HIS BIG EBONY CABINET. MR. NORBURY'S STORY. HOW AN EARL CAN DO A MEAN ACTION, WITH A GOOD MOTIVE. THE FORGED LETTER SEES THE LIGHT. HOW THE COUNTESS WOKE UP, AND THE EARL GOT TO BED AT LAST

When the Earl and Countess came to Park Lane, especially if their visit was a short one, and unless it was supposed to be known to themselves and their Maker only, they were on their P's and Q's. Why the new identity that came over them on those occasions was so described by her ladyship remained a secret; and, so far as we know, remains a secret still. But that was the expression she made use of more than once in conversation with her daughter.

If her statements about herself were worthy of credence, her tastes were Arcadian, and the satisfactions incidental to her position as a Countess—wealth and position, with all the world at her feet, and a most docile husband, ready to make any reasonable, and many unreasonable, sacrifices to idols of her selection—were the merest drops on the surface of Life's crucible. What her soul really longed for was a modest competence of two or three thousand a year, with a not too ostentatious house in town, say in Portland Place; or even in one of those terraces near the Colosseum in Regent's Park, with a sweet little place in Devonshire to go to and get away from the noise, concocted from specifications from the poets, with a special clause about clotted cream and new-laid eggs. Something of that sort! Then she would be able to turn her mind to some elevating employment which it would be premature to dwell on in detail to furnish a mere castle-in-the-air, but of which particulars would be forthcoming in due course. Or rather, would have been forthcoming. For now the die was cast, and a soul that could have been pastorally satisfied with a lot of the humble type indicated, had been caught in a whirl, or entangled in a mesh, or involved in a complication—whichever you like—of Extravagance, or Worldliness, or Society, or Mammon-worship, or Plutocracy, or Pactolus—or all the lot—and there was an end of the matter!

"All I can say is that I wonder you do it. I do indeed, mamma!" Thus Gwen, a week later in the story, in her bedroom at the very top of the house, which had once been a smoking-room and which it was her young ladyship's caprice to inhabit, because it looked straight over the Park towards the Palace, which still in those days was close to Kensington, its godmother. The Palace is there still, but Kensington is gone. Look about for it in the neighbourhood, if you have the heart to do so, and see if this is a lie. You will find residential flats, and you will find Barker's, and you will find Derry's, and you will find Toms's. But you will not find Kensington.

"You may wonder, Gwen! But if ever you are a married woman with an unmarried grown-up daughter in England and a married one at Vienna, and a position to keep up—I suppose that is the right expression—you will find how impossible everything is, and you will find something else to wonder about. Why—only look at that dress you are trying on!" The grown-up daughter was Gwen's elder sister, Lady Philippa, the wife of Sir Theseus Brandon, the English Ambassador at the Court of Austria. Otherwise, her ladyship was rather enigmatical.

Gwen seemed to attach a meaning to her words. "I don't think we shall ever have a daughter married to an Ambassador at Vienna. It would be too odd a coincidence for anything." This was said in the most unconcerned way, as a natural chat-sequel. What a mirror was saying about the dress, a wonderful Oriental fabric that gleamed like green diamonds, was absorbing the speaker's attention. The modiste who was fitting it had left the room to seek for pins, of which she had run dry. A low-class dressmaker would have been able to produce them from her mouth.

The Countess assumed a freezing import. It appeared to await explanation of something that had shocked and surprised her. "We!" said her ladyship, picking out the gravamen of this something. "Who are 'We' in this case?... Perhaps I did not understand what you said?..." And went on awaiting explanation, which any correct-minded British Matron will see was imperatively called for. Young ladies are expected not to refer too freely to Human Nature at any time, and to talk of "having a daughter" was sailing near the wind.

"Who are the 'We'? Why—me and Adrian, of course! At least, Adrian and I!—because of grammar. Whom did you suppose?"

The Countess underwent a sort of well-bred collapse. Her daughter did not observe it, as she was glancing at what she mentioned to herself as "The usual tight armhole, I suppose!" beneath an outstretched arm Helen might have stabbed her for in Troy. Neither did she notice the shoulder-shrug that came with the rally from this collapse, conveying an intimation to Space that one could be surprised at nothing nowadays. But the thing she ought not to have been surprised at was past discussion. Decent interment was the only course. "Who? I? I supposed nothing. No doubt it's all right!"

Gwen turned a puzzled face to her mother; then, after a moment came illumination. "Oh—I see-ee!" said she. "It's the children—our children! Dear me—one has such innocent parents, it's really quite embarrassing! Of course I shouldn't talk about them to papa, because he's supposed to know nothing about such things. But really—one's own mother!"

"Well—at least don't talk so before the person.... She's coming back—sh!"

"My dear mamma, she's got six children of her own, so how could it matter? Besides, she's French." That is to say, an Anglo-Grundy would have no jurisdiction.

The dazzling ball-dress, which the Countess had professedly climbed all those stairs to see tried on, having been disposed of satisfactorily, and carried away for finishing touches, her ladyship showed a disposition to remain and talk to her daughter. These two were on very good terms, in spite of the occasional strain which was put upon their relations by the audacity of the daughter's flights in the face of her old-fashioned mother's code of proprieties.

As soon as normal conditions had been re-established, and Miss Lutwyche, an essential to the trying on, had died respectfully away, her ladyship settled down to a chat.

"I've really hardly seen you, child, since you came tearing up from Rocester in that frantic way in the middle of the night. It's always the same in town, an absolute rush. And the way one has to mind one's P's and Q's is trying to the last degree. If it was only Society, one could see one's way. One can deal with Society, because there are rules. But People are quite another thing.... Well, my dear, you may say they are not, but look at Clotilda—there's a case in point! I assure you, hardly a minute of the day passes but I feel I ought to do something. But what? One may say it's her own fault, and so it no doubt is, in a sense. No one is under any sort of obligation to go into these horrible places, which the Authorities ought not to allow to exist. There ought to be proper people to do this kind of thing, inoculated or something, to be safe from infection.... But she is going on all right?"

"They wouldn't let me see her this morning. But Dr. Dalrymple said there was no complication, so far...."

"Oh, well, so long as there's no complication, that's all we can expect." The Countess jumped at an excuse to breathe freely. But there were other formidable contingencies. How about Constance and Cousin Percy? "Yes—they've got to be got married, somehow," said her ladyship. "It's impossible to shut one's eyes to it. I've been talking to Constance about it, and what she says is certainly true. When one's father has chronic gout, and one's stepmother severe nervous depression, one knows without further particulars how difficult it would be to be married from home. She says she simply won't be married from her Porchhammer sister's, because she gushes, and it isn't fair to Percy. Her other sister—the one with a name like Rattrap—doesn't gush, but her husband's going to stand for Stockport."

"I suppose," said Gwen, "those are both good reasons. Anyhow, you'll have to accommodate the happy couple. I see that. I suppose papa will have to give her away. If she allows Madame Pontet to groom her, she'll look eighteen. I wonder whether they couldn't manage to...."

"Couldn't manage to...?"

"Oh no, I see it would be out of the question, because of the time. I was going to say—wait for us. And then we could all have been married together." Gwen had remembered the Self-denying Ordinance, which was to last six months, and was not even inaugurated. She looked up at her mother. "Come, dear mother of mine, there's nothing to be shocked at in that!"

The Countess had risen from her seat, as though to depart. She stood looking across the wintry expanse of Hyde Park, seen through a bow-window across a balcony, with shrubs in boxes getting the full benefit of a seasonable nor'easter; and when at length she spoke, gave no direct reply. "I came up here to talk to you about it," she said. "But I see it would not be of any use. I may as well go. Did Dr. Dalrymple say when Clotilda would be out of danger? Supposing that all goes well, I mean."

"How can he tell? I'm glad I'm not a doctor with a critical case, and everyone trying to make me prophesy favourable results. It's worse for him than it is for us, anyhow, poor man!"

"Why? He's not a relation, is he?"

"No. Oh no! Perhaps if he were one.... Well—perhaps if he were, he wouldn't look so miserable.... No—they are only very old friends." The Countess had not asked; this was all brain-wave, helped by shades of expression. "I'm not supposed to know anything, you know," added Gwen, to adjust matters.

"Well—I suppose we must hope for the best," said her mother, with an implied recognition of Providence in the background; a mere civility! "Now I'm going."

"Very well then—go!" was what Gwen did not say in reply. She only thought that, if she had said it, it would have served mamma right. What she did say was:—"I know what you meant to say when you came upstairs, and you had better say it. Only I shall do nothing of the sort."

"I wish, my dear, you would be less positive. How can you know what I meant to say? Of what sort?"

"Reconsidering Adrian. Jilting him, in fact!"

"How can you know that?"

"Because you said it would not be any use talking to me about it. Just before you stopped looking out of the window, and said you might as well go."

Driven to bay, the Countess had a sudden accès of argumentative power. "Is there nothing it would be no use to talk to you about except this mad love-affair of yours?"

"Nothing so big. This is the big one. Besides, you know you did mean Adrian." As her ladyship did, she held her tongue.

Presently, having in the meantime resumed her seat, thereby admitting that her daughter was substantially right, she went on to what might be considered official publication.

"Your father and I, my dear, have had a good deal of talk about this unfortunate affair...."

"What unfortunate affair?"

"This unfortunate ... love-affair."

"Cousin Percy and Aunt Constance?"

"My dear! How can you be so ridiculous? Of course I am referring to you and Mr. Torrens."

"To me and Adrian. Precisely what I said, mamma dear! So now we can go on." The young lady managed somehow to express, by seating herself negligently on a chair with its back to her mother, that she meant to pay no attention whatever to any maternal precept. She could look at her over it, to comply with her duties as a respectful listener. But not to overdo them, she could play the treble of Haydn's Gipsy Rondo on the chair back with fingers that would have put a finishing touch on the exasperation of Helen of Troy.

Her ladyship continued:—"We are speaking of the same thing. Your father and I have had several conversations about it. As I was saying when you interrupted me—pray do not do so again!—he agrees with me entirely. In fact, he told me of his own accord that he wished you to come away with me for six months.... Yes—six! Three's ridiculous.... And that it should be quite distinctly understood that no binding engagement exists between Mr. Torrens and yourself."

"All right. I've no objection to anything being distinctly understood, so long as it is also distinctly understood that it doesn't make a particle of difference to either of us.... Yes—come in! Put them on the writing-table." This was to Miss Lutwyche, who came in, bearing letters.

"To either of you! You answer for Mr. Torrens, my dear, with a good deal of confidence. Now, do consider that the circumstances are peculiar. Suppose he were to recover his eyesight!"

"You mean he wouldn't be able to bear the shock of finding out what he'd got to marry...." She was interrupted by her mother exhibiting consciousness of the presence of Lutwyche, whose exit was overdue. A very trustworthy young woman, no doubt; but a line had to be drawn. "What are you fiddling with my letters for, Lutwyche?" said Gwen. "Do please get done and go!"

"Yes, my lady." Discreet retirement of Miss Lutwyche.

"She didn't hear, mamma. You needn't fuss."

"I was not fussing, my dear, but it's as well to.... Yes, go on with what you were saying." Because Lutwyche, being extinct, might be forgotten.

Gwen was looking round at the mirror. If Helen of Troy had seen herself in a mirror, all else being alike, what would her verdict have been? Gwen seemed fairly satisfied. "You meant Adrian might be disgusted?" said she.

The mother could not resist the pleasure of a satisfied glance at her daughter's reflection, which was not looking at her. "I meant nothing of the sort," she said. "But your father agreed with me—indeed, I am repeating his own words—that Mr. Torrens may have a false impression, having only really seen you once, under very peculiar circumstances. It is only human nature, and one has to make allowance for human nature. Now all that I am saying, and all that your father is saying, is that the circumstances are peculiar. Without some sort of reasonable guarantee that Mr. Torrens cannot recover his eyesight, I do contend that it would be in the highest degree rash to take an irrevocable step, and to condemn one—perhaps both, for I assure you I am thinking of Mr. Torrens's welfare as well as your own—to a lifetime of repentance."

"Mamma dear, don't be a humbug! You are only putting in Adrian's welfare for the sake of appearances. Much better let it alone!"

"My dear, it is not the point. If you choose to think me inhumane, you must do so. Only I must say this, that apart from the fact that I have nothing whatever against Mr. Torrens personally—except his religious views, which are lamentable—that his parents...."

"I thought you said you never knew his mother."

"No—perhaps not his mother." Her ladyship intensified the parenthetical character of this lady by putting her into smaller type and omitting punctuation:—"I can't say I ever really knew his mother and indeed hardly anything about her except that she was a Miss Abercrombie and goes plaguing on about negroes. But"—here she became normal again—"as for his father...."

"As for his father?"

"He was a constant visitor at my mother's, and I remember him very well. So there is no feeling on my part against him or his family." Her ladyship felt she had come very cleverly out of a bramble-bush she had got entangled in unawares, but she wanted to leave it behind on the road, and pushed on, speaking more earnestly:—"Indeed, my dearest child, it is of you and your happiness that I am thinking—although I know you won't believe me, and it's no use my saying anything...." At this point feelings were threatened; and Gwen, between whom and her mother there was plenty of affection, of a sort, hastened to allay—or perhaps avert—them. She shifted her seat to the sofa beside her mother, which made daughterliness more possible. A short episode of mutual extenuations followed; for had not a flavour of battle—not tigerish, but contentious—pervaded the interview?

"Very well, then, dear mother of mine," said Gwen, when this episode had come to an end. "Suppose we consider it settled that way! I'm to be tractability itself, on the distinct understanding that it commits me to nothing whatever. As for the six months' penal servitude, you and papa shall have it your own way. Only play fair—make a fair start, I mean! I like method. You have only to say when—any time after Christmas—and Adrian and I will tear ourselves asunder for six months. And then I'll accompany my mamma to Vienna, because I know that's what she wants. Only mind—honour bright!—as soon as I have dutifully forgotten Adrian for six whole months, there's to be an end of the nonsense, and I'm to marry Adrian ... and vice versa, of course! Oh no—he shan't be a cipher—I won't allow it...."

"My dear Gwendolen, I wish I could persuade you to be more serious." But her ladyship, as she rose to depart, was congratulating herself on having scored. The idea of any young lady's love-fancies surviving six months of Viennese life! She knew that fascinating capital well, and she knew also what a powerful ally she would find in her elder daughter, the Ambassadress, who was glittering there all this while as a distinct constellation.

She might just as well have retired satisfied with this brilliant prospect; only that she had, like so many of us, the postscript vice. This is the one that never will allow a conversation to be at an end. She turned to Gwen, who was already opening a letter to read, to say:—"You used the expressions 'reconsidering' and 'jilting' just now, my dear, as if they were synonymous. I think you were forgetting that it is impossible to 'jilt'—if I understand that term rightly—any man until after you have become formally engaged to him, and therefore.... However, if your letter is so very important, I can go. We can talk another time." This rather stiffly, Gwen having opened the letter, and been caught and held, apparently, by something in a legible handwriting. Whatever it was, Gwen put it down with reluctance, that she might show her sense of the importance of her mother's departure, whom she kissed and olive-branched, beyond what she accounted her lawful claims, in order to wind her up. She went with her as far as the landing, where cramped stairs ended and gradients became indulgent, and then got back as fast as she could to the reading of that letter.

It was an important letter, there could be no doubt of that, as a thick one from Irene—practically from Adrian—lay unopened on the table while she read through something on many pages that made her face go paler at each new paragraph. On its late envelope, lying opened by Irene's, was the postmark "Chorlton-under-Bradbury." But it was in a handwriting Gwen was unfamiliar with. It was not old Mrs. Picture's, which she knew quite well. For which reasons the thought had crossed her mind, when she first saw the envelope, that the old lady was seriously ill—perhaps suddenly dead. It was so very possible. Think of those delicate transparent hands, that frame whose old tenant had outstayed so many a notice to quit. Gwen's cousin, Percy Pellew, had said to her when he carried it upstairs in Cavendish Square, that it weighed absolutely nothing.

But this letter said nothing of death, nor of illness with danger of death. And yet Gwen was so disturbed by it that there was scarcely a brilliant visitor to her mother's that afternoon but said to some other brilliant visitor:—"What can be the matter with Gwen? She's not herself!" And then each corrected the other's false impression that it was the dangerous condition of her most intimate cousin and friend, Miss Clotilda Grahame; or screws loose and jammed bearings in the machinery of her love-affair, already the property of Rumour. And as each brilliant visitor was fain to seem better informed than his or her neighbour, a very large allowance of inaccuracy and misapprehension was added to the usual stock-in-trade of tittle-tattle on both these points.

There was only a short interregnum between the last departures of this brilliant throng, and the arrival of a quiet half-dozen to dinner; not a party, only a soothing half-dozen after all that noise and turmoil. So that Gwen got no chance of a talk with her father, which was what she felt very much in need of. That interregnum was only just enough to allow of a few minutes' rest before dressing for dinner. But the quiet half-dozen came, dined, and went away early; perhaps the earlier that their hostess's confessions of fatigue amounted to an appeal ad misericordiam; and Gwen was reserved and silent. When the last of the half-dozen had departed, Gwen got her opportunity. "Don't keep your father up too long, child," said the Countess, over the stair-rail. "It makes him sleep in the day, and it's bad for him." And vanished, with a well-bred yawn-noise, a trochee, the short syllable being the apology for the long one.

The Earl had allowed the quiet three, who remained with him at the dinner-table after their three quiet better-halves had retired with his wife and daughter, to do all the smoking, and had saved up for his own cigar by himself. It was his way. So Gwen knew she need not hurry through preliminaries. Of course he wanted to know about the Typhus patient, and she gave a good report, without stint. "That's all right," said he, in the tone of rejoicing which implies a double satisfaction, one for the patient's sake, one for one's own, as it is no longer a duty to be anxious.

"Why are you glaring at me so, papa darling?" said his daughter. It was a most placid glare. She should have said "looking."

"Your mamma tells me," said he, without modifying the glare, "that she has persuaded you to go with her to Vienna for six months."

"She said you wished me to go."

"She wishes you to go herself, and I wish what she wishes." This was not mere submissiveness. It was just as much loyalty and chivalry. "Is it a very terrible trial, the Self-denying Ordinance?"

Gwen answered rather stonily. "It isn't pleasant, but if you and my mother think it necessary—why, what must be, must! I'm ready to go any time. Only I must go and wind up with Adrian first ... just to console him a little! It's worse for him than for me! Just fancy him left alone for six months and never seeing me!... Oh dear!—you know what I mean." For she had made the slip that was so usual. She brushed it aside as a thing that could not be helped, and would even be sure to happen again, and continued:—"Irene has just written to me. I got her letter to-day."

"Well?"

"She makes what I think a very good suggestion—for me to go to Pensham to stay a week after Christmas, and then go in for.... What do you call it?... the Self-denying Ordinance in earnest afterwards. You don't mind?"

"Not in the least, as long as your mother agrees. Is that Miss Torrens's—Irene's—letter?"

"No. It's another one I want to speak to you about. Wait with patience!... I was going to say what exasperating parents I have inherited ... from somewhere!"

"From your grandparents, I suppose! But why?"

"Because when I say, may I do this or may I say that, you always say, 'Yes if your mother,' etcetera, and then mamma quotes you to squash me. I don't think it's playing the game."

"I think I gather from your statement, which is a little obscure, that your mamma and I are like the two proctors in Dickens's novel. Well!—it's a time-honoured arrangement as between parents, though I admit it may be exasperating to their young. What's the other letter?"

"I want to tell you about it first," said Gwen. She then told, without obscurity this time, the events which had followed the Earl's departure from the Towers a week since. "And then comes this letter," she concluded. "Isn't it terrible?"

"Let's see the letter," said the Earl. She handed it to him; and then, going behind his high chair, looked over him as he read. No one ever waits really patiently for another to read what he or she has already read. So Gwen did not. She changed the elbow she leaned on, restlessly; bit her lips, turn and turn about; pulled her bracelets round and round, and watched keenly for any chance of interposing an abbreviated précis of the text, to expedite the reading. Her father preferred to understand the letter, rather than to get through it in a hurry and try back; so he went deliberately on with it, reading it half aloud, with comments:

"At Strides Cottage,
"Chorlton-under-Bradbury,
"November 22, 1854.

"My Lady,

"I have followed your instructions, and brought the old Mrs. Prichard here to stay until you may please to make another arrangement. My mother will gladly remain at my daughter's at her husband's farm, near Dessington, till such time as may be suitable for Mrs. Prichard to return. This I do not wish to say because I want to lose this old lady, for if your ladyship will pardon the liberty I take in saying so, she is a dear old person, and I do in truth love her, and am glad to have charge of her."

"She seems always to make conquests," said the Earl. "I acknowledge to having been épris myself."

"Yes, she really is an old darling. But go on and don't talk. It's what comes next." She pointed out the place over his shoulder, and he took the opportunity to rub his cheek against her arm, which she requited by kissing the top of his head. He read on:

"Nor yet would my mother's return make any difference, for we could accommodate, and I would take no other children just yet a while. Toby goes home to-morrow. But I will tell you there is something, and it is this, only your ladyship may be aware of it, that the old lady has delusions and a strange turn to them, in which Dr. Nash agrees with me it is more than old age, and recommends my mother, being old too, not to come back till she goes, for it would not be good for her, for anything of this sort is most trying to the nerves, and my mother is eighty-one this Christmas, just old Mrs. Prichard's own age."

"I think that's the end of the sentence," said the Earl. "I take it that Nash, who's a very sharp fellow in his own line, is quite alive to the influence of insanity on some temperaments, and knows old Mrs. Marrable well enough to say she ought not to be in the way of a lunatic.... What's that?"

"A lunatic!" For Gwen had started and shuddered at the word.

"I see no use in mincing matters. That's what the good woman is driving at. What comes next?" He read on:

"I will tell all what happened, my lady, from when she first entered the house, asking pardon for my length. It began when I was showing the toy water-mill on our mantel-shelf, which your ladyship saw with Miss Grahame. I noticed she was very agitated, but did not put it down to the sight of this toy till she said how ever could it have been my grandfather's mill, and then I only took it for so many words, and got her away to bed, and would have thought it only an upset, but for next morning, when I found her out of bed before six, no one else being up but me, measuring over the toy with her hands where it stood on the shelf, and I should not have seen her only for our dog calling attention, though a dumb animal, being as I was in the yard outside."

"I think I follow that," said the Earl. "The dog pulled her skirts, and had a lot to say and couldn't say it."

"That was it," said Gwen. "Just like Adrian's Achilles. I don't mean he's like Achilles personally. The most awful bulldog, to look at, with turn-up tusks and a nose like a cup. But go on and you'll see. 'Yard outside.'"

"I would have thought her sleep-walking, but she saw me and spoke clear, saying she could not sleep for thinking of a model of her father's mill in Essex as like this as two peas, and thought it must be the same model, only now she had laid her hands on it again she could see how small it was. She seemed so reasonable that I was in a fright directly, particularly it frightened me she should say Essex, because my grandfather's mill was in Essex, showing it was all an idea of her own...."

"I can't exactly follow that," said the Earl, and re-read the words deliberately.

"Oh, can't you see?" said Gwen. "I see. If she had said the other mill was in Lancashire, it would have seemed possible. But—both in Essex!"

"I suppose that's it. Two models of mills exactly alike, and both in Essex, is too great a tax on human credulity. On we go again! Where are we? Oh—'idea of her own.'"

"But I got her back to bed, and got her some breakfast an hour later, begging she would not talk, and she was very good and said no more. After this I moved the model out of the way, that nothing might remind her, and she was quiet and happy. So I did not send for Dr. Nash then. But when it came to afternoon, I saw it coming back. She got restless to see the model I had put by out of sight, saying she could not make out this and that, particular the two little girls. And then it was she gave me a great fright, for when I told her the two little girls was my mother and my aunt, being children under ten, over seventy years ago, and twins, she had quite a bad attack, such as I have never seen, shaking all over, and crying out, 'What is it?—What is it?' So then I sent Elizabeth next door for Dr. Nash, who came and was most kind, and Mrs. Nash after. He gave her a sedative, and said not to let her talk. He said, too, not to write to you just yet, for she might get quite right in a little while, and then he would tell you himself."

"Poor darling old Mrs. Picture!" said Gwen. "Fancy her going off like this! But I think I can see what has done it. You know, she has told me how she was one of twins, and how her father had a flour-mill in Essex."

"Did she say the name?"

"No—she's very odd about that. She never tells any names, except that her sister was Phoebe. She told me that.... Oh yes—she told me her little girl's name was Ruth." Gwen did not know the christened name of either Granny Marrable or Widow Thrale, when she said this.

"Phoebe and Ruth," said the Earl. "Pretty names! But what has done it? What can you see?... You said just now?..."

"Oh, I understand. Of course, it's the twins and the flour-mill in Essex. Such a coincidence! Enough to upset anybody's reason, let alone an old woman of eighty! Poor dear old Mrs. Picture!—she's as sane as you or I."

"Suppose we finish the letter. Where were we? 'Tell you himself'—is that it? All right!"

"Then she was quiet again, quite a long time. But when we was sitting together in the firelight after supper, she had it come on again, and I fear by my own fault, for Dr. Nash says I was in the wrong to say a word to her of any bygones. And yet it was but to clear her mind of the mixing together of Darenth Mill and this mill she remembers. For I had but just said the name of ours, and that my grandfather's name was Isaac Runciman when I saw it was coming on, she shaking and trembling and crying out like before, 'Oh, what is it? Only tell me what it is!' And then 'Our mill was Darenth Mill,' and 'Isaac Runciman was my father.' And other things she could not have known that had been no word of mine, only Dr. Nash found out why, all these things having been told to little Dave Wardle last year, and doubtless repeated childlike. And yet, my lady, though I know well where the dear old soul has gotten all these histories, seeing there is no other way possible, it is I do assure you enough to turn my own reason to hear her go on telling and telling of one thing and another all what our little boy we had here has made into tales for his amusement, such-like as Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox our horses, and she had just remembered the foreman's name Muggeridge when she saw the model; it makes my head fairly spin to hear. Only I take this for my comfort, that I can see behind her words to know the tale is not of her making, but only Dave, like when she said Dave must have meant Muggeridge in his last letter, and would I find it to show her, only I could not. And like when she talked of her old piano at her father's, there I could see was our old piano my mother bought at a sale, now stood in a corner here where I had talked of it the evening I had the old lady here first. I am naming all these things that your ladyship may see I do right to keep my mother away from Strides till Mrs. Prichard goes. But I do wish to say again that that day when it comes will be a sad one for me, for I do love her dearly and that is the truth, though it is but a week and a day, and Dr. Nash does not wonder at this."

"If I remember right," said the Earl, stopping, "Nash has made some study of Insanity—written about it. He knows how very charming lunatics can be. You know your Great-Aunt Eileen fairly bewitched the Lord Chancellor when he interviewed her...."

"Did he see the lunatics himself?..."

"When they were fascinating and female—yes!... Well, what happened was that she waited to be sure he had refused to issue the Commission, and then went straight for Lady Lostwithiel's throat—her sister-in-law, you know...."

"Did that show she was mad?"

"Let us keep to the point. What does 'Muggeridge' mean?"

"I was thinking. 'Muggeridge'! But I've got Dave's last letter. I'll get it." And she was off before the Earl could say that to-morrow would do as well.

He went on smoking the bitter—and bitten—end of his cigar, which had gone slowly, owing to the reading. Instead of finishing up the letter, he went back, carefully re-reading the whole with absorbed attention. So absorbed, that Gwen, coming in quietly with a fresh handful of letters, was behind his chair unobserved, and had said:—"Well, and what do you make of it?" before he looked up at her.

"Verdict in accordance with the medical opinion, I think. But let's see Dave's letter." He took and read to himself. "I see," said he. "The cross stood for Dolly's love. A mere proxy. But he sends the real article. I like the 'homliburst,' too. Why did Dolly's lady want to towel Mrs. Spicture?... Oh, I see, it's the name of our house ... h'm—h'm—h'm!... Now where do we come to Muggeridge?... Oh, here we are! I've got it. Well—that's plain enough. Muggeridge. M, U, one G, E, R, I, J for D, G, E. That's quite plain. Can't see what you want more."

"Oh yes, it's all very easy for you, now you've been told. I couldn't make head or tail of it. And I don't wonder dear old Mrs. Picture couldn't...."

The Earl looked up suddenly. "Stop a bit!" said he. "Now where was it in Mrs. Thrale's letter. I had it just now ... here it is! 'The old lady had just remembered the foreman's name when she saw the model.' Got that?"

"Yes—but I don't see...."

"No—but listen! Dr. Nash found out that all these particulars were of Dave's communicating. Got that?"

"Yes—but still I don't see...."

"Don't chatterbox! Listen to your father. Keep those two points in mind, and then consider that when you read her Dave's letter she could not identify his misspelt name, which seems perfectly obvious and easy to me, now I know it. How could she forget it so as not to be reminded of it by a misspelt version? Can you conceive that she should fail, if she had heard the name from the child so clearly as to have it on the tip of her tongue the moment she saw the mill she only knew from Dave's description?"

"No—it certainly does seem very funny!"

"Very funny. Now let's see what the rest of the letter says." He went on reading:

"I know your ladyship will pardon the liberty I take to write at such length, seeing the cause of it, and also if I may suggest that your ladyship might send for Mrs. Bird, who lives with Mrs. Prichard, or for the parents of the little Dave Wardle, to inquire of them has she been subject to attacks or is this new. I should tell you that she has now been free from any aberration of mind, so Dr. Nash says, for nearly two days, mostly knitting quietly to herself, without talk, and sometimes laying down the needles like to think. Dr. Nash says to talk to her when she talks, but to keep her off of bygones, and the like. She has asked for things to write you a letter herself, and I have promised as soon as this is done. But I will not wait for hers to post this, as Dr. Nash says the sooner you know the better. I will now stop, again asking pardon for so long a letter, and remain, my lady, your obedient and faithful servant.

"R. Thrale"

"How very like what everyone else does!" said the Earl. "This good woman writes so close to economize paper that she leaves no room for her signature and goes in for her initial. I was wanting to know her Christian name. Do you know it? And see—she has to take more paper after all! Here's a postscript."

"P.S.—There is another reason why it is better not to have my mother back till Mrs. Prichard goes, she herself having been much upset by a man who said he was Mrs. Prichard's son, and was looking for his mother. My son-in-law, John Costrell, came over to tell me. This man had startled and alarmed my mother very much. I should be sorry he should come here to make Mrs. Prichard worse, but my mother is no doubt best away. I am not afraid of him myself, because of our dog."

"That dog is a treasure," said the Earl, re-enveloping the letter. "What are those other letters? Irene's?... And what?"

"I was trying to think of Mrs. Thrale's Christian name. I don't think I know it.... Yes—Irene's, and some papers I want you to lock up, for me." Gwen went on to tell of the inroad on Mrs. Prichard's secrétaire, and explained that she was absolutely certain of forgiveness. "Only you will keep them safer than I shall, in your big ebony cabinet. I think I can trust you to give them back." She laid them on the table, gave her father an affectionate double-barrelled kiss, and went away to bed. It was very late indeed.

Mr. Norbury, in London, always outlived everyone else at night. The Earl rather found a satisfaction, at the Towers, in being the last to leave port, on a voyage over the Ocean of Sleep. In London it was otherwise, but not explicably. The genesis of usage in households is a very interesting subject, but the mere chronicler can only accept facts, not inquire into causes. Mr. Norbury always did give the Earl a send-off towards Dreamland, and saw the house deserted, before he vanished to a secret den in the basement.

"Norbury," said the Earl, sending the pilot off, metaphorically. "You know the two widows, mother and daughter, at Chorlton-under-Bradbury? Strides Cottage."

"Yes, indeed, my lord! All my life. I knew the old lady when she came from Darenth, in Essex, to marry her second husband, Marrable." Norbury gave other particulars which the story knows.

"Then Widow Thrale is not Granny Marrable's daughter, though she calls her mother?"

"That is the case, my lord. She was a pretty little girl—maybe eleven years old—and was her mother's bridesmaid.... I should say her aunt's."

"Who was her mother?"

"I have understood it was a twin sister."

"Who was her father?"

Mr. Norbury hesitated. "If your lordship would excuse, I would prefer not to say. The story came to me through two persons. My own informant had it from Thrale. But it's near twenty years ago, and I could not charge my memory, to a certainty."

"Something you don't like to tell?"

"Not except I could speak to a certainty." Mr. Norbury, evidently embarrassed, wavered respectfully.

"Was there a convict in it, certain or uncertain?"

"There was, my lord. Certain, I fear. But I am uncertain about his name. Peverell, or Deverell."

"What was he convicted of? What offence?"

"I rather think it was forgery, my lord, but I may be wrong about that. The story said his wife followed him to Van Diemen's Land, and died there?"

"That was Thrale's story?"

"Thrale's story."

"He must have known."

"Oh, he knew!"

"What is old Mrs. Marrable's Christian name?"

"I believe she was always called Phoebe. Her first married name was a very unusual one, Cropredy."

"And Widow Thrale's?"

"Ruth—Keziah Solmes calls her, I think."

His lordship made no reply; and, indeed, said never a word until he released Mr. Norbury in his dressing-room ten minutes later, being then as it were wound up for a good night's rest, and safe to go till morning. Even then the current of serious thought into which he seemed to have plunged seemed too engrossing to allow of his making a start. He remained sitting in the easy-chair before the fire, with intently knitted brows and a gaze divided between the vigorous flare to which Mr. Norbury's final benediction had incited it, and the packet of letters Gwen had given him, which he had placed on the table beside him. Behind him was what Gwen had spoken of as his big ebony cabinet. If a ghost that could not speak was then and there haunting that chamber, its tongue must have itched to remind his lordship what a satisfaction it would be to a disembodied bystander to get a peep into the cinquecento recesses of that complicated storehouse of ancient documents, which was never opened in the presence of anyone but its owner.

Gradually Gwen's packet absorbed more than its fair share of the Earl's attention; finally, seemed to engross it completely. He ended by cutting the outer string, taking the contents out, and placing them before him on the table, assorting them in groups, like with like.

There were the printed formal warrants, variously signed and attested, of some assignments or transfers—things of no interest or moment. Put them by! There were one or two new sheets covered with a child's printed efforts towards a handwriting manifestly the same as the one recently under discussion, even without the signature, "dAve wARdLe." There was a substantial accumulation of folded missives in an educated man's hand, and another in a woman's; of which last the outermost—being a folded sheet that made its own envelope—showed a receipt postmark "Macquarie. June 24, 1807," and a less visible despatch-stamp "Darenth. Nov. 30, 1806," telling its tale of over six months on the road. Then one, directed in another hand, a man's, but with the same postmarks, both of 1808, with the months undecipherable. This last seemed the most important, being tied with tape. It was the elder Daverill's successful forgery, treasured by old Maisie as the last letter from her family in England, telling of her sister Phoebe's death. All the letters were addressed to "Mrs. Thornton Daverill," the directions being only partly visible, owing to the folding.

Lest the reader should be inclined to blame the accidental possessor of these letters for doing what this story must perforce put on record, and to say that his action disgraced the Earldom of Ancester, let it remind him what the facts were that were already in his lordship's possession, and ask him whether he himself, so circumstanced, might not have felt as the Earl did—that the case was one for a sacrifice of punctilios in the face of the issues that turned upon their maintenance. Had he any right to connive at the procrastination of some wicked secret—for he had the clue—when a trivial sacrifice of self-respect might bring it to light? He could see that Mrs. Prichard must be the twin sister, somehow. But he did not see how, as yet; and he wanted confirmation and elucidation. These letters would contain both, or correction and guidance. Was he to bewilder Gwen with his own partial insights, or take on himself to sift the grist clean before he milled it for her consumption? He was not long in deciding.

Two or three slippered turns up and down the room, very cautious lest they should wake her ladyship in the adjoining one, were all the case required. Then he resumed his seat, and, deliberately taking up the taped letter, opened it and read:

"My dear daughter Maisie,

"It is with great pain that I take up my pen to acquaint you of the fatal calamity which has befallen your sister Phoebe and her husband, as well as I grieve to say of your own child Ruth, my granddaughter, all three of whom there is every reason to fear have lost their lives at sea on the sailing-packet Scheldt, from Antwerp to London, which is believed to have gone down with every soul on board in the great gale of September 30, now nearly two months since.

"You will be surprised that your sister and little girl should be on the seas, but that this should be so was doubtless the Will of God, and in compliance with His ordinances, though directly contrary to my own advice. Had due attention been paid to my wishes this might have been avoided. Here is the account of how it happened, from which you may judge for yourself:

"Your brother-in-law Cropredy's imprudence is no doubt to answer for it, he having run the risk of travelling abroad to put himself in personal communication with a house of business at Malines, a most unwholesome place for an Englishman, though no doubt healthy for foreigners. As I had forewarned him, he contracted fever in the heat of August, when ill-fed on a foreign diet, which, however suitable to them, is fatal to an English stomach, and little better than in France. The news of this illness coming to your sister, she would not be resigned to the Will of Providence, to which we should all bow rather than rashly endanger our lives, but took upon herself to decide, contrary to my remonstrance, to cross the Channel with the little girl, of whom I could have taken charge here at my own home. Merciful to say, the fever left him, having a good constitution from English living, and all was promise of a safe return, seeing the weather was favourable when the ship left the quay, and a fair wind. But of that ship no further is known, only she has not been heard of since, and doubtless is gone to the bottom in the great gale which sprung up in mid-channel, for so many have done the like. Even as the ships of Jehosaphat were broken that they were not able to go to Tarshish (Chron. II. xx. 37).

"There is, I fear, no room for hope that, short of a miracle, for the sea will not give up its dead (Rev. xx. 13), any remains should be recovered, but you may rest assured that if any come to the surface and are identified they shall be interred in the family grave where your sainted mother was laid, and reposes in the Lord, in a sure and certain hope of a joyful resurrection (Acts xxiii. 6).

"Believe me, my dear daughter, to remain your affectionate father

"Isaac Runciman.

"I have no message for my son-in-law, nor do I retain any resentment towards him, forgiving him as I wish to be forgiven (Luke vi. 37).

"Darenth Mill,
Oct. 16, 1807."

The Earl read this letter through twice—three times—and apparently his bewilderment only increased as he re-read it. At last he refolded it, as though no more light could come from more reading, and sat a moment still, thinking intently. Then he suddenly exclaimed aloud:—"Amazing," adding under his voice:—"But perfectly inexplicable!" Then, going on even less audibly:—"I must see what Hawtrey can make of this...." At which point he was taken aback by a voice through the door from the next room:—"What are you talking to yourself so for? Can't you get to bed?" Palpably the voice of an awakened Countess! He replied in a conciliatory spirit, and accepted the suggestion, first putting the letters safely away in the ebony cabinet.

---

Anyone who reads this forged letter with a full knowledge of all the circumstances will see that it was at best, from the literary and dramatic point of view, a bungling composition. But style was not called for so long as the statements were coherent. For what did the forger's wife know of what her father's style would be under these or any abnormal circumstances? Had she ever had a letter at all from him before? Even that is doubtful. The shock, moreover, was enough to unbalance the most critical judgment.

Two things are very noticeable in the letter. One that it fights shy of strong expressions of feeling, as though its fabricator had felt that danger lay that way; the other that he manifestly enjoyed his Scripture references, familiar to him by his long experience of gaol-chaplains, and warranted by his knowledge of his father-in-law. We—who write this—have referred to the passages indicated, and found the connection of ideas to be about an average sample, as coherency goes when quotation from Scripture is afoot. No doubt Maisie's husband found their selection entertaining.

---

CHAPTER XII

THE LEGAL ACUMEN OF THOTHMES. OF COURSE IT WAS ISAAC RUNCIMAN'S SIGNATURE. THE ANTIPODEAN INK. HOW LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS WAS MADE OF WOOD. HOW GWEN AND HER FATHER CAME OFF THEIR P'S AND Q'S. THE RIDDLE AS GOOD AS SOLVED. HOW GWEN GOT A LIFT TO CAVENDISH SQUARE AND HER MOTHER WENT ON TO HELP TO ABOLISH SOUTH CAROLINA. ANOTHER LIFT, IN A PILL-BOX. SAPPS COURT'S VIEWS OF THE WAR. MICHAEL RAGSTROAR'S HALF-SISTER'S BROTHER-IN-LAW. LIVE EELS. BALL'S POND. MRS. RILEY'S ELEVEN RELATIVES. MRS. TAPPING'S NAVAL CONNECTIONS. OLD BILLY. RUM SHRUB. LOUIS NAPOLEON AND KING SOLOMON. A PARTY IN THE BAR. WHICH WAY DID HE GO?

Said his lordship next morning to Mr. Norbury, bringing him preliminary tea at eight o'clock:—"I want to catch Mr. Hawtrey before he goes to Lincoln's Inn. Send round to say.... No—give me one of my cards and a pencil.... There!—send that round at once, because he goes early."

The result was that Mr. Hawtrey was announced while the Earl was having real breakfast with Gwen and her mother at ten, and was shown into the library. Also that the real breakfast was hurried and frustrated, that Mr. Hawtrey should not be kept waiting. For the Earl counter-ordered his last cup of tea, and went away with his fast half broken. So her ladyship sent the cup after him to the library. He sent a message back to Gwen. Would her ladyship be sure not to go out without seeing him? She would.

Mr. Hawtrey was known to Gwen as the Earl's solicitor, a man of perfectly incredible weight and importance. He was deep in the Lord Chancellor's confidence, and had boxes in tiers in his office, to read the names on which was a Whig and Tory education. If all the acres of land that had made Mr. Hawtrey's acquaintance, somehow or other, had been totalled on condition that it was fair to count twice over, the total total would have been as large as Asia, at a rough guess. His clerks—or his firm's, Humphrey and Hawtrey's—had witnessed leases, wills, transfers, and powers of attorney, numerous enough to fill the Rolls Office, but so far as was known none of them had ever been called on to attest his own signature. Personally, Mr. Hawtrey had always seemed to Gwen very like an Egyptian God or King, and she would speak of him as Thothmes and Rameses freely. Her father admitted the likeness, but protested against her levity, as this gentleman was his most trusted adviser, inherited with his title and estates. The Earldom of Ancester had always been in the habit of consulting Mr. Hawtrey about all sorts of things, not necessarily legal.

So when Gwen was sent for to her father's sanctum, and went, she was not surprised to hear that he had given Mr. Hawtrey all the particulars she had told him of Mrs. Prichard's history, and a clear outline of the incidents up to that date, ending with the seeming insanity of the old lady. "But," said the Earl, who appeared very serious, "I have given no names. I have sent for you now, Gwen, to get your consent to my making no reserves with Mr. Hawtrey, in whose advice I have great confidence." Mr. Hawtrey acknowledged this testimony, and Gwen acknowledged that gentleman's desert; each by a bow, but Gwen's was the more flexible performance.

She just hung back perceptibly over giving the carte blanche asked for. "I suppose no harm can come of it—to anybody?" said she. None whatever, apparently; so she assented.

"Very good," said the Earl. "And now, my dear, I want you, before I show it to Mr. Hawtrey, to read this letter, which I have opened on my own responsibility—nobody to blame but me! I found it among your old lady's letters you gave me to take care of."

"Oh dear!" said Gwen.

"I shall not show it to Mr. Hawtrey, unless you like. Take it and read it. No hurry." Gwen was conscious that the solicitor sat as still as his prototype Thothmes at the British Museum, and with as immovable a countenance.

She took the letter, glancing at the cover. "Who is Mrs. Thornton Daverill?" said she, quite in the dark.

"Go on and read," said the Earl.

Gwen read half to herself:—"'My dear daughter Maisie,'" and then said aloud:—"But that is Mrs. Prichard's name!"

"Read through to the end," said the Earl. And Gwen, with a painful feeling of bewilderment, obeyed orders, puzzling over phrases and sentences to find the thing she was to read for, and staggered a moment by the name "Cropredy," which she thought she must have misread. There was no clue in the letter itself, as she did not know who "Phoebe" and "Ruth" were.

Her father's observation of her face quickened as she visibly neared the end. She was quite taken aback by the signature, the moment it caught her eye. "Isaac Runciman!" she exclaimed. "Why—that's—that's....

"That's the name of Mrs. Marrable's father that old Mrs. Prichard lays claim to for hers," said the Earl quietly. "And this letter is written to his daughter, Mrs. Thornton Daverill, whose name is Maisie.... And old Mrs. Prichard's name is Maisie.... And this letter is in the keeping of old Mrs. Prichard." He left gaps, for his hearer to understand.

"Good God!" exclaimed Gwen. "Then old Mrs. Prichard is not mad." She could only see that much for the moment—no details. "Oh, be quiet a moment and let me think." She dropped the letter, and sat with her face in her hands, as though to shut thought in and work the puzzle out. Her father remained silent, watching her.

Presently he said, quietly still, as though to help her:—"Norbury told me last night what we did not know, that old Mrs. Marrable's name is Phoebe, and that Widow Thrale's is Ruth...."

"That old Mrs. Marrable is Phoebe and her daughter is Ruth." Gwen repeated his words, as though learning a lesson, still with her fingers crushing her eyes.

"And that Ruth is not really Phoebe's daughter but her niece. And, according to Norbury, she is the daughter of a twin sister, whose husband was transported for forgery, and who followed him to Van Diemen's Land, and died there." He raised his voice slightly to say this.

A more amazed face than Gwen's when she withdrew her fingers to fix her startled eyes upon her father, would have been almost as hard to find as a more beautiful one.

"But that is Mrs. Prichard, papa dear," she gasped. "Don't you know? The story I told you!"

"Exactly!" said the Earl.

"But the letter—the letter! Phoebe and Ruth in the letter cannot be drowned, if they are Granny Marrable and Widow Thrale." A rapid phantasmagoria of possibilities and impossibilities shot through her mind. How could order come of such a chaos?

"Excuse me," said Thothmes, speaking for the first time. "Do I understand—I assume I am admitted to confidence—do I understand that the letter states that these two women were drowned?"

"Crossing from Antwerp. Yes!"

"Then the letter is a falsehood, probably written with a bad motive."

"But by their father—their father! Impossible!"

"How does your ladyship know it was written by their father?"

"It is signed by their father—at Darenth Mill in Essex. Both say Isaac Runciman was their father."

"It is signed with Isaac Runciman's name—so I understand. Is it certain that it was signed by Isaac Runciman? May I now see the letter? And the envelope, please!—oh, the direction is on the back, of course." He held the letter in front of him, but apparently took very little notice of it. "As if," thought Gwen to herself, "he was thinking about his Dynasty."

"What do you make of it, Hawtrey?" said the Earl, but, getting no answer, waited. Silence ensued.

"Yes," said the lawyer, breaking it suddenly. He seemed to have seen his way. "Now may I ask whether we have any means of knowing what the forgery was for which this man was transported?"

"Oh yes!" said Gwen. "Old Mrs. Prichard told me what he was accused of, at least. Forging an acceptance—if that's right? I think that was it."

"But whose signature? Did she say?"

"Oh yes—I made her tell me, her father's." Then Gwen fitted the name, just heard, into its place in old Mrs. Prichard's tale, and was illuminated. "I see what you think, Mr. Hawtrey," said she, interrupting herself. The lawyer was examining the direction on the letter-sheet.

"I think I did right to pry into the letter, Gwennie," said her father; seeking, nevertheless, a salve for conscience.

"Of course you did, you darling old thing!... What, Mr. Hawtrey? You were going to say?..."

"I was going to say had you seen an odd thing in the direction. Have you noticed that the word Hobart has kept black, and all the rest has faded to the colour of the writing inside?" So it had, without a doubt, inexplicably. Mr. Hawtrey's impression was that the word was written in a different hand, perhaps filled in by someone who had been able to supply the name correctly, having been entrusted the letter to forward.

"But," said he, "the person who wrote Hobart must have been in England, and the forger of the letter was certainly in Van Diemen's Land."

"Why 'must have been in England'?"

"Bless the girl!" said the girl's father. "Why—I can see that! Of course, an Australian convict, who could do such a fine piece of forgery, would never ask another person to spell the name of an Australian town. Do you suppose he sent it to England to get an accomplice to spell 'Hobart' right for him? No—no, Hawtrey, your theory won't hold water."

"That is the case," said Thothmes, more immovably than ever. "I see I was mistaken. That point must wait. Or ... stop one minute!... may we examine the other letters?"

"I had thought," said the Earl, "of leaving them unopened. We have got what we want."

"Very proper. But I only wish to read the directions." No harm in this, anyhow. A second packet was opened. It was the one in the woman's hand, all postmarked "Darenth Mill" and "Macquarie." Then it was that Thothmes, with impassive shrewdness, made up for his blunder, with interest. He saw why the ink of one word of the forged direction was black. It was the same ink as the English directions, and, on close examination, the same hand. This had not been clear at first, as the word was mixed with the English postmark, "Darenth Mill"—so much so as not to clash with the pale hand of the forgery. "That word," said Thothmes, "was never written in Van Diemen's Land. The English stamp is on the top of it."

Gwen took it from him, and saw that this was true. "But then the rest of the direction was written in Australia," said she, "if this man wrote it at all! Oh dear, I am so puzzled." And indeed she was at her wit's end.

"I won't say another word," said Mr. Hawtrey. "I have made one blunder, and won't run any further risks. I must think about this. If you will trust me with the letter, you shall have it back to-morrow morning. I dare say your lordship will now excuse me. I have an appointment at the High Court at eleven, and it's now a quarter past.... Oh no—it's not a hanging matter.... I shall make my man drive fast.... So I will wish your ladyship a very good morning. I wish those two old ladies could have known this earlier. But better late than never!"

The Earl accompanied his legal adviser to the head of the stairs to give him a civil send off, while his daughter, white with tension of excitement and impatience, awaited his return. Coming back, he was not the least surprised that she should fall into his arms with a tempest of tears, crying out:—"Oh, papa dearest—fifty years!—think of it! All their lives! Oh, my darling old Mrs. Prichard! and Granny Marrable too—it's the same for both! Oh, think, that they were girls—yes, nearly girls, only a few years older than me, when they parted! And the horrible wickedness of the trick—the horrible, horrible wickedness! And then the dear old darling's own daughter, who has almost never seen her, thinks her mad!... No, papa dear, don't shish me down, because cry I must! Let me have a good cry over it, and I shall be better. Sit down by me, and don't let go—there!—here on the sofa, like that.... Oh dear, I wish I was made of wood, like some people, and could say better late than never!" This was the wind-up of a good deal more, and similar, expression of feeling. For tears and speech come easily to a generous impulsive nature like Gwen's, when strong sympathy and sorrow for others bid them come, though its own affliction might have made it stupefied and dumb.

Her father soothed and calmed her as he would a child; for was she not a child to him—in the nursery only the other day? "I'm not made of wood, darling, am I?" said he. And Gwen replied, refitting spars in calmer water:—"No, dear, that you are not, but Lincoln's Inn Fields is. Sitting there like an Egyptian God, with his hands on his knees!" She repacked a stray flood of gold that had escaped from its restraints—the most conspicuous record of the recent gale—and reassured her father with a liberal kiss. Then she thawed towards the legal mind. "I'm sure he's very good and kind and all that—Lincoln's Inn Fields, I mean, is—because people are. Only it's at heart they are, and I want it to come out like a rash." No doubt an interview with Dr. Dalrymple yesterday was answerable for this, having reference to the Typhus Fever patient. The eruption, he said, was subsiding favourably, and he was hourly expecting a fall in the temperature. But he had made a stand against her seeing the patient.

"If Hawtrey came out in a rash over all his clients' botherations," said the Earl, "he would very soon be in a state of confluent smallpox. What he's wanted for now is his brains. You'll see we shall have a letter from him, clearing it all up...."

"And you know what he'll say, I suppose? That is, if he's as clever as you think him!"

"I can't say that I feel absolutely certain. What do you suppose?"

Then Gwen gave a very fair conjectural review of the facts as this story knows them; saying, whenever she felt the ground insecure beneath her feet, that of course it was this way and not the other. A blessed expression that, to reinforce one's convictions!

However, she was not far wrong on any point, if the letter her father received next day from "Lincoln's Inn Fields" was right. It came by messenger, just as the family were sitting down to lunch with two or three friends, and his lordship said, "Will you excuse me?" without waiting for an answer, though one of his guests was a Rajah. Then he read the letter through, intently, while his Countess looked thunderclouds at him. "'Fore God, they are both of a tale!" said he, quoting. Then he sent it to Gwen by Norbury, who was embarrassed by her ladyship the Countess saying stiffly:—"Surely afterwards would do." But Gwen cut in with:—"No—I can't wait. Give it to me, Norbury!" And took it and read it as intently as her father had done. Having finished, she telegraphed to him, all the length of the table:—"Isn't that just what I said?" And then things went on as before. Only the Earl and his daughter had come off their P's and Q's, most lawlessly.

Here is the letter each had read, when off them:

"My dear Lord Ancester,

"I have thoroughly considered the letter, and return it herewith. I am satisfied that it is a forgery by the hand of the convict Daverill, but it is difficult to see what his object can have been, malice apart. It is clear, however, that it was to influence his wife, to what end it is impossible to say.

"The only theory I can have about the black ink is far-fetched. It is that a letter from England of that date was erased to make way for the forgery, these few black letters having been allowed to remain, not to disturb the English postmark, which partly-obscures them. You may notice some compromise or accommodation in the handwriting of the direction, evidently to slur over the difference. I suggest that the letter should be referred to some specialist in palimpsests, who may be able to detect some of the underlying original, which is absolutely invisible to me.

"If you meet with any other letter written by this ingenious penman, I suspect it will be in the pale ink of the forgery, which no doubt was as black as the English ink, when new.

"Believe me, my lord, your very faithful and obedient servant,

"James Hawtrey."

"There can't be another letter of the ingenious penman's in the lot we left tied up, because he and his wife were living together, and not writing each other letters." So said Gwen afterwards, deprecating a suggestion of her father's that the packet should be opened and examined. But he replied:—"It is only to look at the colour of the ink. We won't read old Mrs. Prichard's love-letters." However, nothing was found, all these letters having been written in England except the one from Sydney inviting her to come out, which was referred to early in this story. The Sydney ink had been different—that was all.

So all the letters were tied up again and placed pro tem. in the cinquecento cabinet, to be quite safe. They had been just about to vanish therein when the Earl made his suggestion. Nothing having come of it, the documents were put away, honourably unread, and Gwen hurried off to be given a lift to Cavendish Square by her mother. Her father exacted a promise from her that she would not force her way past Dr. Dalrymple into the patient's presence, come what might! She accompanied her mother in the carriage as far as her own destination. The Countess was on a card-leaving mission in Harley Street, and devoutly hoped that Lady Blank would not be at home. In that case she might take advantage of her liberty to go to a meeting at the Duchess of Sutherland's to abolish this horrible negro slavery in America, so as not to be exceptional, which was odious; and your father—Gwen's to wit—never would exert himself about anything, and was simply wrapped up in old violins and majolica. Of course it was right to put an end to slavery, and people ought to exert themselves. Her ladyship waited in the carriage at the door till Gwen could supply an intensely authentic report—not what the servants were told to say to everybody; that was no use—of the precise condition of the patient, including the figures of the pulse and temperature, and whether she had had a good night. Gwen came back with a report from the nurse, to find Dr. Dalrymple conversing with her mother at the carriage door, and to be exhorted by him to follow her maternal example in matters of prudence. For the good lady had furnished herself with a smelling-bottle and was inhaling it religiously, as a prophylactic.

When she had departed, leaving Gwen wondering why on earth she was seized with such a desire just now to abolish negro slavery, Gwen returned into the house to await the doctor's last word about her friend. Waiting for him in the sitting-room, she read the Times, and naturally turned to the news from the Seat of War—it was then at its height—and became engrossed in the details of the Balaklava charge, a month since. The tragedy of the Crimea—every war is a tragedy—was at this time the all-engrossing topic in London and Paris, and men hung eagerly on every word that passed current as news. The reason it has so little place in this story is obvious—none of the essential events intersect. All our narrative has to tell relates to occurrences predetermined by a past that was forgotten long before Sebastopol was anticipated.

Gwen read the story of the great historical charge with a breathless interest certainly, but only as part of the playbill of a terrible drama, where the curtain was to fall on fireworks and a triumph for her own nationality; and, of course, its ally—ça se vit. Dr. Dalrymple reappeared, looking hopeful, with a good report, but too engrossed in his ease to be moved even by the Charge of the Light Brigade, or the state of the hospitals at Scutari. Where was Gwen going? To Sapps Court—where was that? Oh yes, just beyond his own destination, so he could give her a lift. And the carriage could take her on to hers and wait for her, just as easily as go home and come back for him. He might be detained a long time at the Hospital. Gwen accepted his offer gratefully, as a private brougham and a coachman made a sort of convoy. In those days young ladies were not so much at their ease without an escort, as they have been of late years. According to some authorities, the new régime is entirely due to the bicycle.

---

Sapps Court had not been itself since the exciting event of the accident; at least, so said Aunt M'riar, referring to the disappearance of Mrs. Prichard chiefly. For the identity of Sapps depended a good deal on the identity of its inhabitants, and its interests penetrated very little into the great world without. It was very little affected even by the news of the War, favourable or the reverse: its patriotism was too great for that. This must be taken to mean that its confidence in its country's power of routing its foes was so deep-seated that an equally firm belief that its armies were starving and stricken with epidemics, and armed with guns that would not go off, and commanded by the lame, halt, and blind in their second childhood, did not in the least interfere with its stability. Whatever happened, the indomitable courage of Tommy Atkins and Jack would triumph over foes, who, when all was said and done, were only foreigners. Sapps Court's faith in Jack was so great that his position was even above Tommy's. When Jack was reported to have gone ashore at Balaklava to help Tommy to get his effete and useless artillery to bear on the walls of Sebastopol, Sapps Court drew a long breath of relief. Misgivings were germinating in its bosom as to whether cholera patients could take fortresses on an empty stomach. But it would be all right now!

No doubt the Court's philosophical endurance of its share of the anxiety about the War was partly due to the fact that it hadn't got no relations there; or, at least, none to speak of. Michael Ragstroar's 'arf-sister's brother-in-law had certainly took the shilling, but Michael's father had expressed the opinion that this young man wouldn't do no good soldiering, and would only be in the way. Which had led Michael to say that this connection of his by marriage would ultimately get himself cashiered by Court Martial, for 'inderin'. Much better have stuck to chopping up live heels and makin' of 'em into pies at Ball's Pond, than go seeking glory at the cannon's mouth! Michael had not reflected on the comparative freedom of his own life, contrasted with the monotonous lot of this ill-starred young man; if, indeed, we may safely accept Micky's description of it as accurate. Sapps Court did so, and went on in the belief that the Ball's Pond recruit would prove a gêne upon the movements of the allied troops in the Crimea.

The interest of the Court, therefore, in the contemporary events which were thrilling the remainder of Europe, was ethical or strategical, and one had to go outside its limits to be brought into touch with personal connecting links. But they were to be met with near at hand, for Mrs. Riley had ilivin relatives at the Sate of War, sivin of her own name, thray Donnigans, and one O'Rourke, a swate boy, though indade only a fosther-brother of her nayce Kathleen McDermott. Mrs. Tapping was unable to enumerate any near relations serving Her Majesty, but laid claim to consanguinity with distinguished officers, Generals of Division and Captains of three-deckers, all of whom had an exalted opinion of her own branch of the Family.

In the main, Sapps regarded the War as a mere Thing in the Newspapers, of which Uncle Mo heard more accurate details, at The Sun. There is nothing more unaccountable than the alacrity with which the human mind receives any statement in print, unless it is its readiness to surrender its belief on hearing a positive contradiction from a person who cannot possibly know anything about the matter. One sometimes feels forced to the conclusion that an absolute disqualification to speak on any subject is a condition precedent of procuring belief. Certainly a claim to inspiration enlists disciples quicker than the most subtle argument; acts, so to speak, as an aperient to the mind—a sort of intellectual Epsom Salts. Uncle Mo, in the simplicity of his heart, went every day for an hour to The Sun parlour, taking with him a profound belief in the latest news from the Seat of War, to have it shattered for him by the positive statements of persons who had probably not read the papers at all, and sometimes couldn't. For in those happy days there were still people who were unable to read or write.

Perhaps the only other customer in the parlour at The Sun, when Uncle Mo was smoking his pipe there, on the afternoon which saw the Countess interest herself in negro slavery, was able to read and write, unknown to his friends, who had never seen him do either. They, however, knew, or professed to feel assured, that old Billy—for that was his only ascertainable name—knew everything. This may have been their vulgar fun; but if it was, old Billy's own convictions of his omniscience were not shaken by it, any more than a creed he professed, that small doses of rum shrub, took reg'lar, kept off old age. In a certain sense he took them regularly, counting the same number in every bar, with nearly the same pauses between each dose. Whether they were really helping him against Time and Decay or not, they were making him pink and dropsical, and had not prevented, if they had not helped to produce, a baldness as of an eggshell. This he would cover in, to counteract the draughty character which he ascribed to all bar parlours alike, with a cloth cap having ear-flaps, as soon as ever he had hung up a beaver hat which he might have inherited from a coaching ancestor.

This afternoon he was eloquent on foreign policy. Closing one eye to accentuate the shrewd vision of the other, and shaking his head continuously to express the steadiness and persistency of his convictions, he indicted Louis Napoleon as the bête noire of European politics. "Don't you let yourself be took in, Mr. Moses," he said, "by any of these here noospapers. They're a bad lot. This here Nicholas, he's a Rooshian—so him I say nothin' about. Nor yet these here Turkeys—them and their Constant Eye No Pulls!"—this with great scorn. "None of 'em no better, I lay, than Goard A'mighty see fit to make 'em, so it ain't, so as you might say, their own fault, not in a manner of speaking. But this Louis Sneapoleum, he's your sly customer. He's as bad as the whole lot, all boiled up together in a stoo! Don't you be took in by him, Mr. Moses. Calls hisself a Coodytar! I call him.... etcetera de rigueur, as some of old Billy's comparisons were unsavoury.

"Can't foller you all the way down the lane, Willy-um," said Uncle Mo, who could hardly be expected to identify Billy's variant of Coup d'Etat. "Ain't he our ally?"

"That's the p'int, Mr. Moses, the very p'int to not lose sight on, or where are we? He's got hisself made our ally for to get between him and the Rooshians. What he's a-drivin' at is to get us to fight his battles for him, and him to sit snug and accoomulate cucumbers like King Solomons."

Uncle Moses felt he ought to interpose on this revision of the Authorised Version of Scripture. "You haven't hit the word in the middle, mate," said he, and supplied it, correctly enough. "You can keep it in mind by thinking of them spiky beggars at the So-logical Gardens—porky pines—them as get their backs up when wexed and bristle."

"Well—corkupines, then! Have it your own way, old Mo! My back'd get up and bristle, if I was some of them! Only when it's womankind, the likes of us can't jedge, especially when French. All I can say is, him and them's got to settle it between 'em, and if they can stand his blooming moostarsh, why, it's no affair of mine." Which was so obviously true that old Billy need not have gone on muttering to himself to the same effect. One would have thought that the Tuileries had applied to him to accept an appointment as Censor Morum.

"What's old Billy grizzlin' on about?" said Mr. Jeffcoat, the host of The Sun, bringing in another go of the shrub, and a modest small pewter of mild for Uncle Mo, who was welcome at this hostelry even when, as sometimes happened, he drank nothing; so powerful was his moral influence on its status. In fact, the Sporting World, which drank freely, frequented its parlour merely to touch the hand of the great heavyweight of other days, however much he was faded and all his glories past. Then would Uncle Mo give a sketch of his celebrated scrap with Bob Brettle, which ended in neither coming to Time, simultaneously. Mo would complain of an absurd newspaper report of the fight, which said the Umpires stopped the fight. "No such a thing!" said Uncle Mo. "I stopped Bob and he stopped me, fair and square. And there we was, come to grass, and stopping there." Perhaps the old boy was dreaming back on something of this sort, rather than listening to boozy old Billy's reflections on Imperial Morality, that Mr. Jeffcoat should have repeated again:—"What's old Billy grizzling about? You pay for both, Mr. Moses? Fourpence halfpenny, thank you!"

"He's letting out at the Emperor of the French, is Billy. He'd do his dags for him, Billy would, if he could get at him. Wouldn't you, Billy? I say, Tim, whose voice was that I heard in the Bar just now, naming me by name?"

"Ah, I was just on telling you. He walks in and he says to me, when does Moses Wardle come in here, he says, and how long does he stop, mostly? And I says to him....

"What sort of a feller to look at?" said Uncle Mo, interrupting. "Old or young? Long? Short? Anything about him to go by?"

This called for consideration. "Not what you would call an average party. His gills was too much slewed to one side." This was illustrated by a finger hooking down the corner of the mouth. "Looked as if his best clothes was being took care of for him."

"What did he want o' me?" Uncle Mo's interest seemed roused.

"I was telling of you. When did you come and how long did you stop? Best part of an hour, I says, and you was here now. You'll find him in the parlour, I says. Go in and see, I says. And I thought to find him in here, having took my eyes off him for the moment."

"He's not been in here," said Uncle Mo, emptying his pipe prematurely, and apparently hurrying off without taking his half of mild. "Which way did he go?"

"Which way did the party go, Soozann?" said the host to his wife in the bar. Who replied:—"Couldn't say. Said he'd be back in half an hour, and went. Fancy he went to the right, but couldn't say."

"He won't be back in half an hour," said Uncle Mo. "Not if he's the man I take him for. You see, he's one of these here chaps that tells lies. You've heard o' them; seen one, p'r'aps?" Mr. Jeffcoat testified that he had, in his youth, and that rumours of their existence still reached him at odd times. Those who listen about in the byways of London will hear endless conversation on this model, always conducted with the most solemn gravity, with a perfect understanding of its inversions and perversions.

Uncle Mo hurried away, leaving instructions that his half-pint should be bestowed on any person whose tastes lay in that direction. Mr. Jeffcoat might meet with such a one. You never could tell. He hastened home as fast as his enemy Gout permitted, and saw when he turned into the short street at the end of which Sapps lay hidden, that something abnormal was afoot. There stood Dr. Dalrymple's pill-box, wondering, no doubt, why it had carried a segment of an upper circle to such a Court as this. If it had been the Doctor himself, it would not have given a thought to the matter, for it used to bear its owner to all sorts of places, from St. James's Palace to Seven Dials.

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CHAPTER XIII

HOW UNCLE MO WAS JUST TOO LATE. THE SHINY LADY. THE TURN THE MAN HAD GIVEN AUNT M'RIAR, AND HER APOLOGIES. DOLLY'S INTENDED HOSPITALITY TO MRS. PRICHARD ON HER RETURN. DOLLY'S DOLLY'S NEW NAME. AN ARRANGEMENT, COMMITTING NEITHER PARTY. GUINEVERE, LANCELOT, AND THE CAKE. MRS. PRICHARD INSANE?—THE IDEA! HOW GWEN READ THE LETTER ALL BUT THE POSTSCRIPT. NOTHING FOR IT BUT TO TELL! BUT HOW? FUN, TELLING THE CHILDREN. ANOTHER RECHRISTENING OF DOLLY. GWEN'S LAST EXIT FROM MRS. PRICHARD'S APARTMENTS. JOAN OF ARC'S SWORD'S SOUL. THE POSTSCRIPT. WIDOW THRALE'S DOG. WHAT THE CONVICT HAD SAID. HOW LONG DOES BONA-FIDE OMNIPOTENCE TAKE OVER A JOB?

Gwen, leaving her convoy to wait for her in the antechamber of Sapps Court, and approach No. 7 alone, heard as she knocked at the door an altercation within; Aunt M'riar's voice and a strange one, with terror in the former and threat in the latter. Had all sounded peaceful, she might have held back, to allow the interview to terminate. But catching the sound of fear in the woman's voice, and having none in her own composition, she immediately delivered a double-knock of the most unflinching sort, and followed it by pushing open the door.

She could hear Dave above, at the top window, recognising her as "The Lady." As she entered, a man who was coming out flinched before her meanly for a moment, then brushed past brutally. Aunt M'riar's face was visible where she stood back near the staircase; it was white with terror. She gasped out:—"Let him go; I'll come directly!" and ran upstairs. Gwen heard her call to the children, more collectedly, to come down, as the lady was there, and then apparently retreat into her room, shutting the door. Thereon the children came rushing down, and before she could get attention to her inquiry as to who that hideous man was, Uncle Mo had pushed the door open. He had not asked that pill-box to explain itself, but had gone straight on to No. 7. Dave met him on the threshold, in a tempest of excitement, exclaiming: —"Oy say, Uncle Mo!—the lady's here. The shoyny one. And oy say, Uncle Mo, the Man's been." The last words were in a tone to themselves, quite unlike what came before. It was as though Dave had said:—"The millennium has come, but the crops are spoiled." He added:—"Oy saw the Man, out of the top window, going away."

Uncle Mo let the millennium stand over. "Which man, old Peppermint Drops?" said he, improvising a name to express an aroma he had detected in his nephew, when he stooped to make sure he was getting his last words right.

"Whoy, the Man," Dave continued, in an undertone that might have related to the Man with the Iron Mask, "the Man me and Micky we sore in Hoyde Park, and said he was a-going to rip Micky up, and Micky he said he should call the Police-Orficers, and the gentleman said...."

"That'll do prime!" said Uncle Mo. For Dave's torrent of identification was superfluous. "I would have laid a guinea I knew his game," added he to himself. Then to Gwen, inside the house with Dolly on her knee:—"You'll excuse me, miss, my lady, these young customers they do insert theirselves—it's none so easy to find a way round 'em, as I say to M'riar.... M'riar gone out?" For it was a surprise to find the children alone entertaining company—and such company!

"There, Dolly, you hear?" said Gwen. "You're not to insert yourself between me and your uncle. Suppose we sit quiet for five minutes!" Dolly subsided. "How do you do, Mr. Wardle!... No, Aunt Maria isn't here, and I'm afraid that man coming worried her. Dave's man.... Oh yes—I saw him. He came out as I came in, three minutes ago. What is the man? Didn't I hear Dave telling how Micky said he should give him to the Police? I wish Micky had, and the Police had found out who he's murdered. Because he's murdered somebody, that man! I saw it in his eyes."

"He's a bad character," said Mo. "If he don't get locked up, it won't be any fault of mine. On'y that'll be after I've squared a little account I have against him—private affair of my own. If you'll excuse me half a minute, I'll go up and see what's got M'riar." But Uncle Mo was stopped at the stair-foot by the reappearance of Aunt M'riar at the stair-top. As they met halfway up, both paused, and Gwen heard what it was easy to guess was Aunt M'riar's tale of "the Man's" visit, and Uncle Mo's indignation. They must have conversed thus in earnest undertones for full five minutes, before Aunt M'riar said audibly:—"Now we mustn't keep the lady waiting no longer, Mo"; and both returned, making profuse apologies. The interval of their absence had been successfully and profitably filled in by an account of how Mrs. Picture had been taken to see Jones's Bull, with a rough sketch of the Bull's demeanour in her company.

Aunt M'riar made amends to the best of her abilities for her desertion. Perhaps the young lady knew what she meant when she said she had been giv' rather a turn? The young lady did indeed. Aunt M'riar hoped she had not been alarmed by her exit. Nor by the person who had gone out? No—Gwen's nerves had survived both, though certainly the person wasn't a beauty. She went on to hope that the effects of the turn he had given Aunt M'riar would not be permanent. These being pooh-poohed by both Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar, became negligible and lapsed.

"The children came running down directly after you went, Aunt Maria," said Gwen. "So I can assure you I didn't lose my temper at being left alone. I wasn't alone two minutes!" Then she gave, in reply to a general inquiry after the fever patient, inaugurated by Dave with:—"Oy say, how's Sister Nora?"—the very favourable report she had just received from Dr. Dalrymple.

Then Mrs. Prichard was rushed into the conversation by a sudden inexplicable statement of Dolly's. "When Mrs. Spicture comes back," said she, "Granny Marrowbone is to pour out Mrs. Spicture's tea. And real Cake. And stoast cut in sloyces wiv real butter."

"Don't get excited, Dolly dear," said Gwen, protesting against the amount of leg-action that accompanied this ukase. "Tell us again! Why is Granny Marrable to make tea? Granny Marrable's at her house in the country. She's not coming here with Mrs. Spicture."

"There, now, Dolly!" said Aunt M'riar. "Why don't you tell clear, a bit at a time, and get yourself understood? Granny Marrowbone's the new name, my lady, she's christened her doll, Dolly. So she should be known apart, Dolly being, as you might say, Dolly herself. Because her uncle he pointed out to her, 'Dolly,' he said, 'you're in for thinkin' out some new name for this here baby of yours, to say which is which. Or 'us you'll get that mixed up, nobody'll know!'"

"I put my oar in," said Uncle Mo, "for to avoid what they call coarmplications nowadays." He never lost an opportunity of hinting at the fallings off of the Age. "So she and Dave they turns to and thinks one out. I should have felt more like Sally or Sooky or Martilda myself. Or Queen Wictoria." The last was a gracious concession to Her Majesty; who, in the eyes of Uncle Mo, had recently come to the throne.

"No!" said Dolly firmly. "Gwanny Mawwowbone!" This was very articulately delivered, the previous, or slipshod, pronunciation having been more nearly Granny Mallowbone.

"Certainly!" said Gwen, assenting. "Dolly's dolly Dolly shall be Granny Marrowbone. Only it makes Dolly out rather old."

Dolly seemed to take exception to this. "I was four on my birfday," said she. "I shan't be five not till my next birfday, such a long, long, long, long time."

"And you'll stop four till you're five," said Gwen. "Won't you, Dolly dear? What very blue eyes the little person has!" They were fixed on the speaker with all the solemnity the contemplation of a geological period of Time inspires. The little person nodded gravely—about the Time, not about her eyes—and said:—"Ass!"

Dave thrust himself forward as an interpreter of Dolly's secret wishes, saying, to the astonishment of his aunt and uncle:—"Dorly wants to take her upstairs to show her where the tea's to be set out when Mrs. Spicture comes back."

Remonstrance was absolutely necessary, but what form could it take? Aunt M'riar was forced back on her usual resource, her lack of previous experience of a similar enormity:—"Well, I'm sure, a big boy like you to call a lady her! I never did, in all my born days!" Uncle Mo meanly threw the responsibility of the terms of an absolutely necessary amendment on the culprit himself, saying:—"You're a nice young monkey! Where's your manners? Is that what they larn you to say at school? What's a lady's name when you speak to her?" He had no one but himself to thank for the consequences. Dave, who, jointly with Dolly, was just then on the most intimate footing with the young lady, responded point-blank:—"Well—Gwen, then! She said so. Sister Gwen."

Her young ladyship's laugh rang out with such musical cordiality that the two horror-stricken faces relaxed, and Uncle Mo's got so far as the beginning of a smile. "It's all quite right," said Gwen. "I told Dave I was Gwen just this minute when you were upstairs. He's made it 'sister'—so we shan't be compromised, either of us." Whereupon Dave, quite in the dark, assented from sheer courtesy.

Aunt M'riar seemed to think it a reasonable arrangement, and Uncle Mo, with a twinkle in his eye, said:—"It's better than hollerin' out 'she' and 'her,' like a porter at a railway-station."

But her ladyship had not come solely to have a symposium with Dave and Dolly. So she suggested that both should go upstairs and rehearse the slaughter of the fatted calf; that is to say, distribute the apparatus of the banquet that was to welcome Mrs. Picture back. Dave demurred at first, on the score of his maturity, but gave way when an appeal was made to some equivalent of patriotism whose existence was taken for granted; and consented, as it were, to act on the Committee.

"Now, don't you come running down to say it's ready, not till I give leave," said Aunt M'riar, having misgivings that the apparatus might not be sufficiently—suppose we affect a knowledge of Horace, and say "Persian"—to keep the Committee employed.

"They'll be quiet enough for a bit," said Uncle Mo. Who showed insight by adding:—"They won't agree about where the things are to be put, nor what's to be the cake." For a proxy had to be found, to represent the cake. Even so Lancelot stood at the altar with Guinevere, as Arthur's understudy for the part of bridegroom.

"Do please now all sit down and be comfortable," said Gwen, as soon as tranquillity reigned. "Because I want to talk a great deal.... Yes—about Mrs. Prichard. I really should be comfortabler if you sat down.... Well—Mr. Wardle can sit on the table if he likes." So that compromise was made, and Gwen got to business. "I really hardly know how to begin telling you," she said. "What has happened is so very odd.... Oh no—I have seen to that. The woman she is with will take every care of her.... You know—Widow Thrale, Dave's Granny's daughter, who had charge of Dave—Strides Cottage, of course! I'm sure she'll be all right as far as that goes. But the whole thing is so odd.... Stop a minute!—perhaps the best way would be for me to read you Mrs. Thrale's letter that she has written me. She must be very nice." This throwing of the burden of disclosure on her correspondent seemed to Gwen to be on the line of least resistance. She was feeling bewildered already as to how on earth the two old sisters could be revealed to one another, and her mind was casting about for any and every guidance from any quarter that could lead her to the revelation naturally. There was no quarter but Sapps Court. So try it, at least!

She read straight on without interruption, except for expressions of approval or concurrence from her hearers when they heard the writer's declaration of how impressionnée she had been by the old lady, until she came to the first reference to the gist of the letter, her mental soundness. Then both broke into protest. "Delusions!" they exclaimed at once. Old Mrs. Prichard subject to delusions? Not she! Never was a saner woman, of her years, than old Mrs. Prichard!

"I only wish," said Uncle Mo, "that I may never be no madder than Goody Prichard. Why, it's enough to convince you she's in her senses only to hear her say good-arternoon!" This meant that Uncle Mo's visits upstairs had always been late in the day, and that her greeting to him would have impressed him with her sanity, had it ever been called in question.

"On'y fancy!" said Aunt M'riar indignantly. "To say Mrs. Prichard's deluded, and her living upstairs with Mrs. Burr this three years past, and Skillicks for more than that, afore ever she come here!" This only wanted the addition that Mrs. Burr had seen no sign of insanity in all these years, to be logical and intelligible.

Gwen found no fault, because she saw what was meant. But there was need for a caution. "You won't say anything of this till I tell you," said she. "Not even to Mrs. Burr. It would only make her uncomfortable." For why should all the old lady's belongings be put on the alert to discover flaws in her understanding? Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar gave the pledge asked for, and Gwen went on reading. They just recognised the water-mill as an acquaintance of last year—not as a subject of frequent conversation with Dave. Aunt M'riar seemed greatly impressed with the old lady's excursion out of bed to get at the mill-model, especially at its having occurred before six in the morning. Also by the dog.

Uncle Mo was more practically observant. When the reading came to the two mills in Essex, he turned to Aunt M'riar, saying:—"She said summat about Essex—you told me." Aunt M'riar said:—"Well, now, I couldn't say!" in the true manner of a disappointing witness. But when, some sentences later, the reference came to the two little girl twins, Uncle Mo suddenly broke in with:—"Hullo!... Never mind!—go on"; as apologizing for his interruption. Later still, unable to constrain himself any longer:—"Didn't—you—tell—me, M'riar, that Mrs. P. she told you her father lived at Darenth in Essex?"

"No, Mo, that's not the name. Durrant was the name she said." Aunt M'riar was straining at a gnat. However, solemn bigwigs have done that before now.

"Nigh enough for most folks," said Uncle Mo. "Just you think a bit and see what she said her father's name was."

"She never said his name, Mo. She never said a single name to me, not that I can call to mind, not except it was Durrant."

"Very well, then, M'riar! Now I come to my point. Didn't—you—tell—me—a'most the very first time you did anything—didn't you tell me Mrs. P. she said she was a twin. And Dave he made enquiries."

"She was a twin."

"I'm stumped," said Uncle Mo. "I was always groggy over the guessing of co-nundrums. Now, miss—my lady—what does your ladyship make of it?"

"Let me read to the end," said Gwen. "It's not very long now. Then I'll tell you." She read on and finished the letter, all but the postscript. She was saying to herself:—"If I stick so over telling these good people now, what will it be when the crisis comes?" It would be good practice, anyhow, to drive it home to Aunt M'riar. When she had quite finished what she meant to read, she went straight on, as she had promised, ignoring obstacles:—"The explanation is that Mrs. Marrable and Mrs. Prichard are twin sisters, who parted fifty years ago. About five years later Mrs. Prichard was deceived by a forged letter, telling her that her sister was drowned. My father and I found it among her papers, and read it. This Mrs. Thrale who writes to me is her own daughter, whom she left in England nearly fifty years since—a baby!... And now she thinks her mother mad—her own mother!... Oh dear!—how will they ever know? Who will tell them?"

A low whistle and a gasp respectively were all that Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar were good for. A reissue of the gasp might have become "Merciful Gracious!" or some equivalent, if Uncle Mo had not nipped it in the bud, thereby to provide a fulcrum for his own speech. "'Arf a minute, M'riar! Your turn next. I want to be clear, miss—my lady—that I've got the record ack-rate. These here two ladies have been twins all their lives, unbeknown...." Uncle Mo was so bewildered that this amount of confusion was excusable.

Gwen took his meaning, instead of criticizing his form. "Not all their lives," she said. "Fifty years ago they were thirty, and it's all happened since then." She went over the ground again, not letting her hearers off even the most incredible of the facts. She was surprised and relieved to find that they seemed able to receive them, only noticing that they appeared to lean on her superior judgment. They were dumfoundered, of course; but they could believe, with such a helper for their unbelief. Were not the deep-rooted faiths of maturity, once, the child's readiness to believe its parents infallible, and would not any other indoctrination have held as firmly? Even so the rather childish minds of Dave's guardians made no question of the credibility of the tale, coming as it did from such an informant—one without a shadow of interest in the fabrication of it.

Aunt M'riar made no attempt at anything beyond mere exclamation; until, after the second detailed review of the facts, Gwen was taken aback by her saying suddenly:—"Won't it be a'most cruel, when you come to think of it?..."

"Won't what be cruel, Aunt M'riar?"

"For to tell 'em. Two such very elderly parties, and all the time gone by! I say, let the rest go! I should think twice about it. But it ain't for me to say." She seemed to have a sudden inspiration towards decision of opinion, a thing rare with her. It was due, no doubt, to her own recent experience of an unwelcome resurrection from the Past.

"'Tain't any consarn of ours to choose, M'riar. Just you go over to their side o' the hedge for a minute. Suppose you was Goody Prichard, and Goody Prichard was you!"

"Well! Suppose!"

"Which would you like? Her to bottle up, or tell?" Aunt M'riar wavered. A momentary hope of Gwen's, that perhaps Aunt M'riar's way out of the difficulty might hold good, died at its birth, killed by Uncle Mo's question.

Which would Gwen have liked, herself, in Mrs. Prichard's place? Aunt M'riar was evidently looking to her for an answer.

"I'm afraid there's no help for it, Aunt Maria," said she. "She must be told. But don't be afraid I shall leave the telling to you. I shall go back and tell her myself in a day or two."

"Will she come back here?" This question raised a new doubt. Would either of the two old twins care to leave the other, after that formidable disclosure had been achieved? It was looking too far ahead. Gwen felt that the evil of the hour was sufficient for the day, or indeed the next three weeks for that matter, and evaded the question with an answer to that effect.

Then, as no more was to be gained by talking, seeing that she could not give all her proofs in detail, she suggested that she should go up to Mrs. Prichard's room to say good-bye to Dave and Dolly. Promises could not be ignored between honourable people. Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar quite concurred. "But," said they, almost in the same breath, "are the children to know?"

Gwen had not considered the point. "No—yes—no!" she said, and then revoked. "Really, though, I don't know, after all, why they shouldn't! What harm can it do?"

What harm indeed? Mo and M'riar looked the question at each other, and neither looked a negative reply. Very good, then! Dave and Dolly were to know, but who was to tell?

Gwen considered again. Then it flashed across her mind that the disclosure of the relationship of his two Grannies could have no distressing effect on Dave. Time and Change and Death are only names, to a chick not eight years old, and nothing need be told of the means by which the sisters' lives had been cut apart. As for Dolly, she would either weep or laugh at a piece of news, according to the suggestions of her informant. Passionless narrative would leave her unaffected either way. Told as good news, this would be accepted as good, and it would be a pleasure to tell it to those babies.

"I'll tell them myself," said she. "Don't you come up. Is Mrs. Burr there?" No—Mrs. Burr was at Mrs. Ragstroar's, attending to a little job for her. Gwen vanished up the stairs, and her welcome was audible below.

She did not mince matters, and the two young folks were soon crowing with delight at her statement, made with equanimity, that she knew that Granny Marrowbone was really old Mrs. Picture's sister. She saw no reason for making the announcement thrilling. It was enough to say that each of them had been told wicked lies about the other, and been deceived by bad people, such as there was every reason to hope were not to be found in Sapps Court, or the neighbourhood. "And each of them," she added, "thought the other was dead and buried, a long time ago!" Inexplicably, she felt it easier to say dead and buried, than merely dead.

Dolly, having been recently in collision with Time, saw her way to profitable comparison. "A long, long, long time, like my birfday!" she said, suggestively but unstructurally.

"Heaps longer," said Gwen. "Heaps and heaps!" Dolly was impressed, almost cowed. She could not be even with these æons and eras and epochs, at her time of life.

Dave burst into a shout of unrestrained glee at the discovery that his London and country Grannies were sisters. "Oy shall wroyte to say me and Dolly are glad. Ever such long letters to bofe." A moment later his face had clouded over. "Oy say!" said he, "will they be glad or sorry?"

"Glad," said Gwen venturesomely. "Why should they be sorry? You must write them very, very long letters." The mine would be sprung, she thought, before even a short letter was finished. But it was as well to be on the safe side.

Dave was feeling the germination in his mind of hitherto unexperienced thoughts about Death and Time, and he remained speechless. He shook his head with closed lips and puzzled blue eyes fixed on his questioner. She saw a little way into his mind as he looked up at her, and pinched his cheek slightly, for sympathy, with the hand that was round his neck, but said nothing. Children are so funny!

"I fink," said Dolly, "old Mrs. Spicture shall bring old Granny Marrowbone back wiv her when she comes back and sets in her harm-chair wiv scushions, and Mrs. Burr cuts the reel cake, wiv splums, in sloyces, in big sloyces and little sloyces, and Mrs. Burr pawses milluck in my little jug, and Mrs. Burr pawses tea in my little pot—ass, hot tea!—and ven Doyvy shall cally round the scups and sources, but me to paw it out"—this clause was merely to assert the supremacy of Woman in household matters—"and ven all ve persons to help veirself to shoogy.... etc., etc. Which might have run on musically for ever, but that a difficulty arose about the names of the guests and their entertainer. It was most unfortunate that the latter should have been rechristened lately after one of the former. Her owner interpreted her to express readiness to accept another name, and that of Gweng was selected, as a compliment to the visitor.

Then it really became time for that young lady to depart. Think of that doctor's pill-box waiting all this while round the corner! So she ended what she did not suspect was her last look at old Mrs. Picture's apartment, with the fire's last spasmodic flicker helping the gas-lamp below in the Court to show Dolly, unable to tear herself away from the glorious array of preparation on the floor. There it stood, just under the empty chair with cushions, still waiting—waiting for its occupant to come again; and meanwhile a Godsend to the cat, who resumed her place the moment the intruder rose from it, with an implication that her forbearance had been great indeed to endure exclusion for so long. There was no more misgiving on the face of that little maid, putting the fiftieth touch on the perfection of her tea-cup arrangements, that her ideal entertainment would never compass realisation, than there was on the faces of the Royal Pair in their robes and decorations, gazing firmly across at Joan of Arc and St. George, in plaster, but done over bronze so you couldn't tell; precious possessions of Mrs. Burr, who was always inquiring what it would cost to repair Joan's sword—which had disintegrated and laid bare the wire in its soul—and never getting an estimate. Nor on the face of Mrs. Burr herself, coming upstairs from her job out at Mrs. Ragstroar's, and beaming—prosaically, but still beaming—on the young lady that had come to see her at the Hospital.

---

"Oh, I remember, by-the-by," said that young lady, three minutes later, having really said adieu all round to the family; including Dolly, who had suddenly awakened to the position, and overtaken her at the foot of the stairs. "I remember there was something else I wanted to ask you, Aunt Maria. Did Mrs. Prichard ever talk to you about her son?"

Was it wonderful that Aunt M'riar should start and flinch from speech, and that Uncle Mo should look preoccupied about everything outside the conversation? Can you imagine the sort of feeling an intensely truthful person like Aunt M'riar would have under such circumstances? How could she, without feeling like duplicity itself, talk about this son as though he were unknown to her, when his foul presence still hung about the room he had quitted less than an hour since? That fact, and that she had seen him, then and there, face to face with her beautiful questioner, weighed heavier on her at that moment than her own terrible relation to him, a discarded wife oppressed by an uncancelled marriage.

She had got to answer that question. "Mrs. Prichard has a son," she said. "But he's no good." This came with a jerk—perhaps with a weak hope that it might eject him from the conversation.

"She hasn't set eyes on him, didn't she say, for years past?" said old Mo, seeing that M'riar wanted help. Also with a hope of eliminating the convict. "Didn't even know whether he was living or dead, did she?"

The reply, after consideration, was:—"No-o! She said that."

And then Gwen looked from one to the other. "Oh-h!" said she. "Then probably the man was her son.... Look here! I must read you the postscript I left out." She reopened Mrs. Thrale's letter, and read that the writer's mother had been much upset by a man who laid claim to being Mrs. Prichard's son. As her eyes were on the letter, she did not see the glance of reciprocal intelligence that passed between her two listeners. But she looked up after the last word of the postscript in time to see the effect of the dog at Strides Cottage. Even as her father had been influenced, so was Uncle Mo. He appeared to breathe freer for that dog. It struck Gwen that Aunt M'riar seemed a little unenquiring and uncommunicative about this son of Mrs. Prichard's, considering all the circumstances.

When Gwen had departed, Aunt M'riar, seeing perhaps interrogation in Mo's eyes, stopped it by saying:—"Don't you ask me no more questions, not till these children are clear off to bed. I'll tell after supper." And then, just that moment, Mr. Alibone looked in, and was greatly impressed by Dave and Dolly's dramatic account of their visitor. "I've seen her, don't you know?" he said. "When you was put about to get that lock open t'other day. She's one among a million. If I was a blooming young Marquish, I should just knock at her door till she had me moved on. That's what, Mo. So might you, old man." To which Uncle Mo replied:—"They've stood us over too long, Jerry. If they don't look alive, they won't get a chance to make either of us a Marquish. I expect they're just marking time." Which Dave listened to with silent, large-eyed gravity. Some time after he expressed curiosity about the prospects of these Marquisates, and made inquiry touching the relation "marking time" had to them. Uncle Mo responded that it wouldn't be so very long now, and described the ceremonies that would accompany it—something like Lord Mayor's Show, with a flavour of Guy Fawkes Day.

However, Dave and Dolly went to bed this evening without even that inaccurate enlightenment. And presently Mr. Alibone, detecting his friend's meaning when he said he was deadly sleepy somehow to-night, took his leave and went away to finish his last pipe at The Sun.

And then Mo and M'riar were left to resume the day, and make out its meaning. "How long had the feller been here?" he asked, in order to begin somewhere.

Aunt M'riar took the question too much to heart, and embarked on an intensely accurate answer. "I couldn't say not to a minute," she said. "But if you was to put it at ten minutes, I'd have felt it safer at seven. The nearer seven the better, I should say."

"Anyhow—not a twelvemonth!" said Mo. "And there he was skearing you out of your wits, when the lady came in and di-verted of him off. Where was the two young scaramouches all the while?"

"Them I'd sent upstairs when I see who it was outside. Dave he never see him, not to look at!"

"He see him out of the top window, and knew him again. What had the beggar got to say for hisself?" This was the gist of the matter, and Uncle Mo settled down to hear it.

"He'd been to look after his mother in the country, at the place I told him—and the more fool me for telling—and he thought he spotted her, but it was some other old woman, and while he was talking to her, there to be sure and if he didn't see a police-officer after him!"

"What did he do on that?"

"Oh, he run for it, and was all but took. But he got away to the railway, and the officer followed him. And when he saw him coming up, he jumped in the wrong train, that was just starting, and got carried to Manchester. And he got back to London by the night train."

"And then he come on here, and found I was in the parlour—round at Joe Jeffcoat's. He thought he see his way to another half-a-sovereign out of you, M'riar, and that's what he come for. He thought I was safe for just the du-ration of a pipe or two."

"What brought you back, Mo?"

"Well, ye see, I heard his ugly voice out in the front bar, askin' for me. And I only thought he was a sporting c'rackter come to see what the old scrapper looked like in his old age. Then I couldn't think for a minute or two because of old Billy's clapper going, but when I did, his face came back to me atop of his voice. More by token when he never showed up! Ye see?" Aunt M'riar nodded an exact understanding of what had happened. "And then I take it he come sneaking down here to see for some cash, if he could get it. He'll come again, old girl, he'll come again! And Simeon Rowe shall put on a man in plain clothes, to watch for him when I'm away."

"Oh, Mo, don'tee say that! It was only his make-believe to frighten me. Anyone could tell that only to see him flourishin' out his knife."

"Hay—what's that?—his knife? You never told me o' that."

"Why, Mo, don't ye see, I only took it for bounce."

"What was it about his knife?"

"Just this, Mo dear! Now, don't you be excited. He says to me again:—'What are you good for, Polly Daverill?' And then I see he was handling a big knife with a buckhorn handle." M'riar was tremulous and tearful. "Oh, Mo!" she said. "Do consider! He wasn't that earnest, to be took at a chance word. He ain't so bad as you think of him. He was only showin' off like, to get the most he could."

"That's a queer way of showin' off—with a knife! P'r'aps it warn't open, though?" But it was, by M'riar's silence. "Anyways," Mo continued, "he won't come back so long as he thinks I'm here. To-morrow morning first thing I shall just drop round to the Station, and tip 'em a wink. Can't have this sort o' thing goin' on!"

M'riar's lighting of a candle seemed to hang fire. Said she:—"You'd think it a queer thing to say, if I was to say it, Mo!" And then, in reply to the natural question:—"Think what?" she continued:—"A woman's husband ain't like any other man. She's never quite done with him, as if he was nobody. It don't make any odds how bad he's been, nor yet how long ago it was.... It makes one creep to think...." She stopped abruptly, and shuddered.

"What he'll catch if he gets his deserts." Mo supplied an end for the sentence, gravely.

"Ah!—he might be.... What would it be, Mo, if he was tried and found guilty?"

"Without a recommendation to mercy? It was a capital offence. I never told it ye. Shall I tell it?"

"No—for God's sake!" Aunt M'riar stopped her ears tight as she had done before. "Don't you tell me nothing, Mo, more than I know already. That's plenty." Uncle Mo nodded, pointed to tightly closed lips to express assent, and she resumed speech with hearing. "Capital offence means ... means?..."

"Means he would go to the scragging-post, arter breakfast one morning. There's no steering out o' that fix, M'riar. He's just got to, one day, and there's an end of it!"

"And how ever could I be off knowing it at the time? Oh, but it makes me sick to think of! The night before—the night before, Mo! Supposin' I wake in the night, and think of him, and hear the clocks strike! He'll hear them too, Mo."

"Can't be off it, M'riar! But what of that? He won't be a penny the worse, and he'll know what o'clock it is." Remember that Uncle Mo had some particulars of Daverill's career that Aunt M'riar had not. For all she knew, the criminal's capital offence might have been an innocent murder—a miscarriage in the redistribution of some property—a too zealous garrotting of some fat old stockjobber. "I'm thinkin' a bit of the other party, M'riar," said Mo. He might have said more, but he was brought up short by his pledge to say nothing of the convict's last atrocity. How could he speak the thought in his mind, of the mother of the victim in a madhouse? For that had made part of the tale, as it had reached him through the police-sergeant. So he ended his speech by saying:—"What I do lies at my own door, M'riar. You're out of it. So I shan't say another word of what I will do or won't do. Only I tell you this, that if I could get a quiet half an hour with the gentleman, I'd ... What would I do?... Well!—I'd save him from the gallows—I would! Ah!—and old as I am, I'd let him keep a hold on his knife.... There—there, old lass! I do wrong to frighten ye, givin' way to bad temper. Easy does it!"

For a double terror of the woman's position was bred of that mysterious, inextinguishable love that never turns to hate, however hateful its object may become; and her dread that if this good, unwieldy giant—that was what Mo seemed—crossed his path, that jack-knife might add another to her husband's many crimes. This dread and counter-dread had sent all Aunt M'riar's blood to her heart, and she might have fallen, but that Mo's strong hand caught her in time, and landed her in a chair. "I was wrong—I was wrong!" said he gently. All the fires had died down before the pallor of her face, and his only thought was how could she be spared if the destroyer of her life was brought to justice.

They said no more; what more was there to be said? Aunt M'riar came round, refusing restoratives. Oh no, she would be all right! It was only a turn she got—that common event! They adjourned, respectively, to where Dolly and Dave were sleeping balmily, profoundly.

But Uncle Mo was discontented with the handiwork of Creation. Why should a cruel, two-edged torture be invented for, and inflicted on, an inoffensive person like M'riar? There didn't seem any sense in it. "If only," said he to his inner soul, "they'd a-let me be God A'mighty for five minutes at the first go-off, I'd a-seen to it no such a thing shouldn't happen." Less than five minutes would have been necessary, if a full and unreserved concession of omnipotence had been made.

---

Dave was a man of his word, though a very young one. He seized the earliest opportunity to indite two letters of congratulation to his honorary grandmothers, including Dolly in his rejoicing at the discovery of their relationship. He wrote as though such discoveries were an everyday occurrence.

His mistakes in spelling were few, the principal one arising from an old habit of thought connecting the words sister and cistern, which had survived Aunt M'riar's frequent attempts at correction. When he exhibited his Identical Notes to the Powers for their sanction and approval, this was pointed out to him, and an allegation that he was acting up to previous instructions disallowed nem. con. He endeavoured to lay to heart that for the future cistern was to be spelt sister, except out on the leads. A holographic adjustment of the c, and erasure of the n, was scarcely a great success, but the Powers supposed it would do. Uncle Mo opposed Aunt M'riar's suggestion that the two letters should go in one cover to Strides Cottage, for economy, as mean-spirited and parsimonious, although he had quite understood that the two Grannies were under one roof; otherwise Dave would have directed to Mrs. Picture at the Towers. So to Strides Cottage they went, some three days later.

---

CHAPTER XIV

HOW THE COUNTESS AND HER DAUGHTER WENT BACK TO THE TOWERS, AND GWEN READ HER LETTERS IN THE TRAIN. THE TORPEYS, THE RECTOR, AND THE BISHOP. HOW THE COUNTESS SHUT HER EYES, AND GWEN HARANGUED. WHO WAS LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS? THE UP-EXPRESS, AND ITS VIRUS. HOW GWEN RESOLVED TO RUSH THE POSITION. AT STRIDES COTTAGE. HOW GWEN BECAME MORE AND MORE ALIVE TO HER DIFFICULTIES. HOW SHE WENT TO SEE DR. NASH. HIS INCREDULITY. AND HIS CONVERSION. HOW HE WOULD SEE GRANNY MARRABLE, BY ALL MEANS. BUT! HOWEVER, BY GOOD LUCK, MUGGERIDGE HAD FORGOTTEN HIS MARRIAGE VOWS, HALF A CENTURY AGO AND MORE

It was written in the Book of Fate, and printed in the Morning Post, that the Countess of Ancester was leaving for Rocestershire, and would remain over Christmas. After which she would probably pay a visit to her daughter, Lady Philippa Brandon, at Vienna. The Earl would join her at the Towers after a short stay at Bath, according to his lordship's annual custom. The Post did not commit itself as to his lordship's future movements, because Fate had not allowed the Editor to look in her Book.

And the Countess herself seemed to know no more than the Post. For when her daughter, in the railway-carriage on the way to the Towers, looked up from a letter she was reading over and over again, to say:—"I suppose it's no use trying to persuade papa to come to Vienna, after all?" her mother's answer was:—"You can try, my dear. You may have some influence with him. I have none. I suppose when we're gone, he'll just get wrapped up in his fiddles and books and old gim-cracks, as he always does the minute my eyes are off him." Gwen made no comment upon inconsistencies, becoming reabsorbed in her letter. But surely a Countess whose eyes prevent an Earl getting wrapped up in fiddles is not absolutely without influence over him.

Gwen's absorbing letter was from Irene, incorporating dictation from Adrian. The writer had found the accepted Official form:—"I am to say," convenient in practice. Thus, for instance, "I am to say that he is not counting the hours till your return, as it seems to him that the total, when reached, will be of no use to him or anyone else. He prefers to accept our estimate of the interval as authentic, and to deduct each hour as it passes. He is at eighty-six now, and expects to be at sixty-two at this time to-morrow, assuming that he can trust the clock while he's asleep." Gwen inferred that the amanuensis had protested, to go on to a more interesting point, as the letter continued:—"Adrian and I have been talking over what do you think, Gwen dear? Try and guess before you turn over this page I'm just at the end of...." Dots ended the page, and the next began:—"Give it up? Well—only, if I tell you, you must throw this letter in the fire when you have read it—I'm more than half convinced that there was once a tendresse, to put it mildly, between our respective papa and mamma—that is, our respective papa and your respective mamma—not the other way, that's ridiculous! And Adrian is coming to my way of thinking, after what happened yesterday. It was at dessert, and papa was quite loquacious, for him—in his best form, saying:—'Niggers, niggers, niggers! What does that blessed Duchess of Sutherland want to liberate niggers for? Much better wollop 'em!' The Duchess was, he said, an hysterical female. Mamma was unmoved and superior. Perhaps papa would call Lady Ancester hysterical, too. She was at Stafford House, and was most enthusiastic. She had promised to drive over as soon as she came back, to talk about Negro slavery, and see if something could not be done in the neighbourhood. Mamma hoped she would interest the Torpeys and the Rector and the Bishop. Only the point was that the moment our mamma mentioned yours, papa shut up with a snap, and never said another word. It struck me exactly as it struck Adrian. And when we came to talk it over we agreed that, if it were, it would account for our having been such strangers till last year."

Gwen was roused from weighing the possibilities of the truth of this surmise by the voice of one of its subjects. "How very engrossing our letters seem to be this morning!" said the Countess, with a certain air of courteous toleration, as of seniority on Olympus. "But perhaps I have no right to inquire." This with empressement.

"Don't be so civil, mamma dear, please!" said Gwen. "I do hate civility.... No, there's nothing of interest. Yes—there is. Lady Torrens says she hopes you won't forget your promise to come and talk about abolishing negroes. I didn't know you were going to."

The Countess skipped details. "Let me see the letter," said she, forsaking her detached superiority. She began to polish a double eyeglass prematurely.

"Can't show the letter," said Gwen equably, as one secure in her rights. "That's all—what I've told you! Says you promised to drive over and talk, and she hoped to interest you—oh no!—it's not you, it's the Torpeys are to be interested."

"Oh—the Torpeys," said the Countess freezingly. Because it was humiliating to have to put away those double eyeglasses. "Perhaps if there is anything else of interest you will tell me. Do not trouble to read the whole."

"But did you promise to drive over to Pensham? Because, if you did, we may just as well go together. With all those men at the Towers, I shall have to bespeak Tom Kettering and the mare."

"I think something was said about my going over. But I certainly made no promise." Her ladyship reflected a moment, and then said:—"I think we had better be free lances. I am most uncertain. It's a long drive. If I do go, I shall lunch at the Parysforts, which is more than half-way, and go on in the afternoon to your aunt at Poynders. Then I need not come back till the day after. I could call at Pensham by the way."

"I won't go to old Goody Parysforts—so that settles the matter! When shall I tell Adrian's mamma you are coming?"

"Are you going there at once?"

"Yes—to-morrow. I must see Adrian to talk to him about my old ladies, before I talk to either of them." Thereupon the Countess became prodigiously interested in the story of the twins, a subject about which she had been languid hitherto, and her daughter was not sorry, because she did not want to be asked again what Irene had said, which might have involved her in reading that young lady's text aloud, with extemporised emendations, possibly complex. She put that letter away, to re-read another time, and took out another one. "I've had this," she said, "from old Mrs. Prichard. But there's nothing in it!"

"Nothing in it?"

"Nothing about what Widow Thrale told us in hers. Nothing about Mrs. Thrale thinking she had gone dotty."

The Countess, with a passing rebuke of her daughter's phraseology, asked to be reminded of the story. Gwen, embarking on a résumé, was interrupted by a tunnel, and then had hardly begun again when the train rushed into a second section of it, which had slipped or been blown further along the line. However, Peace ensued, in a land where, to all appearance, notice-boards were dictating slow speeds from interested motives, as there was no reason in life against quick ones. Gwen took advantage of it to read Mrs. Prichard's letter aloud, with comments. This was the letter:—

"'My dear Lady,

"'I am looking forward to your return, and longing for it, for I have much to tell you. I cannot tell of it all now, but I can tell you what is such a happiness to tell, of the sweet kindness of this dear young woman who takes such care of me. A many have been very very kind to me, and what return have I to make, since my dear husband died?'...

"Her dear husband, don't you see, mamma, was the infamous monster that wrote the forged letter that did it all.... Papa read it to you, didn't he?"

"My dear, it's no use asking me what your father read or did not read to me, for really the last few days have been such a whirl. It always is, in London. However, go on! I know the letter you mean—what you were telling me about. Only I can't say I made head or tail of it at the time. Go on!" Her ladyship composed herself to listen with her eyes shut, and Gwen read on:—

"'But never, no never, was such patient kindness to a tiresome old woman, because that is what I am, and I know, my dear. I know, my dear, that I owe this to you, and it is for your sake, but it ought to be, and that is right. I do not say things always like I want to. She says her own mother is no use to her, because she is so strong and never ill, and I am good to nurse. But she is coming back very soon, and I shall see her. She is my Davy's other Granny, you know, and I am sure she must be good. I cannot write more, but oh, how good you have been to me!

"'Your loving and dutiful
"'Maisie Prichard.

"'I must say this to you, that she lets me call her her name Ruth. That was my child's I left at our Dolly's age, who was drowned.'

"Now are you sure, mamma," said Gwen, not without severity, "that you quite understand that it's the same Ruth? That this Widow Thrale is the little girl that old Mrs. Prichard has gone on believing drowned, all these years? Are you quite clear that old Granny Marrable actually is the twin sister she has not seen for fifty years? Are you certain...?"

"My dear Gwen, I beg you won't harangue. Besides, I can't hear you because the train's going quick again. It always does, just here.... No—I understand perfectly. These two old persons have not seen each other for fifty years, and it's very interesting. Only I don't see what they have to complain of. They have only got to be told, and made to understand how the mistake came about. I think they ought to be told, you know."

"Oh dear, what funny things maternal parents are! Mamma dear, you are just like Thothmes, who said:—'Better late than never'!"

"Who is 'Thothmes'?" Her ladyship knew perfectly well.

"Well—Lincoln's Inn Fields—if you prefer it! Mr. Hawtrey. He's like a cork that won't come out. I cannot understand people like you and Mr. Hawtrey. I suppose you will say that you and he are not in it, and I am?"

"I shall say nothing, my dear. I never do." The Countess retired to the Zenith, meekly. The train was picking up its spirits, audibly, but cautiously. The flank fire of hints about speed had subsided, and it had all the world before it, subject to keeping on the line and screeching when called on to do so by the Company.

"I wonder," said Gwen, "whether you have realised that that dear old soul is calling her own daughter Ruth 'Ruth,' without knowing who she is."

"Oh dear yes—perfectly! But suppose she is—what does it matter?" The conversation was cut short by the more than hysterical violence of the up-express, which was probably the thing that passed, invisible owing to its speed, before its victims could do more than quail and shiver. When it had shrieked and rattled itself out of hearing, it was evident that it had bitten Gwen's engine and poisoned its disposition, for madness set in, and it dragged her train over oily lines and clicketty lines alike at a speed that made conversation impossible.

Gwen was panting to start upon the bewildering task she had before her, but only to put it to the proof, and end the tension. It was impossible to keep the two old twins in the dark, and it seemed to her that delay might make matters worse. As for ingenious schemes to reveal the strange story gradually, some did occur to her, but none bore reconsideration. Probably disaster lay in ambush behind over-ingenuity. Go gently but firmly to the point—that seemed to her a safe rule for guidance. If she could only anchor her dear old fairy godmother in a haven of calm knowledge of the facts, she was less distressingly concerned about the sister and daughter. The former of these was the more prickly thorn of anxiety. Still, she was a wonderfully strong old lady—not like old Mrs. Picture, a semi-invalid. As for the latter, she scarcely deserved to be thought a thorn at all. She might even be relied on to put her feelings in her pocket and help.

Yes—that was an idea! How would it be to make Widow Thrale know the truth first, and then simply tell her that help she must, and there an end! Gwen acted on the impulse produced in her mind during the last twenty minutes of her journey, in which conversation with her mother continued a discomfort, owing to the strong effect which the poisoned tooth or bad example of the down-train express had produced on her own hitherto temperate and reasonable engine. On arriving at Grantley Thorpe she changed her mind about seeing Adrian before visiting Strides Cottage, and petitioned Mr. Sandys, the Station-master, for writing materials, and asked him to send the letter she then and there wrote, by bearer, to Widow Thrale at Chorlton; not because the distance of Strides Cottage from the main road was a serious obstacle to its personal delivery on the way home, but because she wished to avoid seeing any of its occupants until a full interview was possible. Also, she wanted Widow Thrale to be prepared for something unusual. Her letter was:—"I am coming to you to-morrow. I want to talk about dear old Mrs. Prichard, but do not show her this or say anything till I see you. And do not be uneasy or alarmed." She half fancied when she had written it that the last words were too soothing. But this was a mistake. Nothing rouses alarm alike reassurance.

It was a relief to her, between this and an early start for Chorlton next day, to be dragged forcibly away from her dominant anxiety. The Colonel's shooting-party was still in possession at the Towers, though its numbers were dwindling daily. It had never had its full complement, as so many who might have gone to swell it were fighting in the ranks before Sebastopol, or in hospital at Balaklava, cholera-stricken perhaps; or, nominally, waiting till resurrection-time in the cemetery there, or by the Alma, for the grass of a new year to cover them in; but maybe actually—and likelier too—in some strange inconceivable Hades; poor cold ghosts in the dark, marvelling at the crass stupidity of Cain, and even throwing doubts on "glory."

The Colonel's party, belonging to the class that is ready to send all its sons that can bag game or ride to hounds, to be food for powder themselves in any dispute made and provided, was sadly denuded of the young man element, and he himself was fretting with impatience at the medical verdict that had disqualified him for rejoining his regiment with a half-healed lung. But the middle-aged majority, and the civilian juniors—including a shooting parson—could talk of nothing but the War.

Some of us who are old enough will recall easily their own consciousness of the universal war-cloud at this time, when reminded that the details of Inkerman were only lately to hand, and that Florence Nightingale had not long begun to work in the hospital at Scutari. But the immediate excitement of the moment, when the two ladies joined the dinner-party that evening at the Towers, was the frightful storm of which Gwen had already had the first news, which had strewn the coast of the Chersonese with over thirty English wrecks, and sent stores and war material costing millions to the bottom of the Black Sea. She was glad, however, to hear that it was certain that the Agamemnon had been got off the rocks at Balaklava, as she had understood that Granny Marrable had a grandson on the ship.

---

The time was close at hand, within an hour, when Gwen would have to find words to tell her strange impossible story, if not to that dear old silver hair—to those grave peaceful eyes,—at least to one whose measure of her whole life must perforce be changed by it. What would it mean, to Widow Thrale, to have such a subversive fact suddenly sprung upon her?

More than once in her ride to Chorlton it needed all her courage to crush the impulse to tell Tom Kettering to turn the mare round and drive back to the Towers. It would have been so easy to forge some excuse to save her face, and postpone the embarrassing hour till to-morrow. But to what end? It would be absolutely out of the question to leave the sisters in ignorance of each other, even supposing the circumstances made continued ignorance possible. The risks to the health or brain-power of either would surely be greater if the éclaircissement were left to haphazard, than if she were controlling it with a previous knowledge of all the facts. Perhaps Gwen was not aware how much her inborn temperament had to do with her conclusions. Had she been a soldier, she would have volunteered to go on every forlorn hope, on principle. No doubt an "hysterical" temperament, as it is so common among women! But it is a form of hysteria that exists also among men.

Whether or no, here she was at the gate of Strides Cottage, and it was now too late to think of going back. Tom Kettering was requesting the mare, in stable language, not to kick terra firma, or otherwise object to standing, till he had assisted the lady down. She was down without assistance before the mare was convinced of sin, so Tom touched his hat vaguely, but committed himself to nothing. He appeared to understand—as he didn't say he didn't, when instructed—that he was to wait five minutes; and then, if nothing appeared to the contrary, employ himself and the mare in any way they could agree upon, for an hour; and then return to pick her up.

The cat, the only inmate visible at Strides, rose from the threshold to welcome the visitor, with explanations perfectly clear to Gwen—who understood cats—that if it had been within her power to reach the door-latch, she would have opened the door, entirely to accommodate her ladyship. She had no mixture of motives, arising from having been shut out. Gwen threw doubt on this; as, having rung the bell, she waited. She might have rung again but for Elizabeth-next-door; who, coming out with advisory powers, said that Mrs. Thrale was probably engaged with the old lady, but that she herself would go straight in if she was her ladyship. Not being able to reach the latch herself over the privet-hedge between them, the good woman was coming round to open the door, but went back when Gwen anticipated her, and entering the empty front-room, heard the voices in the bedroom behind. How strange it seemed to her, to wait there, overhearing them, and knowing that the old voice was that of a mother speaking to her unknown daughter, and that each was unsuspicious of the other.

The dog who trotted in from the passage between the rooms or beyond it, was no doubt the one Gwen had heard of. He examined her slightly, seemed satisfied, and disappeared as he had come. The cat chose the most comfortable corner by the fire, and went to sleep in it without hesitation. The fire crackled with new dry wood, and exploded a chance wet billet into jets of steam, under a kettle whose lid was tremulous from intermittent stress below.

Otherwise, nothing interfered with the two voices in the room beyond; the mother's, weak with age, but cheerful enough, no unhappy sound about it; the daughter's, cheerful, robust, and musical, rallying and encouraging her as a child, perhaps about some dress obstacle or mystery. The effect on Gwen of listening to them was painful. To hear them, knowing the truth, made that knowledge almost unendurable. Could she possess her soul in peace until what she supposed to be the old lady's toilette was complete?

The question was decided by the dog, who was applying for admission at the door beyond the passage, somewhat diffidently and cautiously. Gwen could just see him, exploring along the door-crack with his nose. Presently, remaining unnoticed from within, he made his voice audible—barely audible, not to create alarm needlessly. It was only to oblige; he had no misgivings about the visitor.

Then Gwen, conceiving that a change in the voices implied that his application had been heard, helped the applicant, by a word or two to identify herself; adding that she was in no hurry, and would wait. Then followed more change in the voices; the mother's exclamation of pleasure; the daughter's recognition of her visitor's dues of courtesy and deference, and their claim for a prompt discharge. Then an opened door, and Widow Thrale herself, not too much overpowered by her obligations to leave the dog's explanations and apologies unacknowledged. The utter unconsciousness this showed of the thing that was to come almost made Gwen feel that the strain on her powers of self-control might become greater than she could bear, and that she might break out with some premature disclosure which would only seem sheer madness to her unprepared hearer.

She could hold out a little yet, though.... Well!—she had got to manage it, by hook or by crook. So—courage! Five minutes of normal causeries, mere currencies of speech, and then the match to the train!

She evolved, with some difficulty, the manner which would be correct in their relative positions; accepted the curtsey before stretching out a hand, guaranteed Olympian, to the plains below. "My dear Mrs. Thrale," said she, choking back excitement to chat-point, "I really am more grateful to you than I can say for taking charge of this dear old lady. I was quite at my wits' end what to do with her. You see, I had to go up to London, because of my cousin's illness—Sister Nora, you know—and it was in the middle of the night, and I was afraid the dear old soul would be uncomfortable at the Towers." She made some pretence of languid indifference to conventional precisions, and of complete superiority to scruples about confessing an error, by adding:—"Most likely I was wrong. One is, usually. But it never seems to matter.... Let's see—what was I saying? Oh—how very kind it was of you to solve the difficulty for me.... Well—to help me out of the scrape!" For Mrs. Thrale had looked the doubt in her mind—could Gurth the Swineherd "solve a difficulty" for Coeur de Lion? She could only do Anglo-Saxon things, legitimately. The point was, however, covered by Gwen's amendment.

Mrs. Thrale had begun a smile of approbation at the phrase "dear old lady," and had felt bound to suspend it for Sister Nora's illness. That was a parenthesis, soon disposed of. The revival of the smile was easy, on the words "dear old soul." She was that, there was no doubt of it, said Mrs. Thrale, adding:—"'Tis for me to be grateful to your ladyship for allowing me the charge of her. I hope your ladyship may not be thinking of taking her away, just yet-a-while?"

"I think not, just at present.... We shall be able to talk of that.... Tell me—how has she been? Because of your letter."

"There now!—when I got your ladyship's note last night I felt a'most ashamed of writing that I had been uneasy or alarmed." Gwen saw that her yesterday's attempt at premonition had missed fire, and Mrs. Thrale added:—"Because—not a word!"

"How do you mean? I don't quite understand."

"She's never said a word since. Not that sort of word! She's just never spoke of the mill, nor Muggeridge, nor my grandfather. And I have said nothing to her, by reason of Dr. Nash's advice. 'Never you talk to a mental patient about their delusions!'—that's what Dr. Nash says. So I never said one word."

Gwen felt sorry she had not made her note of alarm more definite. For the absolute faith of the speaker in her own belief and Dr. Nash's professional infallibility, that a dropped voice and confidential manner seemed to erect as a barrier to enlightenment, made her feel more at a loss than ever how to act. Would it not, after all, be easiest to risk the whole, and speak at once to the old lady herself? She prefigured in her mind the greater ease of telling her story when she could make her own love a palliative to the shock of the revelation, could take on her bosom the old head, stunned and dumfoundered; could soothe the weakness of the poor old hand with the strength and youth of her own. But into that image came a disturbing whim—call it so!—a question from without, not bred of her own mind:—"Is not this the daughter's right?—the prerogative of the flesh and blood that stands before you?" Perhaps Gwen was whimsical sometimes.

If Widow Thrale had said one word to pave the way—had spoken, for instance, of the unaccountableness of the old lady's memories—Gwen might have seen daylight through the wood. But this placid immovable ascription of the whole of them to brain-disorder was an Ituri forest of preconceptions, shutting out every gleam of suggested truth.

A sudden idea occurred to her. Her father had spoken well of Dr. Nash—of his abilities, at least—and he seemed very much in Mrs. Thrale's good books. Could she not get him to help, or at least to take his measure as a confidant in her difficulty before condemning him as impossible?

So quickly did all this pass through her mind that the words "I think I should like to see Dr. Nash" seemed to follow naturally. Mrs. Thrale welcomed the idea.

"But he'll be gone," said she. "He goes to see his patient at Dessington Manor at eleven. And if he was sent for it is very like he could not come, even for your ladyship. Because his sick folk he sees at the surgery they will have their money's worth. Indeed, I think the poor man's worked off his legs."

"I see," said Gwen. "I shall go and see him myself, at once." She breathed freer for the respite, and the prospect of help. "But there's plenty of time if I look sharp. Would you tell Tom outside that he's not to run away. I shall want him? May I go through to see her? Is she getting up?"

She was up, apparently, in the accepted sense of the word; though she had collapsed with the effort of becoming so; and was now down, in the literal sense, lying on the bed under contract not to move till Mrs. Thrale returned with a cup of supplementary arrowroot. She had had a very poor breakfast. Certainly, her ladyship might go in.

"Oh, my dear, my dear, I am so glad you are come!" It was the voice of a great relief that came from the figure on the bed; the voice of one who had waited long, of a traveller who sees his haven, a castaway adrift who spies a sail.

"Now, dear Mrs. Picture, you are not to get up, but lie still till I come back. I'm going to try to catch Dr. Nash, and must hurry off. But I am coming back."

"Oh—all right!" There was disappointment in her tone, but it was docility itself. She added, however, with the barest trace of remonstrance:—"I'm quite well, you know. I don't want the doctor."

Gwen laughed. "Oh no—it's not for you! I've ... I've a message for him. I shall soon be back." An excusable fiction, she thought, under the circumstances.

She was only just in time to catch Dr. Nash, whose gig was already in possession of him at his garden-gate with a palpably medical lamp over it, and a "surgery bell" whose polish seemed to guarantee its owner's prescriptions. "Get down and talk to me in the house," said her young ladyship. "Who is it you were going to? Anyone serious?"

"Only Sir Cropton Fuller."

"He can wait.... Can't he?"

"He'll have to. No hurry!" The doctor found time to add, between the gate and the house:—"I go to see him every day to prevent his taking medicine. He's extremely well. I don't get many cases of illness, among my patients." He turned round to look at Gwen, on the doorstep. "Your ladyship doesn't look very bad," said he.

Gwen shook her head. "It's nothing to do with me," she said. "Nor with illness! It's old Mrs. Prichard at Strides Cottage."

The doctor stood a moment, latchkey in hand. "The old lady whose mind is giving way?" said he. He had knitted his brows a little; and, having spoken, he knitted his lips a little.

"We are speaking of the same person," said Gwen. She followed the doctor into his parlour, and accepted the seat he offered. He stood facing her, not relaxing his expression, which worked out as a sort of mild grimness, tempered by a tune which his thumbs in the armpits of his waistcoat enabled him to play on its top-pockets. It was a slow tune. Gwen continued:—"But her mind is not giving way."

The doctor let that expression subside into mere seriousness. He took a chair, to say:—"Your ladyship has, perhaps, not heard all particulars of the case."

"Every word."

"You surprise me. Are you aware that this poor old person is under a delusion about her own parentage? She fancies herself the daughter of Isaac Runciman, the father of old Mrs. Marrable, the mother of Widow Thrale."

"She is his daughter."

The doctor nearly sprang out of his chair with surprise, but an insecure foothold made the chair jump instead.

"But it's impossible—it's impossible!" he cried. "How could Mrs. Marrable have a sister alive and not know it?"

"That is what I am going to explain to you, Dr. Nash. And Sir Cropton Fuller will have to wait, as you said."

"But the thing's impossible in itself. Only look at this!..."

"Please consider Sir Cropton Fuller. You won't think it so impossible when you know it has happened." The doctor listened for the symptoms with perceptibly less than his normal appearance of knowing it all beforehand. Gwen proceeded, and told with creditable brevity and clearness, the succession of events the story has given, for its own reasons, by fits and starts.

It could not be accepted as it stood, consistently with male dignity. The superior judicial powers of that estimable sex called for assertion. First, suspension of opinion—no hasty judgments! "A most extraordinary story! A most extraordinary story! But scarcely to be accepted.... You'll excuse my plain speech?..."

"Please don't use any other! The matter's too serious."

"Scarcely to be accepted without a close examination of the evidence."

"Unquestionably. Does any point occur to you?"

Now Dr. Nash had nothing ready. "Well," he said, dubiously, "in such a very difficult matter it might be rash...." Then he thought of something to say, suddenly. "Well—yes! It certainly does occur to me that ... No—perhaps not—perhaps not!..."

"What were you going to say?"

"That there is no direct proof that the forged letter was ever sent to Australia." This sounded well, and appeared like a tribute to correctness and caution. It meant nothing whatever.

"Only the Australian postmark," said Gwen. "I have got it here, but it's rather alarming—the responsibility."

"If it was written, as you say, over an effaced original, it might have been done just as easily in England." The doctor was reading the direction, not opening the letter.

"Not by a forger at the Antipodes!" said Gwen.

"I meant afterwards—when—when Mrs. Prichard was in England?"

"She brought the letter with her when she came. It couldn't have been forged afterwards."

The doctor gave it up. Masculine superiority would have to stand over. But he couldn't see his way, on human grounds, profundity apart. "What is so horribly staggering," said he, "is that after fifty years these two should actually see each other and still be in the dark. And the way it came about! The amazing coincidences!" The doctor spoke as if such unblushing coincidences ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Gwen took this to be his meaning, apparently. "I can't help it, Dr. Nash," she said. "If they had told me they were going to happen, I might have been able to do something. Besides, there was only one, if you come to think of it—the little boy being sent to Widow Thrale's to convalesce. It was my cousin, Miss Grahame, who did it.... Yes, thank you!—she is going on very well, and Dr. Dalrymple hopes she will make a very good recovery. He fussed a good deal about her lungs, but they seem all right...." The conversation fluctuated to Typhus Fever for a moment, but was soon recalled by the young lady, whose visit had a definite purpose. "Now, Dr. Nash, I have a favour to ask of you, which is what I came for. It occurred to me when I heard that you would be going to Dessington Manor this morning." The doctor professed his readiness, or eagerness, to do anything in his power to oblige Lady Gwendolen Rivers, but evidently had no idea what it could possibly be. "You will be close to Costrell's farm, where the other old lady is staying with her granddaughter?"

"I shall. But what can I do?"

"You can, perhaps, help me in the very difficult job of making the truth known to her and her sister. I say perhaps, because you may find you can do nothing. I shall not blame you if you fail. But you can at least try."

It would have been difficult to refuse anything to the animated beauty of his petitioner, even if she had been the humblest of his village patients. The doctor pledged himself to make the attempt, without hesitation, saying to himself as he did so that this would be a wonderful woman some day, with a little more experience and maturity. "But," said he, "I never promised to do anything with a vaguer idea of what I was to do, nor how I was to set about it."

Gwen's earnestness had no pause for a smile. "It is easier than you think," she said, "if you only make up your mind to it. It is easy for you, because your medical interest in old Mrs. Prichard's case makes it possible for you to entamer the conversation. You see what I mean?"

"Perfectly—I think. But I don't see how that will entamer old Mrs. Marrable. Won't the conversation end where it began?"

"I think not—not necessarily. I will forgive you if it does. Consider that the apparent proof of delusion in my old lady's mind is that she has told things about her childhood which are either bona-fide recollections, or have been derived from the little boy...."

"Dave Wardle. So I understood from Widow Thrale. She has told me all the things as they happened. In fact, I have been able to call in every day. The case seemed very interesting as a case of delusion, because some of the common characteristics were wanting. It loses that interest now, certainly, but.... However, you were saying, when I interrupted?..."

"I was saying that unless these ideas could be traced to Dave Wardle, they must have come out of Mrs. Prichard's own head. Is it not natural that you should want to hear from Granny Marrable what she recollects having said to the child?"

The doctor cogitated a moment, then gave a short staccato nod. "I see," said he, in a short staccato manner. "Yes. That might do something for us. At any rate, I can try it.... I beg your pardon."

Gwen had just begun again, but paused as the doctor looked at his watch. She continued:—"I cannot find anything that she might not have easily said to a small boy. I wish I could. Her recollection of not having said anything won't be certainty. But even inquiring about what she doesn't recollect would give an opening. Did Mrs. Prichard say nothing to you about her early life at the mill?"

"She said a good deal, because I encouraged her to talk, to convince myself of her delusion.... Could I recollect some of it? I think so. Or stay—I have my notes of the case." He produced a book. "Here we are. 'Mrs. Maisie Prichard, eighty-one. Has delusions. Thinks mill was her father's. It was Widow Thrale's grandfather's. Knows horses Pitt and Fox. Knows Muggeridge waggoner. Has names correct. Qy.:—from child Wardle last year? M. was dismissed soon after. Asked try recollect what for.' I am giving your ladyship the abbreviations as written."

"Quite right. Is there more?" For evidently there was. Gwen could see the page.

"She remembered that he was dismissed for ... irregularity."

Gwen suspected suppression. "What sort? Did he drink? Let me see the book. I won't read the other cases." And so all-powerful was beauty, or the traces of Feudalism, that this middle-aged M.R.C.S. actually surrendered his private notes of cases into these most unprofessional hands. Gwen pointed to the unread sequel, triumphantly. "There!" she exclaimed. "The very thing we want! You may be sure that neither Granny Marrable nor her daughter ever told a chick of seven years old of that defect in Mr. Muggeridge's character." For what Gwen had not read aloud was:—"Mug. broke 7th: Comm:"

The doctor was perhaps feeling that masculine profundity had not shone, and that he ought to do something to redeem its credit. For his comment, rather judicial in tone, was:—"Yes—but Widow Thrale was not able to confirm this ... blemish on Mr. Muggeridge's reputation."

"Now, my dear Dr. Nash, why should she be able to confirm a thing that happened when her mother was ten years old?"

The doctor surrendered at discretion—perhaps resolved not to repeat the attempt to reinstate the male intellect. "Of course not!" said he. "Perfectly correct. Very good! I'll try, then, to make use of that. I understand your object to be that old Granny Marrable shall come to know that she and Mrs. Prichard are sisters, as gradually as possible. I may not succeed, but I'll do my best. Ticklish job, rather! Now I suppose I ought to look after Sir Cropton Fuller."

Five minutes after saying which the doctor's gig was doing its best to arrive in time to prevent that valetudinarian swallowing five grains of calomel, or something of the sort, on his own responsibility.

---

Gwen had felt a misgiving that her expedition to Dr. Nash had really been a cowardly undertaking, because she had flinched from her task at the critical moment. Well—suppose she had! It might turn out a fortunate piece of poltroonery, if Dr. Nash contrived to break the ice for her with the other old sister. But the cowardice was beginning again, now that every stride of the mare was taking her nearer to her formidable task. Desperation was taking the place of mere Resolve, thrusting her aside as too weak for service in the field, useless outside the ramparts. Oh, but if only some happy accident would pave the way for speech, would enable her to say to herself:—"I have said the first word! I cannot go back now, if I would!"

On the way to Strides Cottage again! Nearer and nearer now, that moment that must come, and put an end to all this puling hesitation. She could not help the thought that rose in her mind:—"This that I do—this reuniting of two souls long parted by a living death—may it not be what Death does every day for many a world-worn survivor of a half-forgotten parting in a remote past?" For, indeed, it seemed to her that these two had risen from the dead, and that for all she knew each might say of the other:—"It is not she." For what is Death but the withdrawal from sight and touch and hearing of the evidence of Some One Else? What less had come to pass for old Maisie and Phoebe, fifty years ago? How is it with us all in that mysterious Beyond, that for the want of a better name we call a Hereafter, when ghost meets ghost, and either lacks the means of recognition?

She knew the trick of that latch now, and went in.

The room was empty of all but the cat, who seemed self-absorbed; silent but for a singing kettle and a chirping cricket. Probably Widow Thrale was in the bedroom. Gwen crossed the passage, and gently opening the door, looked in. Only the old lady herself was there, upon the bed, so still that Gwen half feared at first she had died in her sleep. No—all was well! She wondered a moment at the silver hair, the motionless hands, alabaster but for the blue veins, the frailty of the whole, and its long past of eighty years, those years of strange vicissitude. And through them all no one thing so strange as what she was to know on waking!

---

CHAPTER XV

HOW GWEN HEARD WIDOW THRALE'S REPORT AND HOW SHE ROSE TO THE OCCASION. HOW WIDOW THRALE WAS IN FAVOUR OF SILENCE. HOW GWEN HAD TO SHOW THE FORGED LETTER. THE LINSTOCK AT THE BREECH. BUT MY NAME WAS RUTH DAVERILL! THE GUN GOES OFF. GWEN'S COOLNESS IN ACTION. BUT WHY IN MRS. PRICHARD'S LETTER? A CRISIS AND AN AWAKENING. WHO WILL TELL MOTHER? HOW GWEN GOT FIRST SPEECH OF MRS. PRICHARD. THE DELUSION CASE'S REPORT OF ITSELF. ANOTHER IMPENETRABLE FORTRESS. THE STAGE METHOD, AS A LAST RESOURCE. AN IMPASSE. "BAS AN AIR EACHIN." HOW MRS. PRICHARD WANTED TO TELL MRS. MARRABLE ABOUT HER DEAD SISTER, STILL ALIVE. GWEN'S FORCES SCATTERED, AND A RALLY. ANOTHER CRISIS, AND SUCCESS. WHO FORGED THAT LETTER?

That had been a quick interview with Dr. Nash in spite of its importance. For the church clock had been striking eleven when the mare, four minutes after leaving Dr. Nash, reached Strides Cottage. A great deal of talk may be got through in a very little time, as the playwright knows to his cost.

Widow Thrale had been talking with Elizabeth-next-door when the mare stopped, disappointed at the short run. She heard the arrival, and came out to find that her ladyship had preceded her into the house. Tom Kettering, having communicated this, stooped down from his elevation to add in confidence:—"Her ladyship's not looking her best, this short while past. You have an eye to her, mistress. Asking pardon!" It was a concession to speech, on Tom's part, and he seemed determined it should go no farther, for he made a whip-flick tell the mare to walk up and down, and forget the grass rim she had noticed on the footpath. Mrs. Thrale hurried into the house. She, too, had seen how white Gwen was looking, before she started to go to Dr. Nash.

She met her coming from the bedroom, whiter still this time. Her exclamation:—"Dearie me, my lady, how!..." was stopped by:—"It is not illness, Mrs. Thrale. I am perfectly well," said with self-command, though with a visible effort to achieve it. But it was clear that the thing that was not illness was a serious thing.

"I was afraid for your ladyship," said Mrs. Thrale. And she remained uneasy visibly.

"I see she is very sound asleep. Will she remain so for awhile?... Has not been sleeping at night, did you say? That explains it.... No, I won't take anything, thank you!... Yes, I will. I'll have some water. I see it on the dresser. That's plenty—thanks!" Thus Gwen's part of what followed. She moistened her lips, and speech was easier to her. They had been so dry and hot. She continued, feeling that the moment had come:—"I want your help, Mrs. Thrale. I have something I must tell you about Mrs. Prichard."

The convict, nearly forgotten since last year, and of course never revived for Widow Thrale, suddenly leaped into her mind out of the past, and menaced evil to her ideal of Mrs. Prichard. She was on her defence directly. "Nay, then—if it is bad, 'tis no fault of the dear old soul's. That I be mortal sure of!"

"Fault of hers. No, indeed! It is something I have to tell her. And to tell you." This was the first real attempt to hint at her hearer's personal concern in the something. Would it reach her mind?

Scarcely. To judge by her puzzled eyes fixed on Gwen, and the grave concern of her face, her heart was rich with ready sympathy for whoever should suffer by this unknown thing, but without a clue to its near connection with herself. "Will it be a great sorrow to her to be told it?" said she uneasily. But all on her old guest's account—none on her own.

Gwen felt that her first attempt to breach the fortress of unconsciousness, had failed. She must lay a new sap, at another angle; a slower approach, but a surer.

"Not a great sorrow so much as a great shock. You can help me to tell it her so as to spare her." Gwen felt at this point the advantages of the Feudal System. This good woman would never presume to hurry disclosure. "You can help me, Mrs. Thrale, and I will tell you the whole. But I want to know one or two things about what she said." Gwen produced Mrs. Thrale's own letter from a dainty gilded wallet, and opened it. "I understand that the very first appearance of these delusions—or whatever they were—was when she saw the mill-model. Quite the very first?"

"That was, like, the beginning of it," said Mrs. Thrale, recollecting. "She asks me, was little Dave in the right about the wheel-sacks and the water-cart, and I say to her the child is right, but should have said wheat-sacks and water-mill. And then I get it down.... Yes, I get it down and show it to her"—this slowly and reminiscently. "And then, my lady, I look round, and there's the poor old soul, all of a twitter!" This was accelerated, for dramatic force.

"You did not put it down to her seeing the mill?"

"No, my lady; I took it she was upset and tired, at her age. I've seen the like before. Not my mother, but old Mrs. Dunage at the Rectory. 'Twas when the news came her mother was killed on the railway. She went quite unconscious, and I helped to nurse her round. She was gone of seventy-seven at the time."

"That was a shock, then?" Gwen felt, although Widow Thrale did not seem to have connected the two things together, that the mill had been the agency that upset Mrs. Prichard.

But she had underestimated the strength of the fortress again. Mrs. Thrale took it as a discrimination between the two cases. "Yes, my lady," said she quietly. "That was a shock. But so you might say, this was a shock, too. By reason of an idea, got on the mind. Dr. Nash said, next day, certainly!"

"Very likely," said Gwen. "But what came next?"

"Well, now—how was it? I was seeing her to bed, unconscious like, and she says to me, on the sudden:—'Whose mill was it?' And then, of course, I say grandfather's. For indeed, my lady, that is so! Mother has had this model all her life, from when grandfather died, and it could be no one else's mill." The irresistible amusement at the absurdity that spread over Ruth's face, and the undercurrent of laughter in her voice, were secret miseries to Gwen, so explicit were they in their tale of the unconsciousness that allowed them. She was relieved when the speaker's voice went back to its tone of serious concern. "And there, now—if the dear old soul didn't say to me, 'How came this mill to be your grandfather's mill?'!"

"And after that?"

"Oh—then I saw plain! But I thought—best say nothing! So I got her off to bed, and she went nicely to sleep, and no more trouble. But next morning early there she was out of bed, hunting for the mill, and feeling round it on the mantelshelf."

"And you still thought it was a delusion?" Gwen said this believing that it must excite suspicion of her object. But again unconsciousness, perfectly placid and immovable, had the best of it, where scepticism would have been alert in its defence.

"Well, I did hope next day, talking it over with Dr. Nash, that it was just some confusion of hers with another's mill, a bit like ours; and at her age, no wonder! Because of what she said herself."

"Said herself?"

"Yes—touching the size of her mill being double. That is, the model. But ah—dear me! It was all gone next day, and she talking quite wild like!" A note of fresh distress in her voice ended in a sigh. Then came a resurrection of hopefulness. "But she has not gone back to it now for some while, and Dr. Nash is hopeful it may pass off."

Gwen began to fear for her own sanity if this was to go on long. To sit there, facing this calm, sweet assurance of that dear old woman's flesh and blood, her own daughter, thick-panoplied in impenetrable ignorance; to hear her unfaltering condemnation of what she must soon inevitably know to be true; to note above all the tender solicitude and affection her every word was showing for this unknown mother—all this made Gwen's brain reel. Unless some natural resolution of the discord came, Heaven help her, and keep her from some sudden cruel open operation on the heart of Truth, some unconvincing vivisection of a soul! For belief in the incredible, however true, flies from forced nurture in the hothouse of impatience.

Gwen felt for a new opportunity. "When you say that next day she began to talk wildly.... What sort of wildly? Are you sure it was so wild?"

Mrs. Thrale lowered her voice to an intense assurance, a heartfelt certainty. "Oh yes, my lady—yes, indeed! There was no doubt possible. When she was looking at the mill model she had got sight of two little figures—just dollies—that were meant for mother, and her sister who died in Australia—my real mother, you know, only I was but four years old—and the dear old soul went quite mazed about it, saying that was herself and her sister that died in England, and they were twins the same as mother and her sister. And it was not till she said names Dr. Nash found out how it was all made up of what we told little Davy last year...."

"And you made sure," said Gwen, interrupting, "that you remembered telling little Davy all these things last year?" It took all Gwen's self-command to say this. She was glad to reach the last word.

Widow Thrale looked hurt, almost indignant. "Why, my lady," said she, "we must have! Else how could she have known them?" Do not censure her line of argument. Probably at this very hour it is being uttered by a hundred mouths, even as—so says a claimant to knowledge—thirteen earthquakes are always busy, somewhere in the world, at every moment of the day.

Gwen could never give up the attempt, having got thus far. But she could see that hints were useless. "I think I can tell you," said she. And then she pitied the dawn of bewilderment on the unconscious face before her, even while she tried to fortify herself with the thought that what she had to tell was not bad in itself—only a revelation of a lost past.... Well—why not let it go? Dust and ashes, dead and done with!... But this vacillation was short-lived.

Mrs. Thrale's bewilderment found words. "You can ... tell me!" she said, not much above a whisper. How could she hint at calling her ladyship's words in question, above her breath?

Gwen, very pale but collected, rose to the occasion. "I can tell you what has come to my knowledge about Mrs. Prichard's history. I cannot doubt its correctness." It crossed her mind then that the telling of it would come easier if she ignored what knowledge she had of the other twin sister. So far as Widow Thrale knew, there was nothing outside what had come to light through this incident. She went steadily on, not daring to look at her hearer. "Mrs. Prichard was one of two sisters, whose father owned a flour-mill near London. She married, and her husband committed forgery and was transported. He was sent to Van Diemen's Land—the penal settlement." Gwen looked up furtively. No sign on the unconscious face yet of anything beyond mere perplexity! She resumed after the slightest pause:—"His young wife followed him out there"—she wanted to say that a child of four was left behind, but her courage failed her—"and lived with him. He was out of prison on what is called ticket-of-leave."

She looked up again. Still no sign! But then—consider! Ruth Thrale had always been kept in the dark about the convict. Gwen could not know this, and was puzzled. Was there, after all, some other solution to the problem? Anyhow, there was nothing for it now but to get on. "She lived with him many years, and then, for some reason or other, we can't tell what, he forged a letter from her father in England, saying that her sister and her husband and her own child that she had left behind were all drowned at sea."

At this point Gwen was quite taken aback by Mrs. Thrale saying:—"But they were not drowned?" It stirred up a wasps' nest of perplexities. A moment later, she saw that it was a question, not a statement. She herself had only said the letter was forged, not that it contained a lie. How could she vouch for the falsehood of the letter without claiming knowledge prematurely, and rushing into her disclosure too quickly? An additional embarrassment was that, when again she looked up at her hearer, she saw no sign of a clue caught—not even additional bewilderment; rather the reverse.

She could, however, reply to a question:—"Mrs. Prichard believed that they were, and continued to believe it. My father, whom I have told all about it—all that I know—is of opinion that her husband managed to prevent her receiving letters from her sister, and destroyed those that came, which would have shown that she was still alive."

"Oh, God be good to us!" cried Widow Thrale. "That such wickedness should be!"

"He was a monster—a human devil! And why he did it Heaven only knows. My father can think of nothing but that his wife wanted to return to her family, and he wanted her to stay. Now, Widow Thrale, you will see why I want you to help me. I think you will agree with me that it would be right that the dear old lady should be undeceived."

Mrs. Thrale fidgeted uneasily. "Your ladyship knows best," she said.

"You think, perhaps," said Gwen, "that it would only give her needless pain to know it now, when she has nothing to gain by it?"

"Yes—that is right." That was said as though Gwen's question had worded a thought the speaker herself had found hard to express.

"Has she nothing to gain by it? I do so want you to think over this quietly.... I wish you would sit down...." Mrs. Thrale did so. "Thank you!—that is comfortabler. Now, just consider this! There is no evidence at all that the young daughter whom she left behind with her sister is not still living, though of course the chances are that the sister herself is dead. This daughter may be.... What's that?"

"I thought I heard her waking up. Will your ladyship excuse me one moment?..." She rose and went to the bedroom. But the old lady was, it seemed, still sleeping soundly, and she came back and resumed her seat.

Of all the clues Gwen had thrown out to arouse suspicion of the truth, and make full announcement possible, not one had entered the unreceptive mind. Was this to go on until the sleeper really waked? Gwen felt, during that one moment alone, how painfully this would add to the embarrassment, and resolved on an act of desperation.

"I think," said she, speaking very slowly, and fighting hard to hide the effort speech cost her. "I think I should like you to see this horrible forged letter. I brought it on purpose.... Oh—here it is!... By-the-by, I ought to have told you. Prichard is not her real name." A look like disappointment came on Widow Thrale's face. An alias is always an uncomfortable thing. Gwen interpreted this look rightly. "It's no blame to her, you know," she said hastily. "Remember that her proper name—that on the direction there—belonged to a convict! You or I might have done the same."

And then, as the eyes of the daughter turned unsuspicious to her mother's name—forged by her father, to imitate the handwriting of her grandfather—Gwen sat and waited as he who has fired a train that leads to a mine awaits the crash of the rifted rock and its pillar of dust and smoke against the heavens.

"But my name was Daverill—Ruth Daverill!" Was the train ill-laid then, that this woman should be able to sit quite still, content to fix a puzzled look upon the wicked penmanship of fifty years ago?

"And your mother's, Ruth Daverill? What was hers?"

"Maisie Daverill." She answered mechanically, with an implication of "And why not?" unspoken. She was still dwelling on the direction, the first name in which was not over-legible, no doubt owing to the accommodation due to the non-erasure of the first syllable by the falsifier. Gwen saw this, and said, quietly but distinctly:—"Thornton."

The end was gained, for better, for worse. Ruth Thrale gave a sudden start and cry, uttering almost her mother's words at first sight of the mill:—"What can this be? What can this be? Tell me, oh, tell me!"

Gwen, hard put to it during suspense, now cool and self-possessed at the first gunshot, rose and stood by the panic-stricken woman. Nothing could soften the shock of her amazement now. Pull her through!—that was the only chance. And the sooner she knew the whole now, the better!

It might have been cruelty to a bad end that made such beauty so pale and resolute as Gwen's, as she said without faltering:—"The name is your mother's name—Mrs. Thornton Daverill. Your father's name was Thornton. Now open the letter and read!"

"Oh—my lady—it makes me afraid!... What can it be?"

"Open the letter and read!" But Ruth Thrale could not; her hand was too tremulous; her heart was beating too fast. Gwen took the letter from her, quietly, firmly; opened it before her eyes; stood by her, pointing to the words. "Now read!"—she said.

And then Ruth Thrale read as a child reads a lesson:—"My ... dear ... daughter ... Maisie.... and a few words more, her voice shaking badly, then suddenly stopped. "But my mother's name was Maisie," she said. She had wavered on some false scent caused by the married name.

"Read on!" said Gwen remorselessly. Social relation said that her ladyship must be obeyed first; madness fought against after. Ruth Thrale read on, for the moment quite mechanically. The story of the shipwreck did not seem to assume its meaning. She read on, trembling, clinging to the hand that Gwen had given her to hold.

Suddenly came an exclamation—a cry. "But what is this about Mrs. Prichard? This is not Mrs. Prichard. Why is mother's old name in this letter?" She was pointing to the word Cropredy, Phoebe's first married name; a name staggering in the force of its identity. She had not yet seen the signature.

Gwen turned the page and pointed to it:—"Isaac Runciman," clear and unmistakable. Incisiveness was a duty now. Said she, deliberately:—"Why is this forged letter signed with your grandfather's name?" A pause, with only a sort of puzzled moan in answer. "I will tell you, and you will have to hear it. Because it was forged by your father, fifty years ago." Again a pause; not so much as a moan to break the silence! Gwen made her voice even clearer, even more deliberate, to say:—"Because he forged it to deceive your mother, and it deceived her, and she believed you dead. For years she believed you and her sister dead. And when she returned to England...."

She was interrupted by a poor dumfoundered effort at speech, more seen in the face she was intently watching than heard. She waited for it, and it came at last, in gasps:—"But it is to Mrs. Prichard—the letter—Mrs. Prichard's letter—oh, why?—oh, why?..." And Ruth Thrale caught at her head with her hands, as though she felt it near to bursting.

The surgeon's knife is most merciful when most resolutely used.

"Because old Mrs. Prichard is your mother," said Gwen, all her heart so given to the task before her that she quite forgot, in a sense, her own existence. "Because she is your mother, whom you have always thought dead, and who has always thought you dead. Because she is your mother, who has been living here in England—oh, for so many years past!—and never found you out!"

Ruth Thrale's hands fell helpless in her lap, and she sat on, dumb, looking straight in front of her. Gwen would have been frightened at her look, but she caught sight of a tear running down her face, and felt that this was, for the moment, the best that might be. That tear reassured her. She might safely leave the convulsion that had caused it to subside. If only the sleeper in the next room would remain asleep a little longer!

She did right to be silent and wait. Presently the two motionless hands began moving uneasily; and, surely, those were sighs, long drawn out? That had the sound of tension relieved. Then Ruth Thrale turned her eyes full on the beautiful face that was watching hers so anxiously, and spoke suddenly.

"I must go to her at once."

"But think!—is it well to do so? She knows nothing."

"My lady—is there need she should? Nor I cannot tell her now, for I barely know, myself. But I want her—oh, I want her! Oh, all these cruel years! Poor Mrs. Prichard! But who will tell mother?" She was stopped by a new bewilderment, perhaps a worse one.

"I will tell mother." Gwen took the task upon herself, recklessly. Well!—it had to be gone through with, by someone. And she would do anything to spare this poor mother and daughter. She would tell Granny Marrable! She did, however, hope that Dr. Nash had broken the ice for her.

A sound came from the other room. The old lady had awaked and was moving. Mrs. Thrale said in a frightened whisper:—"She will come in here. She always does. She likes to move about a little by herself. But she is soon tired."

Said Gwen:—"Will she come in here? Let me see her alone! Do! It will only be for a few minutes. Run in next door, and leave me to talk to her. I have a reason for asking you." She heard the bedroom door open, beyond the passage.

"When shall I come back, my lady?" This reluctance to go seemed passing strange to Gwen. But it yielded to persuasion, or to feudal inheritance. Gwen watched her vanish slowly into Elizabeth-next-door's; and then, perceiving that the mare had sighted the transaction, and was bearing down towards her, she delayed a moment to say:—"Not yet, Tom! Wait!"—and returned into the house.

---

"My dear, God has been good to let you come. Oh, how I have prayed to see your face again, and hear your dear voice!" Thus old Mrs. Picture, crying with joy. She could not cling close enough to that beautiful hand, nor kiss it quite to her heart's content.

Gwen left her in possession of it. "But, dear Mrs. Picture," she said, "I thought your letter said you were so comfortable, and that Mrs. Thrale was so kind?"

"What, my Ruth!—that is how I've got to call her—my Ruth is more than kind. No daughter could be kinder to a mother. You know—I told you—my child was Ruth. Long ago—long, long ago! She was asleep when I kissed her. I can feel it still." Gwen fancied her speech sounded wandering, as she sat down in Granny Marrable's vacant chair.

This story often feels that the pen that writes it must resent the improbabilities it is called on to chronicle. That old Maisie should call her own child by the name she gave her, and think her someone else!

"Tell me, dear, what it was—all about it!" Thus Gwen, getting the old lady comfortably settled, and finding a footstool for herself, as in Francis Quarles at the Towers. She had made up her mind to tell all if she possibly could. But it had to be all or nothing. It would be better not to speak till she saw her way. Let Mrs. Picture tell her own tale first!

"I want to tell you." She possessed herself again of the precious hand, surrendered to assist in resettling a strayed head-cushion. "Only, tell me first—did you know...?"—She paused and dropped her voice—" ... Did you know that they thought me...?"

"Thought you what?"

"Did you know that they thought me mad?"

"They were wrong if they did. But Mrs. Thrale does not think you mad now. I know she does not."

"Oh, I am glad." Gwen's white and strained look then caught her attention, and she paused for reassurance. It was nothing, Gwen was tired. It was the jolting of a quick drive, and so on. Mrs. Prichard got back to her topic. "They did think me mad, though. Do you know, my dear"—she dropped her voice almost to a whisper—"I went near to thinking myself mad. It was so strange! It was the mill-model. I wish she had let me see it again. That might have set it all to rights. But thinking like she did, maybe she was in the right. For see what it is when the head goes wrong! I was calling to mind, all next day, when I found out what they thought...."

"But they did not tell you they thought you mad. How did you know?"

"It came out by little things—odd talk at times.... It got in the air, and then I saw the word on their lips.... I never heard it, you know.... What was I saying?"

"You were calling something to mind, all next day, you said. What was that?"

"A man my husband would talk about, in Macquarie Gaol, whose head would be all right so long as no cat came anigh him. So the others would find a cat to start him off. Only my Ruth thought to take away what upset me. 'Tis the same thing, turned about like."

Gwen allowed the illustration. "But why did Mrs. Thrale think you mad, over the mill-model?"

"My dear, because to her I must have seemed mad, to say that was my father's mill, and not her grandfather's."

Gwen kept a lock on her tongue. How easy to have said:—"Your father was her grandfather!" She said nothing.

"And yet, you know, how could I be off the thought it was so, with it there before me, seeming like it did? I do assure you, there it seemed to be—the very mill! There was my father, only small, and not much to know him by, smoking. And there was our man, Muggeridge, that saw to the waggon. And there was Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox, our horses. And there was the great wheel the water shot below, to turn it, and the still water above where Phoebe saw the heron, and called me—but it was gone!" Tears were filling the old eyes, as the old lips recalled that long-forgotten past. Then, as she went on, her voice broke to a sob, and failed of utterance. But it came. "And there—and there—were I and my darling, my Phoebe, that died in the cruel sea! Oh, my dear—that I might have seen her once again! But once again!..." She stopped to recover calm speech; and did it, bravely. "It was all in the seeming of it, my dear, but all the same hard for me to understand. Very like, my dear Ruth here was right and wise to keep it away from me. It might have set me off again. I'm not what I was, and things get on my mind.... There now—my dear. See how I've made you cry!"

Gwen felt that this could not go on much longer without producing some premature outbreak of her overtaxed patience; but she could sit still and say nothing; for a little time yet, certainly. "I'm not crying, dear Mrs. Picture," said she. "It was riding against the cold wind. Go on and tell me more." Then a thought occurred to her—a means to an end. "Tell me about your father. You have never told me about him. When did he die?"

"My father? That I could not tell you, my dear, for certain. For no letter reached me when he died, nor yet any letter since his own, that told me of Phoebe's death. Oh, but it is a place for letters to go astray! Why, before they gave my husband charge over the posts, and made him responsible, the carrier would leave letters for the farm on a tree-stump two miles away, and we were bound to send for them there—no other way! And there was none I knew to write to, for news, when Phoebe was gone, and our little Ruth, and Uncle Nick. Such an odd name he had. I never told it you. Nicholas Cropredy."

"I knew it," said Gwen heedlessly. Then, to recover her foothold:—"Somehow or other! You must have told it me. Else how could I have known?"

"I must have.... No, I never knew when my father died. But I should have known. For I stood by his grave when I came back. Such a many years ago now—even that! But I read it wrong. 'May, 1808....' How did I know it was wrong, what I read? Because I looked at his own letter, telling me of the wreck, and it was that very year—but June, not May. And my son was with me then, and he looked at the letter, too, and said it must have been 1818—eighteen, not eight."

Gwen saw the way of this. Phoebe's letter, effaced to make way for the forgery, was to announce Isaac Runciman's death, and was probably written during the first week of June, and posted even later. The English postmark showed two figures for the date; indistinct, as a postmark usually is. Could she utilise this date in any way to sow the seeds of doubt of the authenticity of the letter? She saw no way open. The letter was a thing familiar to Mrs. Prichard, but a sudden thunderbolt to Ruth Thrale. Had Gwen been in possession of Daverill's letter announcing Maisie's own death, she might have shown it to her. But could such old eyes have read it, or would she have understood it?

No—it was impossible to do anything but speak. The next opportunity must be seized, for talk seemed only to erect new obstacles to action. The perplexities close at hand, there in Strides Cottage, were the things to dwell on. Better go back to them! "But Mrs. Thrale did not think you mad only because you thought that about the mill," Gwen said this to coax the conversation back.

"No, my dear! I think, for all I found to say that night, she might have thought it no more than a touch of fever. And little wonder, too, for her to hear me doubt her grandfather's mill being his own. But what put me past was to see how the bare truth I told of my father's name, and my sister's, and the name of the mill my father would say was older than the church-tower itself—just that and no more—to make her"—here the old lady lowered her voice, and glanced round as though to be sure they were alone—"to make her turn and run from me, quite in a maze, as though I was a ghost to frighten her, that was what unsettled me!" She fixed her eyes on Gwen, and her hands were restless with her distressing eagerness to get some clue to a solution of her perplexity.

Gwen could say nothing, short of everything. She simply dared not try to tell the whole truth, with a rush, to a hearer so frail and delicate. It seemed that any shock must kill. The musical voice went on, its appealing tone becoming harder and harder for her hearer to bear. "Why—oh why—when I was telling just the truth, that my father's name was Isaac Runciman, and my sister was Phoebe, and our mill was Darenth Mill, why should she not have heard me through to the end, to make it all clear? Indeed, my dear, she put me on thinking I was not saying the words I thought, and I was all awake and clear the whole time. Was I not?"

Gwen's response:—"I will ask her what it was," contained, as a temporary palliative, as much falsehood as she dared to use; just to soothe back the tears that were beginning to get the better of speech. She felt vaguely about for a straw to catch at—something that might soften the revelation that had to come. "Did you tell her your sister was Phoebe?"

"I told her Phoebe—only Phoebe. I never said her married name."

"Did you tell her you and your sister were twins?"

"Oh yes—I told her that. And I think she understood. But she did not say."

"I think, dear Mrs. Picture, I can tell you why she was astonished. It was because her mother had a twin sister."

The old lady's pathetic look of perplexity remained unchanged. "Was that enough?" she said. The mere coincidence of the twinship did not seem to her to have warranted the effect it produced.

"I am not sure that it was not. There are other things. Did she ever tell you her mother's story? I suppose she told you she is only her mother by adoption? You know what I mean?"

"Oh yes, perfectly! No—Ruth has not told me that. We have not talked much of old Mrs. Marrable, but I shall see her before I go back to Sapps Court. Shall I not? My Davy's other Granny in the country!" It did her good to think and speak of Dave.

"You shall go back to Davy," said Gwen. "Or Davy shall come to you. You may like to stay on longer with Mrs. Thrale."

"Oh, indeed I should ... if only ... if only....

"If only she hadn't thought you had delusions!—isn't that it?... Well, let me go on and tell you some more about her mother—or aunt, really. It is quite true that she was one of twin sisters, and the sister married and went abroad."

Mrs. Prichard was immensely relieved—almost laughed. "There now!—if she had told me that, instead of running away with ideas! We would have found it all out, by now."

Gwen felt quite despairing. She had actually lost ground. Was it conceivable that the whole tale should become known to Mrs. Prichard—or to both sisters, for that matter—and be discredited on its merits, with applause for its achievements in coincidence? It looked like it! Despair bred an idea in her mind; a mad one, perhaps, a stagey one certainly. How would it be to tell Maisie Phoebe's story, seen from Phoebe's point of view?

Whenever an exciting time comes back to us in after-life, the incident most vividly revived is usually one of its lesser ones. Years after, when Gwen's thoughts went back to this trying hour at Strides Cottage, this moment would outstep its importance by reminding her how, in spite of the pressure and complexity of her embarrassment, an absurd memory would intrude itself of an operatic tenor singing to the soprano the story of how she was changed at birth, and so forth, the diva listening operatically the while. It went so far with her now, for all this tension, as to make a comment waver about her innermost thought, concerning the strange susceptibility of that soprano to conviction on insufficient evidence. Then she felt a fear that her own power of serious effort might be waning, and she concentrated again on her problem. But no solution presented itself better than the stagey one. Is the stage right, after all?

"The sister married and went abroad. Her husband was a bad man, whom she had married against the consent of her family." Gwen looked to see if these words had had any effect. But nothing came of them. She continued:—"Poor girl! her head was turned, I suppose."

"My dear—'twas the like case with me! 'Tis not for me, at least, to sit in judgment."

"No, dear Mrs. Picture, nor any of us. But if she had been as bad as the worst, she could hardly have deserved what came about. I told you she had married a bad man, and I am going to tell you how bad he was." It was as well that Gwen should rouse her hearer's attention by a sure and effective expedient, for it was flagging slightly. Dave's other Granny's sister's misadventures seemed to have so little to do with the recent mystery of the mill-model. But a genuine bad man enthrals us all.

"What did he do?" said his unconscious widow.

"He forged a letter to his own wife, saying that her sister was dead, and she believed it."

"But did her sister never write, to say she was alive?"

"Old Mrs. Marrable? No—because she received a letter at the same time saying that her sister.... You see which I mean?..."

"Oh yes—the bad man's wife, who was abroad."

"... Was also dead. Do you think you see how it was? He told each sister the other was dead."

"Oh, I see that! But did they both believe it?"

"Both believed it."

"Then did Mrs. Marrable's sister die without knowing?"

Gwen had it on her lips to say:—"She is not dead," before she had had time to foresee the consequences. She had almost said it when an apprehension struck across her speech and cut it short. How could she account to Mrs. Prichard for this knowledge of Mrs. Marrable's sister without narrowing the issue to the simple question:—"Who and where is she?" And if those grave old eyes, at rest now that the topic had become so impersonal to them, were fixed upon her waiting for the answer, how could she find it in her heart to make the only answer possible, futile fiction apart:—"It is you I am speaking of—you are Mrs. Marrable's sister, and each has falsely thought the other dead for a lifetime"? All her elaborate preparation had ended in an impasse, blocked by a dead wall whose removal was only possible to the bluntest declaration of the truth, almost more cruel now than it would have been before this factitious abatement of the agitation in which Gwen had found her.

And then the long tension that had kept Gwen on the rack, more or less, since the revelation of the letter, keenly in this last hour or so, began to tell upon her, and her soul came through into her words. "Oh no—oh no! Mrs. Marrable's sister did not die without knowing—at least, I mean ... I mean she has not died.... She may.... She was stopped by the danger of inexplicable tears, in time as she thought.

But old Mrs. Prichard, always on the alert for her Guardian Angel, caught the slight modulation of her voice, and was alive with ready sympathy. "Why—oh why—why this?..." she began, wanting to say:—"Why such concern on Mrs. Marrable's account?" and finding herself at fault for words, came to a dead stop.

"You mean, why should I fret because of Mrs. Marrable's sister? Is it not that?"

"Ye-es. I think ... I think that is what I meant to say."

Gwen nerved herself for a great effort. She took both the old hands in hers, and all her beauty was in the eyes that looked up at the old face, as she said:—"I will tell you. It is because—I—have to tell her to-day ... that she is ... that she is ... Mrs. Marrable's sister!" The last words might have been a cry for pity.

Could old Maisie fail to catch a gleam of the truth? She did. She only saw that her sweet Guardian Angel was in trouble, and thought to herself:—"Can I not help her?" She immediately said, quite quietly and clearly:—"My dear—my dear! But it will give you such pain. Why not let me tell her? I am old, and my time is at hand. It would be nothing to me. For see what trouble I have had myself. And I could say to her....

"What could you say to her?" Desperation was in Gwen's voice. How could this awful barrier be passed? Could it be past at all—ever?

"I could tell her of all the trouble of my own life, long ago. I do think, if I told her and said, 'See—it might have been me,' that might make it easy." The suggestion was based on a perfectly reasonable idea. Gwen felt that her own task would have been more achievable had her own record been one of sorrow and defeat. Old Maisie took her silence—which was helplessness against new difficulties—for an encouragement to her proposal, and continued:—"Why, my dear, look at it this way! If my dear sister Phoebe had lived, anyone bad enough out there in the Colony, might have written a lie that I was dead, and who would have known?... But, my dear, you are ill? You are shaking."

It was a climax. The perfect serenity, the absolute unconsciousness, of the speaker had told the tale of Gwen's failure more plainly than any previous rebuff. And here was the old lady trying to get up from her chair to summon Widow Thrale! Gwen detained her gently; as, having risen from the stool at her feet, she kneeled beside her.

"No, no—I am not ill.... I will tell you directly."

Moments passed that, to Gwen's impatience for speech she could neither frame nor utter, might have been hours. Old Maisie's growing wonderment was bringing back the look she had had over that mill-model. But she said nothing.

Gwen's voice came at last, audibly to herself, scarcely more. "I want you—I want you to tell me something...."

"What, my dear?... Oh—to tell you something! Yes—what is it?"

Was the moment at hand, at last? Gwen managed to raise her voice. "I want you to tell me this:—Has Mrs. Thrale ever told you her mother's name—I mean her aunt's—Granny Marrable's?"

"Her christened name?—her own name?"

"Yes!"

"No!"

"Shall I tell it you?"

"Why not?... Oh, I am frightened to see you so white. My dear!"

"Listen, dear Mrs. Picture, and try to understand. Mrs. Thrale's aunt's name is Phoebe."

"Is Phoebe!"

"Is Phoebe." Gwen repeated it again, looking fixedly at the old face, now rapidly resuming its former utter bewilderment.

"Is ... Phoebe!" Old Maisie sat on, after echoing back the word, and Gwen left her to the mercy of its suggestion. She had done her best, and could do no more.

She saw that some new thought was at work. But it had to plough its way through stony ground. Give it time!

Watching her intently, she could see the critical moment when the new light broke. A moment later the hand she held clutched at hers beyond its strength, and its owner's voice was forcing its way through gasps. "But ... but ... but ... Widow Thrale's name is Ruth!"

"Is Ruth." Yes—leave the fact there, and wait! That was Gwen's decision.

A moment later what she waited for had come. Old Maisie started, crying out aloud:—"Oh, what is this—what is it?" as she had done when she first saw the mill-model. Then on a sudden a paroxysm seized on the frail body, so terrifying to Gwen that her heart fairly stood still to see it.

It did not kill. It seemed to pass, and leave a chance for speech. But not just yet. Only a long-drawn breath or two, ending always in a moan!

Then, with a sudden vehemence:—"Who was it—who was it—that forged the letter that came—that came to my husband and me?" Her voice rose to a shriek under the sting of that terrible new knowledge. But she had missed a main point in Gwen's tale. Her mind had received the forgery, but not its authorship.

Gwen saw nothing to wonder at in this. The thing was done, and that was enough. "It was your husband himself," said she, and would have gone on to ask forgiveness for her own half-distortion of the facts, and told how she came to the knowledge. But the look on her hearer's face showed her that this must be told later, if indeed it were ever told at all. She was but just in time to prevent old Maisie falling forward from her chair in a dead swoon. She could not leave her, and called aloud for help.

She did not need to call twice. For Widow Thrale, unable to keep out of hearing through an interview so much longer than her anticipation of it, had come into the house from the back, and was already in the passage; had, indeed, been waiting in feverish anxiety for leave to enter.

"Take her—take her!" cried Gwen. "No—never mind me!" And then she saw, almost as in a dream, how the daughter's strong arms clasped her mother, and raising the slight unconscious figure, that lay as if dead, bore it away towards the door. "Yes," said she, "that is right! Lay her on the bed!"

What followed she scarcely knew, except that she caught at a chair to save herself from falling. For a reaction came upon her with the knowledge that her task was done, and she felt dizzy and sick. Probably she was, for a minute or more, practically unconscious; then recovered herself; and, though feeling very insecure on her feet, followed those two strange victims of a sin half a century old. Not quite without a sense of self-reproach for weakness; for see how bravely the daughter was bearing herself, and how immeasurably worse it was for her!

She could not but falter between the doors, still standing open. How could she dare to enter the room where she might find the mother dead? That was her fear. And a more skilful, a gentler revelation, might have left her a few years with the other little twin of the mill-model, still perhaps with a decade of life to come.

She heard the undertones of the daughter's voice, using the name of mother. What was she saying?

"My mother—my mother—my mother!" And then, with a strange acceptance of the name in another sense:—"But when will mother know?"

Gwen entered noiselessly, and stood by the bedside. She began to speak, but shrank from her last word:—"She is not...?"

Widow Thrale looked up from the inanimate form she was clasping so closely in her arms, to say, quite firmly:—"No, she is not dead." Then back again, repeating the words:—"My mother!" as though they were to be the first the unconscious ears should hear on their revival. Then once more to Gwen, as in discharge of a duty omitted:—"God bless you, my lady, for your goodness to us!"

Gwen's irresistible vice of anticlimax nearly made her say:—"Oh bother!" It was stopped by a sound she thought she heard. "Is she not speaking?" she said.

Both listened, and Widow Thrale heard, being the nearer, "Who called you her mother?" she repeated. "I did." And then Gwen said, clearly and fearlessly:—"Your daughter Ruth!"

---

CHAPTER XVI

SIR CROPTON FULLER'S LUNCH. LAZARUS'S FAMILY. HOW HIS GREAT-GRANNY CATECHIZED A TOOTHLESS HUMAN PUPPY THIRTEEN MONTHS OLD. HOW DR. NASH DRAGGED MRS. PRICHARD IN. A VERY TAKING OLD PERSON, BUT QUITE CRACKED. GOD'S MERCY IN LEAVING US OUR NATURAL FACULTIES. THAT WAS A SEVERE CASE AMONG THE TOMBS. HOW DR. NASH HAD ALL THE MODEL STORY OUT AGAIN, AND ABOUT MUGGERIDGE'S DON GIOVANITIES. MRS. PRICHARD HAD KNOWN MAISIE, CLEARLY. EVERYTHING EXPLAINED. THE FUTILITY OF HYPOTHESES. HOW A MEMORY OF HER MADMAN-CONVICT MADE OLD PHOEBE FEEL BEWITCHED. OBSTINATE PATERNITY. THE MEASUREMENT OF THAT MODEL. WHY ARM-MEASUREMENT? KID'S JARGON. MR. BARLOW. DAVE'S LETTER DELIVERED. A SORT OF FAINT. VINEGAR. DR. NASH PURSUED AND BROUGHT BACK. HOW OLD PHOEBE CAME TO KNOW THE TRUTH THROUGH A CHILD'S DIRECT SPEECH. HER PRESENCE OF MIND. AND HOW SHE WENT STRAIGHT HOME, TO LOOK BACK ON FIFTY LOST YEARS

The madman who had claimed as his mother the old woman at Strides Cottage, whom Granny Marrable had not yet seen, had certainly no statutory powers to impose an oath. But this did not stand in the way of her keeping hers, religiously. That is to say, she kept her tongue silent on every point that she could reasonably suppose to call for secrecy, whether from his point of view or this old Mrs. Prichard's.

She felt at liberty to repeat what she remembered of his shocking ravings about his prison life, and to dwell on the fact that he appeared to have mistaken her for his mother. But this could be told without connecting him with any person in or near the village. He was a returned convict who had not seen his mother for twenty years, and meeting an old woman who closely resembled her, or his idea of what she must have become, had made a decisive mistake in identity.

As to the name he had written down for her, she simply shrank from it; and destroyed it promptly, as soon as she collected her faculties after the shock it gave her. She framed a satisfactory theory to account for it, out of materials collected by foraging among her memories of fifty years ago. It turned on these facts:—That the name Ralph Thornton Daverill was the baptismal name of her sister's little boy that died in England, and that Maisie had repeated to her what her husband had said after the child's death, that the name would do over again if ever she had another son; but had added that she herself would never consent to its adoption. Granny Marrable was sure on both these points, but so uncertain about what she had heard of the christenings of her nephews born in Van Diemen's Land, that she had no scruple in deciding that her sister had dissuaded her brother-in-law from his intention. For this madman was clearly not Maisie's son, if Mrs. Prichard was his mother. But what would be more natural and probable than that if Daverill married again, he should make use of the name a second time? He might have married again more than once, for anything Granny Marrable knew. So might his widow—might have married a man named Prichard. Why not? Those were considerations she need not weigh or speculate about.

Nevertheless, though she had destroyed the signed name, it was a cobweb in her memory she would have gladly brushed away altogether. How she would have liked to tell the whole to Ruth, when—as once or twice happened—she walked over from Chorlton to get a report of progress, leaving old Mrs. Prichard in charge of that loyal dog, supported by Elizabeth-next-door, if need were. But she was sworn to silence on matters she dared not provoke inquiry about. So her tale of her meeting with the convict was minimised.

On the other hand, Ruth was scrupulously uncommunicative of everything connected with Mrs. Prichard's supposed delusions. So was Dr. Nash, on the one or two occasions when he looked in at Costrell's Farm, prophylactically. Where was the use of upsetting Juno Lucina by telling her that her daughter had taken a lunatic inmate? All the circumstances considered, he would have much preferred that Mrs. Maisie's mother should take charge of her. But this young woman liked to have her own way.

The doctor was almost sorry, after Gwen drove away, that he had not pointed out what an unpropitious moment it was for an upsetting revelation, and suggested postponement. It was too late to do anything, by the time he thought of it. He shrugged his shoulders about it, and perceived that what was done couldn't be undone. Then he drove as fast as he could to Sir Cropton Fuller, who asked him to stay to lunch. This meant a long unemployed delay, but he compromised. He would see another patient, and return to lunch, after which he would go to Costrell's Farm. It was only a short drive from the Manor House, but if he had gone there direct, he knew the mid-day meal at the Farm would cut across what might prove a long conversation with Granny Marrable. Suppose circumstances should favour a full communication of the extraordinary disclosure he had it in his power to make to her, he would not feel any hesitation about making it. In fact, he hoped that might prove the natural order of events, although he was quite prepared to act on Lady Gwendolen's suggestion that he should merely lay the train, not fire it, if that should prove possible. But, said he to himself, that will be neither fish nor flesh. Mysterious hints—so ran his reflections—will only terrify the old body out of her seven senses and gain no end. Get the job over!—that was the sacramental word. It took him all the period of his drive to Sir Cropton's, and all the blank bars betwixt prescription and prescription, to get—as it were—to this phrase in the music.

But by the time Sir Cropton had given him lunch, it had become the dominant theme of his reflections. Get the job done—if possible! More especially because he did not want Juno Lucina's nerves to be upset at a critical moment, and that was exactly what might happen if the revelation were delayed too long. If she were told now, and disabled by the shock, there would at least be time to make sure of a capable substitute.

However, he must be guided by his prognosis on arriving at Costrell's. It is just possible, too, that the doctor was alive to the interest of the case on its own account, and not being himself personally involved, felt a sort of scientific curiosity in the issue—What would the old lady say or do, in face of such an extraordinary revelation? What were the feelings of the family of Lazarus when he was raised from the tomb? Or rather, what would they have been, had he been dead half a century?

The males at the farm would be away at this time of day; that was satisfactory. He wanted to talk to Granny Marrable alone, if possible. He could easily get his patient out of the way—that was a trifle. But it would be a bore to have that young brother hanging round. In that case he would have to negotiate a private conversation with Juno Lucina, as such, and to use the opportunity professional mystery would give.

However, events smiled upon his purpose. Only Mrs. Maisie, a perfect image of roseate health, was there alone with Granny; the two of them appreciating last year's output, unconscious in his cradle, enjoying the fourteenth month of his career in this world, having postponed teething almost beyond precedent. His young mother derided her doctor's advice to go and lie down and rest, but ultimately gave way to it, backed as it was by public opinion.

"We seem to be going on very well, Mrs. Marrable," said the doctor, when this end was achieved. The doctor shared a first person plural with each of his patients. "And yourself? You're not looking amiss."

"No, thank God! And for all that I be eighty-one this Christmas, if I live to see the New Year in, I might be twenty-eight." She then very absurdly referred to the baby, who had waked up and made his presence felt, as to whether this was, or was not, an exaggeration, suggesting that he had roused himself to confirm it. Did he, she asked, want to say his great-Granny was as young as the best, and was he a blessed little cherub? She accommodated her pronunciation to the powers of understanding she imputed to him, calling him, e.g., a bessed ickle chezub. He seemed impatient of personalities; but accepted, as a pipe of peace, an elastic tube that yielded milk. Whereupon Granny Marrable made no more attempts to father opinions on him. "Indeed, doctor," said she, speaking English again, "I wish every soul over fifty felt as young as I do. We shouldn't hear such a many complaints."

"Very bad for the profession, Mrs. Marrable! This isn't a good part of the world for my trade, as it is, and if everyone was like you, I should have to put the shutters up. Well!—you see how it is? Look at Miss Grahame—Sister Nora! Goes up to London the picture of health, and gets fever! Old lady from some nasty unwholesome corner by Tottenham Court Road comes down to Chorlton, and gets younger every day!"

"I was going to ask about Sister Nora, doctor—what the latest news was saying."

"She'll make a good recovery, as things go. But that means she won't be herself again for a twelvemonth, if then!" Granny Marrable looked so unhappy over this, that the doctor took in a reef. "Less if we're lucky—less if we're lucky!" said he. "She's being very well looked after. Dalrymple's a good man."

"I'm glad you should know him to speak well of, for the lady's sake. She's a good lady, and kind. It was through her the little boy Davy came to the Cottage. My little Davy, I always call him."

"So does t'other old lady—she your daughter's got there now. You'll scratch each other's eyes out over that young monkey when you come to meet, Mrs. Marrable."

"There now, doctor, you will always have your joke. Ruth—my daughter—is quite beside her judgment about the old soul. What like is she, doctor, to your thinking?"

"Well—your daughter's right about her." He paused a moment, and then added, meaningly:—"So far as being a very—very taking sort of old person goes."

Granny Marrable, rather absorbed in her descendant's relations with his bottle, found in due course an opportunity to answer, looking up at the doctor:—"A very taking old person? But what, then, is to seek in her? Unless she be bad of heart or dishonest." Her old misgivings about Dave's home influences, revived, had more share in the earnestness of her tone than any misgivings about her daughter. And was not there the awful background of the convict?

"Not a bit of it—not a bit of it! Right as a trivet, I should say, as far as that goes! But.... He stopped and touched his forehead, portentously.

"Ah—the poor soul! Now is that true?"

"I think you may take it of me that is so." The doctor threw his professional manner into this. After a moment he added, as a mere human creature:—"Off her chump! Loose in the top story!" A moment after, for professional reassurance:—"But quite harmless—quite harmless!"

Granny Marrable was grave and oppressed by this news. "The poor old soul!—think of it!" said she. "Oh, but how many's the time I've thanked God in His mercy for sparing me my senses! To think we might any of us be no better off, but for Him, than the man our Lord found naked in the tombs, in the country of the Gadarenes! But she is not bad like that, this Mrs. Prichard?"

"Oh no!—that was a severe case, with complications. Not a legion of devils, this time! One or two little ones. Just simple delusions. Might have yielded to Treatment, taken younger. Too late, now, altogether. Wastage of the brain, no doubt! She's quite happy, you know."

Although Dr. Nash had not shone as a reasoner forming square to resist evidence, he had shrewd compartments in his mind, and in one of them a clear idea that he would do ill to thrust forward the details of the supposed simple delusions. This old lady must not be led to infer that he was interested in them—mere scientific curiosities! She was sure to ask for them in time; he knew that. And it was much better that he should seem to attach no weight whatever to them.

Granny Marrable seemed to entertain doubts of the patient's happiness. "I could never be happy," she said, "if I had been in a delusion."

"Not if you came to know it was a delusion. Very likely not!"

"But does not—does not—poor old Mrs. Prichard ever come to know she has been in a delusion?"

"Not she! What she fancies she just goes on fancying. Sticks to it like grim death."

"What sort of things now, doctor?"

This was a bite. But the doctor would play his fish. No hurry. "Perfectly crazy things! Oh—crack-brained! Has not your daughter told you?... Oh, by-the-by!—yes!—I did tell her she had better not.... I don't think it matters, though."

"But not if you would rather not, doctor!" This clearly meant the reverse.

"Well now—there was the first thing that happened, about that little model thing that stands on your mantelshelf at the cottage."

"What—my father's mill? Davy's mill, we call it now, because the child took to it so, and would have me tell him again and again about Muggeridge and the horses...."

"Ah—you told him about Muggeridge and the horses!"

"Yes, sure! And I lay, now, he'd told Mrs. Prichard all about that!"

"Trust him! Anyhow, he did. And she knew all about it before ever she came to Chorlton. But her mind got a queer twist over it, and she forgot it was all Master Dave's telling, and thought it had happened to herself."

"Thought what had?"

"I mean, thought she had been one of those two little kiddies in violet frocks...."

"Ah, dear me—my dear sister that died out in Australia—my darling Maisie!"

"Hay—what's that? Your darling what? What name did you say?"

"Maisie."

"There we have it—Maisie!" The doctor threw his forefinger to Granny Marrable, in theory; it remained attached to his hand in practice. "That's her name. That's what it was all cooked up out of. Maisie!" He was so satisfied with this little piece of shrewd detective insight that he forgot for the moment how thoroughly he knew the contrary.

Granny Marrable seemed to demur a little, but was brought to order by the drastic argument that it must have been that, because it could not have been anything else. By this time the doctor had recollected that he was not in a position to indulge in the luxury of incredulity.

"At least," said he, "I should have said so, only it doesn't do to be rash. One has to look at a thing of this sort all round." He paused a moment with his eyes on the ceiling, while his fingers played on the arm of his chair the tune, possibly, of a Hymn to Circumspection. Then he looked suddenly at the old lady. "You must have told the small boy a great deal about the mill-model. You told him about Muggeridge, didn't you say, and the horses? Not your daughter, I mean?"

"Sure! Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox."

"Tell him anything else about Muggeridge?"

"Well, now—did I?... No—I should say not.... I was trying to think what I would have remembered to tell. For you must bear in mind, doctor, we were but young children when Muggeridge went away, and Axtell came, after that.... No. I could not speak to having said a word about Muggeridge, beyond his bare name. That I could not."

The doctor did not interrupt his witness's browsings in the pastures of memory; but when she deserted them, saying she had found nothing to crop, said suddenly:—"Didn't tell him about Muggeridge and the other lady, who wasn't Mrs. Muggeridge?"

"Now Lard a mercy, doctor, whatever do ye take me for? And all these years you've known me! Only the idea of it!—to tell a young child that story! Why—what would the baby have thought I meant? Fie for shame of yourself, that's what I say!" A very small amount of indignation leavened a good deal of hilarity in this. The old lady enjoyed the joke immensely. That she, at eighty, should tell a child of seven a tale of nuptial infidelity! She took her great-grandson into her confidence about it, asking him:—"Did they say his great-grandmother told shocking stories to innocent little boys?"—and so forth.

The doctor had to interpose upon this utter unconsciousness, and the task was not altogether an easy one; indeed, its difficulties seemed to him to grow. He let her have her laugh out, and then said quietly:—"But where did Mrs. Prichard get the story?"

Granny Marrable had lost sight of this, and was disconcerted. "What—why—yes—where did she get it? Mrs. Prichard, of course! Now, wherever could Mrs. Prichard have got it?..." It called for thought.

Dr. Nash's idea was to give facts gradually, and let them work their own way. "Perhaps she knew Mr. Muggeridge herself," said he. "When did he die?"

"Mercy me, doctor, where's the use of asking me? Before you were born, anyhow! That's him, a man of forty, with the horses and me a child under ten! Seventy years ago, and a little to spare!"

"That cock won't fight, then. As I make out, old Mrs. Prichard didn't come from Van Diemen's Land above five-and-twenty years ago."

"Where did Mrs. Prichard come from?"

"From Van Diemen's Land. In Australia. Where the convicts go."

"There now! Only to think of that! Why—I see it all!" Granny Marrable seemed pleased.

"What do you see, Mrs. Marrable?" The doctor was puzzled. He had quite expected that at this point suspicion of the facts must dawn, however dimly.

"Because that is where my dear sister was, that died. Oh, so many long years ago!" Whenever old Phoebe mentioned Maisie, the same note of pathos came in her voice. The doctor felt he was operating for the patient's sake; but it would be the knife, without an anæsthetic. He had not indefinite time to spare for this operation.

"I am going to ask what will seem a very absurd question," said he, in the dry, professional manner in which he was wont to intrude upon his patients' private internal affairs. "But you must remember I am an outsider—quite in the dark."

A slight puzzled look on the strong old face before him, with—yes—a faint suspicion of alarm! But oh, how faint! Perhaps he was mistaken, though. For Granny Marrable let no sign of alarm come in her voice, if she felt any. "What were ye wishing to be told, doctor?" she cheerfully said. "If it's a secret, I won't tell it ye. You may take my word for that."

He fixed his eyes attentively on her face. "You are absolutely certain," said he, "that the news of your sister's death was.... He was going to say "authentic," but was arrested by an ebullition of unparalleled fury in the baby, who became fairly crumpled up with indignation, presumably at being unable to hold more than a definite amount of milk. It was a case that called for the promptest and humblest apologies from the human race, represented by his great-grandmother. She had assuaged the natural exasperation of two previous generations, and had the trick of it. He subsided, accepting as his birthright a heavenly sleep, with dreams of further milk.

Then Granny Marrable, released, looked the doctor in the face, saying:—"'That the news of my sister's death was?...'" and stopped for him to finish the sentence.

"Authentic," said he. He did not know whether her look meant that she did not understand the word, and added:—"Trustworthy."

"I know what you mean," she said. "Go on and say why?"

The doctor was fairly frightened at his own temerity. Probably the difficulties of his task had never fully dawned upon him. Would it not be safer to back out of it now, leaving what he had suggested to fructify? He would have fulfilled his promise to Lady Gwendolen, and made it easier for her to word the actual disclosure of the facts. "I was merely trying to think what anyone would say who wanted to make out that this old Mrs. Prichard was not under a delusion."

"The poor old soul! What would they say, indeed?" This was no help. Commiseration of Mrs. Prichard was not the doctor's object. But the position was improved when she added:—"But there's ne'er a one wants to make it out."

He thought of saying:—"But suppose there were!" and gave it up, knowing that his hearer, though fairly educated, would regard hypotheses as intense intellectual luxuries, prized academically, but without a place in the sane world without. He decided on saying:—"Of course, you would have documentary evidence." Then he felt that his tone had been ill-chosen—a curfew of the day's discussions, a last will and testament of the one in hand.

So it was, for the moment. Granny Marrable wanted the subject to drop. On whatever pretext it was revived, the story of her sister's life and death was still painful to her. But "documentary evidence" was too sesquipedalian to submit to without a protest. "I should have her husband's letter," said she, "telling of her death."

"Yes, you would have his letters."

"There was but two." Her intense truthfulness could not let that plural pass. "He was a strange man—and a bad one, doctor, if ye want to know—and he never wrote to me again, not after answering my letter I wrote to tell him of my father's death. But I've a long letter from him, saying how Maisie died, and her message to me, giving me—like you might say—her girl for my own. That is my Ruth, you know, at Strides Cottage, this little man's own granny. But I've never heard his name since ... not till ... not till....

"What's the matter? Anything wrong?" For Granny Marrable had stopped with a jerk, and her look was one of the greatest bewilderment. The memory of the name the madman who said he was Mrs. Prichard's son had given her as his own had come upon her with a sudden shock, having—strangely enough—been dormant throughout this interview. She was confronted with a host of perplexities, which—mark you!—had no possible solution except the one her mind could not receive, and which therefore never presented itself at all.

"Indeed, doctor, I think I be bewitched outright," said she. "I never was so put to it, all the days of my life.... No, don't ye ask me no questions! I haven't the liberty to tell above half of it, and maybe better say nothing at all."

"I see—matter of confidence! Well—I mustn't ask questions." This was really because he was certain the answer would come without asking. Granny Marrable would never let the matter drop, with that look on her face.

So it turned out. In a moment she looked up from the baby, whom she had been redistributing, to his advantage. "I'll tell ye this much, doctor," she said. "There was a crazy man in yonder field near by, when I was coming back from Jane Naunton's—just a few days since...."

"I've heard of him."

"What do they say of him?"

"I only heard the police were after him. Go on."

"Well—the name he called himself by was my sister's husband's, and he said he came from Australia."

"That might be, and no witchcraft. When did your sister die?"

"Five-and-forty—six-and-forty—years ago!"

"Any children left? Boys?"

"Boys?—Lord, no! At least, yes—two boys! What I mean is, not by this name."

"What were the boys' names?"

"One, I call to mind, was Isaac. For Maisie wrote me what work she had to persuade her husband to the name...." She had meant to say more, giving reasons why, but changed her speech abruptly. "The youngest boy's name I let slip. But I know it was never this name that man gave me."

"You remember it near enough for that?"

Granny Marrable's intense truthfulness would not allow margins. "No—it's clean slipped my memory, and I could not make oath I never knew it. It was all out of reach, beyond the seas."

"That seems reasonable. Five-and-forty years! Now, can I remember anything as long back as that?... However, I was two, so that doesn't count."

"Maisie's son never bore this name. That's out of doubt!"

"Why?"

"Because her first was christened by it, and died at Darenth Mill, after ... after his father went away."

"Roger Trufitt's son is Roger. But both his brothers who died before he was born were named Roger. There's no law against it. You know old Trufitt, the landlord at the Five Bells? He says that if this son died, he would marry again to have another and call him Roger. He's a very obstinate man, old Trufitt."

Granny Marrable sat silent while the doctor chatted, watching her changes of countenance. Her conscience was vacillating. Could she interpret her oath of silence as leaving her free to speak of the convict's claim to Mrs. Prichard as a parent? The extenuation of bad faith would lie in the purely exceptional nature of the depository of her secret. Could a disclosure to a professional ear, which secrets entered every day, be accounted "splitting"? She thought she saw her way to a limited revelation, which would meet the case without breach of confidence.

"Maybe!" said she, putting old Trufitt out of court. "But I can tell ye another reason why he's no son of my sister's. Though he might be, mind you, a son of her husband. My brother-in-law, most like, married again. How should I know?"

"What's the other reason?"

"He told me his mother's name. But I am not free to tell it, by reason I promised not to."

This struck the doctor as odd. "How came you to be talking to a stray tramp about his mother, Granny Marrable?" he asked shrewdly.

"Because he took me for his mother, and would have it I should know him." This was no doubt included in what she had promised not to tell, but the question had taken her by surprise.

A light broke on Dr. Nash. All through the interview he had been wondering at himself for never having before observed the likeness between the two old women, which he now saw plainly by the light of the information Gwen had given him. He might have seen it before, had he heard of the gipsy's mistake, but Ruth Thrale had never mentioned this. He remembered, too, in Gwen's story, some slight reference to a son of Mrs. Prichard who was a mauvais sujet. He determined on a daring coup. "Are you sure Mrs. Prichard is not the mother he was looking for?" said he.

Granny Marrable was struck with his cleverness. "Now, how ever did you come to find that out, doctor?" said she.

"We're a clever lot, us doctors! We've got to be clever.... Let's see, now—where are we? Mrs. Prichard has a son who is called by your brother-in-law's name, but who is not your sister's son. Because if he were, Mrs. Prichard would be your sister. Which is impossible. But Mrs. Prichard has got muddled about her own identity, and thinks she is. What can we do to cure such a delusion? I've seen a great deal of this sort of thing—I've had charge of lunatics—and the only thing I know of for the case is to stimulate memory of the patient's actual past life. But we know nothing about Mrs. Prichard. Who the dickens is Mrs. Prichard?"

Granny Marrable had looked really pleased at the reductio ad absurdum—always exhilarating when one knows what's impossible—but looked perplexed over Mrs. Prichard's real identity. "No, indeed, poor dear soul!" she said. "'Tisn't as if there was any would tell us about her."

"I have found, and so has your daughter, that she goes back and back in these dreams of her own childhood, which no doubt are made up of ... which no doubt may have been told her by.... He stopped intentionally. He wanted to stagger her immobility by making her recite the nonsense about Mrs. Prichard's informants.

She was quite amenable. "By little Davy," said she contentedly.

"And what she had from your sister in Australia, years ago," said the doctor, and saw her content waver. He had his clue, and resolved to act on it. "For instance, Mr. Muggeridge's gallivantings. You're sure you never told the child?"

"Sure?... Merciful gracious me! That baby?"

"And how you and she measured the mill-model? That must have come from your sister."

She started. "What was that?" she said. "You never told me."

He did not look at her—only at his watch. He really had to be off, he said, but would tell her about the measurements. Thought she knew it before. He went on to narrate the incident referred to, which is already familiar to the story. Then he got up from his chair as though to take leave. If this did not land the suspicion of the truth in her unreceptive mind, it could only be done by a sort of point-blank directness that he shrank from employing, and that he had made it difficult to adopt by his implied pretence of unconcern. He would sooner, if that was to be the way of it, come to her at the outset as the herald of something serious, and ask her to prepare herself for a great shock. His manner had not pointed to an open operation, and such a variation of it would be the sudden production of the knife. Perhaps the dentist is sometimes right who brings his pliers from behind his back when the patient fancies he is only scouting; but he runs a risk, always. Dr. Nash was not at all confident in this case.

But he could venture a little farther with mere suggestion. "Certainly," said he, "it is a very curious phase of delusion, that this old lady should go back on a statement of your sister's, made a lifetime ago, to no apparent end. But the whole subject of the action of the brain is a mystery." He looked up at his hearer's face.

She was sitting motionless, with a sort of fixed look. Had he injured her—struck at the heart of her understanding? Well, it had got to come, for better, for worse. Moreover, the look implied self-command. No, he need not be frightened.

"What strikes me about this arm-measurement," said he, "is the strength of her conviction. If she had only spoken of it, well! But to get up, at six in the morning, the day after she saw it!"

The old lady's eyes met his. "Why arm-measurement?" she asked, speaking quite steadily and clearly.

"Because that was the way it was done. I don't know if I described it right. Look here—it was like this...." He took her right wrist, as he stood facing her, with his left hand. "You stretch out your fingers straight," said he, and brought the tip of the middle finger of his own right hand to meet hers. "Now, what Mrs. Prichard fancies she remembers—what your sister told her in Australia, you know—is that you and she, being girls, tried the length of your two arms together on the top of the mill-case, from the elbow down. Just like ours now." He determined to make the most of this incident, for his impression was that her mind was already in revolt against the gross improbability of her sister having dwelt on it to a new acquaintance in the Colony. He had made Mrs. Prichard linger over the telling of it; it was such a strange phase of delusion. In fact, he had said to himself that it must be a genuine memory, ascribed to the wrong persons. He went on to a cold-blooded use of her minutest details, still keeping the hand he held in his. "You see, Mrs. Prichard's point was this—don't take your hand away; I haven't quite done with it—her point was that your arm and your sister's were exactly of a size...."

"We were twins."

"Precisely. And your two little paws, being young kids, or youngish...."

"We were just children. I mind it well. 'Twas a sort of game, to see how our hands grew. But...."

"Let me finish. This old woman, when she went touring about to have a look at the model that had given her such a turn overnight, found that her own arm was well two-thirds the length of it, and something over. She was cocksure the two small arms only just covered it, because unless one cheated and pushed her elbow over the edge, your middle fingers wouldn't jam and go cleck—like this.... That's why I wanted your hand for—that'll do!... There was such a funny name she called it by—the finger-tips jamming, I mean...."

Granny Marrable was pressing the released hand on her eyes and forehead. "You fairly make my head spin, doctor, digging up of old-time memories. But whatever was the funny name? Can't ye recollect?"

"It was sheer gibberish, you know...."

"Can't ye call the gibberish to mind?" This was asked earnestly, and made Dr. Nash feel he was on the right tack.

"One can't speak positively to gibberish. The nearest I can go to the word Mrs. Prichard used is"—the doctor paused under the weight of his responsibility for accuracy—"the, nearest, I, can, go is ... spud-clicket." He waited, really anxiously. If, rather than admit a suspicion of the truth, she could believe that such a piece of infant jargon could dwell correctly for decades in the mind of a chance hearer, she could believe anything.

He was utterly taken aback when equable and easy speech, with a sound of relief in every word, came from lips which he thought must at least be tremulous. "Well—there now! Doesn't that show? Only Maisie could have told her that word. It's all right. But I'm none so sure, mind you, that I could have remembered it right, myself."

It seemed perfectly hopeless. So said the doctor to himself. Surely, in this long interview, he had tried all that suggestion could do to get a fulcrum to raise the dead weight of conviction that years of an accepted error had built up undisturbed. How easy it would have been had the tale of Daverill's audacious fraud been a few months old; or a few years, for that matter! It was that appalling lapse of time.

What could the doctor do to carry out his rash promise to Lady Gwendolen, more than what he had done? He was already overdue at the house of another patient, three miles off. The alternatives before him were:—To rush the position, saying, "Look here, Granny Marrable, neither you nor your sister are dead, but you were each told of the other's death by the worst scoundrel God ever made." To do this or to throw up the sponge and hurry off to his waiting patient! He chose the latter. After all, he had striven hard to fulfil his promise to her young ladyship, and only been repulsed from an impregnable fortress. But he would have a parting shot.

"You must be very curious to see this queer old Mrs. Prichard, Mrs. Marrable?" said he.

The old lady did not warm up to this at all. "Indeed, doctor, if I tell the truth, I could not say I am. For to hear the poor old soul fancy herself my sister, dead now five-and-forty years and more! Not for the pain to myself, but for the great pity for a poor demented soul, and no blessed Saviour near to bid the evil spirit begone. No, indeed—I will hope she may be well on her way home before ever I return to Strides. But my daughter says she'll be loath to part with her, so I'm not bound to hurry back."

"Well—I rather hope she'll stop on long enough for you to get a sight of her. You would be interested.... There's the postman." For they were standing at the farm-gate by this time, leading into the lane.

"Yes, it be John Barlow on his new mail-cart. He's brought something for the farm, or he wouldn't come this way.... Good-evening to you, John Barlow!... What—three letters! And one of them for the old 'oman.... So 'tis!—'tis a letter from my little man Davy, bless his heart!"

"One fower th' ma'aster," said Mr. Barlow's strong rustic accent. "One fower th' mistress. And one fower the granny. It be directed Strides, but Widow Thrale she says, 'Ta'ak it along, to moother at Costrell's.' And now ye've gotten it, Granny Marrable."

"There's no denying that, Master John. I'll say good-bye, doctor." But what the letter-carrier was saying caught her ear, and she paused before re-entering the house, holding the letters in her hand.

"There was anoother letter for th' Cottage, the vairy fetch of yowern, Granny, all but th' neam. Th' neam on't was Mrs. Picture, and on yowern Mrs. Marrowbone, and if th' neam had been sa'am on both, 'twould have ta'aken Loondon Town to tell 'em apart."

"And you left one at the Cottage, and brought the other on here? Was that it? Sharp man!" The doctor was pulling on his thick driving-gloves, to depart. Granny Marrable was opening her letter already. "Bless the boy," said she, "he's writing to both his Grannies with the same pen, so they may not be jealous!"

"You may call me a sha'arp ma'an for soomat else, doctor," said Mr. Barlow, locking his undelivered letters into the inner core of the new mail-cart. "This time I be no cleverer than my letters. 'Twas Joe Kerridge's wife, next dower the cottage, said, 'Ta'ak it on to the Granny at Dessington.' And says I to her, 'They'm gotten the sa'am yoong ma'an to write 'em love-letters,' I says. 'You couldn't tell they two letters apart, but for the neams on 'em.' And then Mrs. Lisbeth she says to me, 'Some do say they have to keep their eyes open to tell the old la'adies apart,' she says. 'But I'm anoother way o' thinking mysen,' she says, 'by reason of this Mrs. Prichard's white head o' hair.' And then I handed all the letters to Lisbeth for Strides, as well as her own, seeing ne'er one came out at door for knocking, and brought yowern on with Farmer Costrell's." Mr. Barlow had been spoken of in the village more than once as a woundy chatterbox.

The doctor glanced at Granny Marrable to see how she had taken the reference to her resemblance to Mrs. Prichard, but was just too late to see her face. She had turned to go into the house, and the only evidence he had that it had perturbed her at all was that she said good-night to no one. He felt that he had more than fulfilled his promise to Lady Gwendolen, having done everything short of forcing the pace. His other patient was no doubt already execrating him for not coming to time, so he drove off briskly; at least, so his pony flattered himself. Ideas of speed differ.

The horse whose quick step the doctor heard overhauling him, about a mile on his road, had another ideal, evidently. It did not concern him; so he ignored it until, as its nearer approach caused him to edge close to the margin of the narrow road, the voice of its driver shouted to him, and he pulled up to see why. Perhaps Mr. Barlow, the shouter, had lighted on an overlooked letter for him, and had preferred this method of delivery.

"They're asking for ye ba'ack at t' hoose—ba'ack to Costrell's Varm.... Noa, noa, doctor—'tis the old Granny, not the yoong wench. She's gone off in a sowart of fayunt."

Dr. Nash turned his pony's head without a word, nodded and started. Mr. Barlow called out, as Parthian information, as many particulars as he thought would be audible, and sped on his course, to stand and deliver at every cottage on the route susceptible to correspondence.

"She was looking queer," said the doctor to himself, stimulating his pony's concept of a maximum velocity. "But I never thought of this. The Devil fly away with the Australian twin! Why couldn't she wait six weeks?"

He was immensely relieved to find the old lady sitting up, with her granddaughter applying vinegar to her forehead. She was discountenancing this remedy, or any remedy, as needless, in an unconvincingly weak voice. She would come round if left to herself. She rallied her forces at sight of the doctor, rather resenting him as superfluous. However, his knowledge of the cause of her upset made him an ally, a fact she probably became aware of. He suggested, after exhibiting two or three drops of hartshorn in a wineglass of water, that she should be taken at her word.

While she came round, left to herself in the big armchair, with her eyes shut and a pillow to lean back on, Maisie the granddaughter told her tale—the occurrence as she had seen it. Hearing the doctor's sounds of departure, she had discontinued a fiction of repose—not admitted as fiction, however—to come down and see what on earth Granny and he had been talking their tongues off for. Granny was reading her letter from Dave Wardle, and just the moment she saw her, gave a cry and fell back in her chair; whereon Maisie, running out, told Mr. Barlow to catch the doctor and send him back, then returned to her grandmother. She herself did not seem seriously upset, though much puzzled and surprised.

The doctor saw something. "Where's the letter?" said he.

"Here on the baby," said Mrs. Maisie. And there on the baby, enjoying, in a holy sleep, deep draughts of imaginary milk, was Dave's large round-hand epistle.

The doctor glanced at it, and had the presence of mind to say:—"Ho!—letter from a kid!" and suppress it. "Your Granny wants something," said he, diverting Mrs. Costrell's attention from it. The old lady was rallying visibly. She was, in fact, making an heroic struggle against a sudden overwhelming shock.

---

Recent theories of a double consciousness—an inner self—that have been worked hard of late years to account for everything Psychology is at a loss about, might be appealed to to throw light on the changes in Granny Marrable's state of mind in this past hour. Although to all appearance the whole of Dr. Nash's efforts to put it on the track had been thrown away, some of the forces his suggestions had set in motion had told upon it; and, just as a swift, mysterious impatience in the few clouds of a blue sky, and a muttered omen from Heaven-knows-what horizon, precedes the thunder-clap that makes us run for shelter, so this underself of hers may have vibrated in response to the strange hints he had thrown out, and become susceptible to an impression from Mr. Barlow's reference to her likeness to Mrs. Prichard, which otherwise would have slipped off it like water off a duck's back. We have to consider how in those happy years of her youth this almost indistinguishable twinship of the sisters had been a daily topic with all their near surroundings. To hear herself spoken of as a duplicate again, after fifty years, carried with it an inexplicable thrill. Oh, how the hours came trooping back from those long-forgotten days of old, each with its appeal to that underself alone; which she, the old Phoebe of this living world, suspected only to disallow! How she might have let the memories of the old mill and the ever-running wheels; of the still backwater where she failed to see the heron she could even now hear her sister's sweet voice calling to her to come—come quickly to!—or she would miss it; of that dear vanished sister's sweet beauty she could dwell upon, forgetful that it also was her own,—how she might have let these memories run riot in her heart, and break it, but that the very thing that provoked them was also their profanation—Mrs. Prichard at Strides Cottage! Who or what was Mrs. Prichard? A poor old crazypate, a victim of delusions....

Yes, but what delusions? That was the question her inner self could not ignore, however much her living mind might cancel it. She could run for shelter from it, but the storm would come. She flinched from hearing another word of Mr. Barlow's woundy chatter, and fled into the house, actually bearing in her hand the lightning-flash whose thunder-clap was in a moment to shake the foundations of her soul.

It came with a terrible suddenness when she read Dave's large, roundhand script. "My dear Graney Marobone—Me and Dolly are so Glad because Gweng has been here To say Mrs. Picture is reely Your Cistern." This is as written first. Old Phoebe deciphered the corrections without illumination; sheltered, perhaps, by some bias of her inner soul to an idea that Mrs. Prichard was a second wife of her convict brother-in-law—a sort of washed-out sister-in-law. The child might have cooked it up out of that. It would explain many things.

Then came the thunderclap. "Gweng says Bad people told you bofe Lies heaps longer ago than dolly's birfday, so you bofe thort you was dead and buried." Straight to the heart of the subject, as perhaps none but a child could have phrased it. Granny Marrable's sight grew dim as she read:—"Gweng says you will be glad, not sory." Then she felt quite sick, and heard her granddaughter coming downstairs. How to tell her nothing of all this, how to pretend nothing was happening—that was what had to be done! But the world vanished as she fell back in her chair beside the cradle.

---

"Yes, Granny dear, what is it?... The letter?—oh, the doctor's got the letter. Does it matter?... Never mind the letter! You sit still! I must get you something. What shall I get for her, doctor?"

"Get me nothing, Maisie. I shall be all right directly...." And it really seemed as if she would. Indeed, her revival was amazingly sudden. "I tell you what I should like," said she, quite firmly. "I should like a little air. Is not John come in?" John was Mr. Costrell, her grandson-in-law—the farmer.

"I think I just heard him, outside." Maisie had heard him drive up to the door, a familiar sound.

"Then let him drive me over to the Cottage."

"Yes," said the doctor, with emphasis. "Good idea!" And Maisie left the room to speak to her husband.

Then old Phoebe, on her feet now, and speaking clearly, with a strange ring of determination in her voice, said to him:—"Have you the young child's letter?" He drew it from his pocket. "If what that letter says is true, this is my sister Maisie, risen from the grave."

He marvelled at her strength. There was no need for reserve; he could speak plainly now. "The letter is all true, Mrs. Marrable," said he. "Mrs. Prichard is your sister Maisie, but she is not risen from the grave. She is ill, and probably knows by now what you know, but for all the shock she has had, she may have years of life before her. You cannot do better than go to her at once. And remember that she will need all your strength to help her. For she is not strong, like you."

The old face relaxed from its tension, and a gleam of happiness was in the life of it. But she only said:—"Maisie": said it twice, as for the pleasure in the name. Then she held out her hand, to take the letter from the doctor.

He handed it to her. "I have been telling fibs, Mrs. Marrable," said he, "or using them, which is the same thing, in trying to tell you this. You will forgive that, I know?" She nodded assent. "Shall I tell you the facts, as far as they are known to me?"

"Please!" She seemed well able to understand.

"Her husband was a damnable scoundrel...."

"He was."

"... And for some motive we can throw no light on, wrote two letters, one a forgery with your father's signature—a letter to his wife—saying that you, with your own husband and her child were drowned at sea. The other to yourself, telling you that she was dead in Australia."

The blank horror on old Phoebe's face remained in the doctor's memory, long after that. She just found voice to say:—"God help us all!" But there was no sign of another collapse, though he was watching for it.

He continued:—"He must have had some means of suppressing your letters to one another, to be safe in this deception...."

"He was the postmaster."

"Oh—was that it? Mrs. Costrell is coming back, and I shall have to stop.... But I must just tell you this. The whole story has come out through Lady Gwendolen Rivers, who is keenly interested in your sister." Old Phoebe gave a visible start at this first mention of Mrs. Prichard's relationship as a certainty. It was like the bather's gasp when the cold water comes level with his heart. "Lady Gwendolen seems to have taken charge of the old lady's writing-desk in London, and his lordship, her father, it appears, opened and read them, having his suspicions...."

"Oh, but his lordship had the right...."

"Surely! No one would question his lordship's actions.... Here comes your granddaughter back. I must stop. But that is really the whole." Mrs. Costrell came back to say that John was mending a buckle in the harness, but would be ready to drive Granny in a few minutes. How much better Granny was looking! What was it, doctor? It wasn't like Granny.

"Stomach, probably," said the doctor, resorting to a time-honoured subterfuge. "I'll send her something to take directly after meals."

"No, Maisie," said the old lady, somewhat to the doctor's surprise. "You shall not be told any stories, with my consent. I've had a piece of news—a blessed piece of news as ever came to an old woman!—and it gave me a jump. But I shan't tell ye a word of it yet a while. Ye may just be busy over guessing what it is till I come back." The doctor was obliged to confess to himself that this was a wonderful stroke of policy on the old lady's part, and resolved to back it up through thick and thin.

But although the young wife's good-humoured face showed every sign of rebellion against her arbitrary exclusion from the enjoyment of this mystery, her protest had to stand over. For baby waked up suddenly in a storm of rage, and called Heaven and Earth to witness the grievous injury and neglect of his family in not being ready with a prompt bottle. The doctor hurried away to that patient, and what sort of reception he got the story can only imagine. It hopes the case was not urgent.

The last he saw that day of Granny Marrable was her back, almost as upright at eighty as the young farmer's beside her at thirty, just starting on the short journey that was to end in such an amazing interview. His thought for a moment was how he would like to be there to see it! Reconsideration made him say to himself:—"Well, now, should I?"

---

CHAPTER XVII

HOW LADY ANCESTER CALLED ON LADY TORRENS, WHO WAS KEEPING HER ROOM. BUT SHE SAW THE BART. A QUEER AND TICKLISH INTERVIEW. MAURICE AND KATHLEEN TYRAWLEY. NO NEED FOR HUMBUG BETWEEN US! THE COUNTESS'S GROUNDS FOR OPPOSING THE MARRIAGE. HOW ADRIAN, WITH EYES IN HIS HEAD, WOULD HAVE BEEN MOST ACCEPTABLE. BUT HOW ABOUT JEPHTHA'S DAUGHTER? OUGHT WE, THOUGH, TO MEDDLE BETWEEN YOUNG LOVERS? AN AWKWARD TOPIC. HOW ROMEO DIDN'T FEEL, ABOUT HIS EX-JULIET! HOW COUNTY PARIS MIGHT HAVE WASHED, AND ROSALINE MIGHT HAVE MARRIED A POPULAR PREACHER. THE SAME LIPS. THE COUNTESS'S COURAGE. A GOOD SHAKE AND NO FLINCHING. CHRISTIAN-NAMING UNDER TUTELAGE. HOW SIR HAMILTON INDULGED IN A FIRESIDE REVERIE OVER HIS PAST, AND HIS SON AND DAUGHTER CAME BACK. HOW MISS SCATCHERD HAD BEEN SEEN BY BOTH. A FLASH OF EYESIGHT, AND HOPE. HOW THE SQUIRE TOOK THE NEXT OPPORTUNITY THAT EVENING. CUPID's NAME NOT DANIEL. WHAT AN IMAGE OF THE COUNTESS SAID TO ADRIAN

Sir Hamilton Torrens is at home, because when a messenger rode from the Towers in the morning with a note from the Countess to say that her ladyship was driving over to Poynders in the afternoon, and could manage a previous visit at Pensham by coming an hour earlier, his wife instructed him that it would never do for him to be absent, seeing that there was no knowing how indisposed she herself might be. There never is, with nerve cases, and she was a nerve case. So Sir Hamilton really must arrange to stay at home just this one afternoon, that Lady Ancester's visit should not be absolutely sterile. If the nerve case's plight and Sir Hamilton's isolation were communicated to her on her arrival, she could choose for herself whether to come in or go on to Poynders. She chose to come in and interview Sir Hamilton. So consider that the lady of the house is indisposed, and is keeping her room, and that the blind man and his sister, and Achilles, have gone to visit a neighbour.

The Countess was acting on her resolution made in the train to be a free lance. She had been scheming an interview with Adrian's father before the next meeting of the lovers, if possible; and now she had caught at the opportunity afforded by her daughter's absence at Chorlton. Hers was a resolution that deserved the name, in view of its special object—the organizing and conduct of what might be a most embarrassing negotiation, or effort of diplomacy.

These two, three decades back, had behaved when they met like lovers on the stage who are carried away by their parts and forget the audience. Unless indeed they had an audience, in which case they had to wait, and did it with a parade of indifference which deceived no one.

And now! Here was the gentleman making believe that the lady was bitterly disappointed at not seeing his amiable wife, who was, after all, only the Miss Abercrombie he married at about the same time that she herself became a Countess. And here was she adding to an insincere acceptance of the position of chief mourner a groundless pretext that the two or three decades were four or five—or anything you please outside King Memory's Statutes of Limitations!—and those endearments too long ago to count. And that the nerve case upstairs, if you please, had no existence for her ladyship as the Miss Abercrombie she heard Hamilton was engaged to marry, and felt rather curious about at the time, but was a most interesting individuality, saturated with public spirit, whose enthusiasm about the Abolition of Slavery had stirred her sympathetic soul to the quick.

Endless speculation is possible over the feelings of a man and woman so related, coming together under such changed circumstances, without the lubricant to easy intercourse of the presence of others. The Countess would not have faced the possible embarrassments, but would have driven on to her cousin's house, Poynders, if she had not had a specific purpose. As it was, it was the very thing she wanted, and she welcomed it. She had the stronger position, and was prepared for all contingencies.

Sir Hamilton had very few demeanours open to him. The most obvious one was that of the courteous host, flattered to receive such a visitor on any terms, especially proud and cordial in view of the prospect of a connection between the families. He maintained a penitential attitude under the depressing shadow of the absence of his better half, which certainly was made the most of by both; somewhat artificially, a perceptive visitor might have said, if one had been there to see. The jeremiads over this unfortunate misadventure must have lasted fully ten minutes before a lull came; for the gentleman could catch no other wind in his sails, and had to let out every reef to move at all.

Lady Ancester was not inclined to lose time. "I am particularly sorry not to see Lady Torrens," she said, "because I really wanted to have a serious talk with her.... Yes, about the boy and girl—your boy and my girl." A curious consciousness almost made her wince. Think how easily either of the young lovers might have been a joint possession! If one, then both, surely, minus their identities and the status quo? It was like sudden unexpected lemon in a made dish.

The worst of it was—not that each thought the same thing at the same moment; that was inevitable—but that each knew the other's thought. The Baronet fell back on mere self-subordination. Automatically non-existent, he would be safe. "Same thing—same thing—Lady Torrens and myself! Comes to the same thing whether you say it to me or to her. Repeat every word!... Of course—easier to talk to her! But comes to the same thing." He abated himself to a go-between, and was entrenched.

The Countess affected an easy languor to say:—"I really don't feel able to say what I want straight off. You know I never used to be able"—she laughed a deprecatory laugh—"in the old Clarges Street days. Besides, your man is coming in and out with tea and things. When he's done, I'll go on."

The sudden reference to the time-when of that old passionate relation contained an implication that it was not unspeakable per se—although its threat had been that it would do its worst as a cupboard-skeleton—but only owing to the childish silliness of a mere calf-love, a reciprocal misapprehension soon forgotten. Treated with contempt, its pretensions to skeletonhood fell through. Moreover, that pending tea had helped to a pause; showing the speaker to be quite collected, and mistress of the situation.

The little episode had put the Baronet more at his ease. He thought he might endeavour to contribute to general lubrication on the same lines. By-the-by, he had met Maurice Tyrawley last week in London—just back from India—been away much longer than our men usually—Lady Ancester would remember Maurice Tyrawley—man with a slight stammer—sister ran away with her father's groom? Her ladyship remembered Maurice very well. And was that really true about Kathleen Tyrawley? Well—that was interesting! Was she alive? Oh dear yes—living in Tavistock Square—fellah made money, somehow. That was very interesting. If the Countess had Kathleen's address, she would try to call on her, some time. What was her name? Hopkins. Oh—Hopkins! She felt discouraged, and not at all sure she should call on her, any time. But she did not say so. An entry of Mrs. Hopkins's address and full name followed, on some painfully minute ivory tablets. The Countess was sure to find the place, owing to her coachman's phenomenal bump of locality. Was Colonel Tyrawley married?... Oh—Major Tyrawley! Yes, he was married, and had some rumpus with his wife. Etcetera, etcetera.

This sort of thing served its turn, as did the tea. But both became things of the past, and left the course clear. Provided always that the servant did not recrudesce! "Is he gone?" said the Countess. "If he isn't, I can wait."

"He won't come back now."

"Very well. Then I can go on. I want to talk about our girl and boy.... I don't think there need be any nonsense between Us, Sir Hamilton?"

"About our boy and girl? Why should there?" Best not to add:—"Or anything else," on the whole!

"I am speaking of his eyesight only. Please understand that I should not oppose my daughter's wishes on any other ground."

"But I am to understand that you do oppose them?"

The Countess held back her answer a few seconds, to take a last look at it before sending it to press. Then she said decisively:—"Yes." She made no softening reservation. She had already said why.

He considered it his duty to soften it for her. "On the ground of his eyesight.... This is a sad business.... I gather that you empower me to repeat to my wife that you are—quite naturally, I admit—are unreconciled.... Or, at least, only partly reconciled to——"

"Unreconciled. I won't make any pretences, Sir Hamilton. I do not think there need be any nonsense between us. I am the girl's mother, and it is my duty to speak plain, for her sake."

"My wife will entirely agree with you."

"I hope so. But I am not sorry that I should have an opportunity of speaking freely to you. This is the first I have had. I wish you to know without disguise exactly how this marriage of Gwen and your Adrian—if it ever comes off—will present itself to me, as the girl's mother."

Sir Hamilton inclined his head slightly, which may have meant:—"I am prepared to listen to you as the boy's father, and his mother's proxy."

"As the girl's mother," repeated the lady. "I shall continue to think, as I think now, that there is an unreal element in my daughter's ... a ... regard for your son."

"An unreal element! Very often is, in young ladies' predilections for young gentlemen."

The Countess rushed on to avoid a complex abstract subject, with pitfalls galore. "Which may very well endanger her future.... Well!—may endanger the happiness of both.... I don't mean that she isn't in love with him—whatever the word means, and sometimes one hardly knows. I mean now that she is under an influence which may last, or may not, but which might never have existed but for ... but for the accident."

"My wife has said the same thing, more than once." Her ladyship could have dispensed with this constant reference to the late Miss Abercrombie. She felt that it put her at a disadvantage.

"And the Earl entirely agrees with me," said she. For why should her ladyship not play a card of the same suit? "There is something I want to say, and I don't know how to say it. But he said it the other day, and I felt exactly as he did. He said, as near as I recollect:—'If I had twenty daughters to give away, I would not grudge one to poor Adrian, if I thought it would do something to make up for the wrong I have done him....'"

Sir Hamilton interrupted warmly. "No, Lady Ancester, no! I cannot allow that to be said! We have never thought of it that way. We do not think of it that way. We never shall think of it that way. It was an accident, pure and simple. It might have happened to his son, on my bit of preserved land. All the owners about shoot stray dogs."

"But if it had, and you had had a mad daughter—because Gwen is a mad girl, if ever there was one—who got a Quixotic idea like this in her head, you would have felt exactly as my husband does."

"Should I? Well—I suppose I should. No, I don't think I should.... Well—at least...!"

"At least, what?"

"At least, if I had supposed that ... that Irene, for instance"—Sir Hamilton's mind required a tangible reality to rest upon—"that Irene was head over ears in love with some man...." He did not seem to have his conclusion ready.

"And you are convinced that my daughter is head over ears, in love with your son? Is that it?" The Countess spoke rather coldly, and Sir Hamilton felt uncomfortable. "It seems to me that the whole thing turns on that. Are you certain that you have not allowed yourself to be convinced?"

"Allowed myself—I'm not sure I understand."

"With less proof, I mean, than her parents have a right to ask for—less than you would have asked yourself in the reverse case?"

Sir Hamilton felt more uncomfortable. He ought to have answered that he was very far from certain. But an Englishman is nothing if not a prevaricator; he calls it being scrupulously truthful. "I have no right to catechize Lady Gwendolen," said he.

"And her parents have, of course. I see. But if her parents, are convinced—as I certainly am in this case, and I think my husband is, almost—that there is an unreal element on Gwen's side, it ought to ... to carry weight with you."

"It would carry weight. It does carry weight. But ... However, I must talk to Lady Torrens about this." He appeared very uncomfortable indeed, and was visibly flushed. But that may have been the red glow of a dying fire in the half-light, or half-darkness, striking his face as he rested his elbow on the chimney-piece, while its hand wandered from his brow to his chin, expressing irresolute perplexity. Until, as she sat silent, as though satisfied that he could have now no doubt about her wishes, he spoke again, abruptly. "I wish you would tell me exactly what you suppose to be the case."

She addressed herself to explicit statement. "I believe Gwen is acting under an unselfish impulse, and I do not believe in unselfish impulses. If a girl is to run counter to the wishes of her parents, and to obvious common sense, at least let her impulse be a selfish one. Let her act entirely for her own sake. Gwen made your son's acquaintance under peculiar circumstances—romantic circumstances—and, as I know, instantly saw that his eyesight might be destroyed and that the blame would rest with her family...."

"No, L-Lady Ancester"—he stumbled somehow over the name, for no apparent reason—"I deny that. I protest against it...."

"We need not settle that point. Your feeling is a generous one. But do let us keep to Gwen and Adrian." Her ladyship went on to develop her view of the case, not at all illogically. Her objection to the marriage turned entirely on Adrian's blindness—had not a particle of personal feeling in it. On the contrary, she and her husband saw every reason to believe that the young man, with eyes in his head, would have met with a most affectionate welcome as a son-in-law. This applied especially to the Earl, who, of course, had seen more of Adrian than herself. He had, in fact, conceived an extraordinary entichement for him; so much so that he would sooner, for his own sake purely, that the marriage should come off, as the blindness would affect him very little. But his duty to his daughter remained exactly the same. If there was the slightest reason to suppose that Gwen was immolating herself as a sacrifice—something was implied of an analogy in the case of Jephtha's daughter, but not pressed home owing to obvious weak points—he had no choice, and she had no choice, but to protect the victim from herself. If they did not do so, what was there to prevent an irrevocable step being taken which might easily lead to disastrous consequences for both? "You must see," said Gwen's mother very earnestly, "that if my daughter is acting, as my husband and I suppose, from a Quixotic desire to make up to your son for the terrible injury we have done him ... No protests, please!... it is our business to protect her from the consequences of her own rashness—to stand between her and a possible lifelong unhappiness!"

"But what," said the perplexed Baronet, "can I do?" A reasonable question!

"If you can do nothing, no one can. The Earl and myself are so handicapped by our sense of the fearful injury that we have—however unintentionally—inflicted on your son, that we are really tied hand and foot. But you can at least place the case before Adrian as I have placed it before you, and I appeal to you to do so. I am sure you will see that it is impossible for my husband or myself to say the same thing to him."

"But to what end? What do you suppose will come of it? What ... a ... what difference will it make?"

"It will make a difference. It must make a difference, if your son is made fully aware—he is not, now—of the motives that may be influencing Gwen." The Countess was not at all confident of her case, in respect of any definite change it would produce in the bearing of Adrian towards his fiancée, and still less of any effect such change would produce upon that headstrong young lady, if once she suspected its cause. But she had confidence in her memories of the rather stupid middle-aged gentleman of whom, as a young dragoon, she had had such very intimate experience. He was still sensitively honourable, as in those old days—she was sure of that. Unless, indeed, he had changed very much morally, as he had certainly done physically. He would shrink from the idea of his son profiting by an heroic self-devotion of the daughter of a man who was no more to blame for his son's mishap than he himself would have been in the counter-case he had supposed. And he would impress her view of the position on his son. It would have no visible and immediate result now, but how about the six months at Vienna? Might it not be utilised to undermine that position during those six months of fascinating change? She pictured to herself an abatement of what her mind thought of as "the heroics" in the first six weeks.

At least, she could see, at this moment, that she had gained her immediate end. The uneasiness of the Baronet was visible in all that can show uneasiness in a not very expressive exterior—restlessness of hand and lips, and the fixed brow of perplexity. "Very good—very good!" he was saying, "I will talk to my wife about it. You may depend on me to do what I can. Only—if you are mistaken...."

"About Gwen? If I am, things must take their own course. But I think it will turn out that I am right.... That is all, is it not? I am truly sorry not to have seen Lady Torrens. I hope she will be better.... Oh yes—it's all right about the time. They know I am coming, at Poynders. And I should have time to dress for dinner, anyhow. Good-bye!" Her ladyship held out a decisive hand, that said:—"Curtain."

But Sir Hamilton did not seem so sure the performance was over. "Half a minute more, L-Lady Ancester," said he; and he again half-stumbled over her name. "I am rather slow in expressing myself, but I have something I want to say."

"I am not in a hurry."

"I can only do exactly what you have asked me to do—place the case before my son as you have placed it before me."

"I have not asked for anything else."

"Well, then, I can do that, after I have talked over it with his mother. But I can't ... I can't undertake to influence him."

"Is he so intractable?... However, young men are."

"I did not mean that. I ... I don't exactly know how to say it...."

"Why should you hesitate to say what you were going to say?... Do you suppose I don't know what it was?" For he had begun to anticipate it with some weakening reservation. "I could tell you exactly. You were going to say, was it right to influence young people's futures and so on, and wasn't it taking a great responsibility, and so on? Now, were you not?"

"I had some such thought."

"Exactly. You mean you thought what I said you thought."

"And you think me mistaken?"

"Not always. In the present case, yes—if you consider that it would be influencing. I don't. It would only be refraining from keeping silence about—about something it may never occur to your son to think possible." It may have struck her hearer that to call shouting a fact on the house-tops "refraining from keeping silence" about it was straining phraseology; but it was not easy to formulate the idea, offhand. It was easier to hold his tongue. The Countess might have done better to hold hers, at this point. But she must needs be discriminating, to show how clear-sighted she was. "Of course, it is quite a different thing to try to bring about a marriage. That is certainly taking a grave responsibility." She stopped with a jerk, for she caught herself denouncing the very course of action which well-meaning friends had adopted successfully in the case of herself and her husband. If it had not been for the jerk, Sir Hamilton would not have known the comparison that was passing in her mind. She recovered herself to continue:—"Of course, trying to bring about a marriage is a grave responsibility, but mere testing of the strength of links that bind may be no more than bare prudence. A breaking strain on lovers' vows may be acknowledged by them as an untold blessing in after-years." Here she began to feel she was not improving matters, and continued, with misgivings:—"I am scarcely asking you to do even that. I am only appealing to you to suggest to your son a fact that is obvious to myself and my husband, because it is almost impossible for us, under the circumstances, to make such an appeal to him ourselves."

"Are you so confident of the grounds of your suspicions ... about ... about the motives that are influencing your daughter?"

"They are not suspicions. They are certainties. At least, I am convinced—and I am her mother—that her chief motive in accepting your son was vitiated—yes, vitiated!—by a mistaken zeal for—suppose we call it poetical justice. I am not going to say the girl does not fancy herself in love." She laughed a maternal sort of laugh—the laugh that seniority, undeceived by life's realities, laughs at the crazy dawn of passion in infatuated children. "Of course she does. But knowing what I do, am I not right to make an attempt at least to protect her from herself?" She lowered her voice to an increase of earnestness, as though she had found a way to go nearer to the heart of her subject. "Does any woman know—can any woman know—better than I do, the value of a girl's first love?"

It was a daring recognition of their old relation, and the veil of the thin pretence that it could be successfully ignored had fallen from between them.

The Baronet was a Man of the World. "Women do not take these things to heart as men do." And then, the moment after, was in a cold perspiration to think in what a delicate position it would have landed him. Just think!—with the Miss Abercrombie he had married cherishing her nervous system upstairs, and the pending reappearance of a son and daughter who were very liable to amusement with a parent whom they scarcely took seriously—for him to be hinting at the remains of an undying passion for this lady! He could only accept her estimate of girls by stammering:—"P-possibly! Young people—yes!"

But his embarrassment and hesitation were so visible that the Countess had little choice between flinching or charging bravely up to the guns.

She chose the courageous course, influenced perhaps by the thought that if the marriage came off, there would be a long perspective of reciprocal consciousnesses in the future for herself and this man, who had an unfortunate knack of transparency. Could not she nip the first in the bud, and sterilise the rest? It was worth the attempt.

"Listen to me, Hamilton," said she; and she was perfectly cool and collected. "Did I not say to you that there need be no nonsense between us?... How funny men are! Why should you jump because I called you by name? Do you know that twice since we have been talking here you have all but called me the name you used to me as a girl?... Yes—you began saying 'Lip,' and made it Lady Ancester. Please say it all another time. I shall not bite you.... Look here!—I want you to help me to laugh at the mistake we made when we were young folks; not to look solemn at it. We were ridiculous.... You were going to say, 'Why?' Well—I don't exactly know. Young folks always are." The fact is, the Countess was beginning to feel comfortably detached, and could treat the subject in a free and easy manner.

The Baronet could not bring himself to allow that he had ever been ridiculous, without protest. The Man within him rose in rebellion against such an admission. He felt a little indignant at her unceremonious pooh-poohing of their early infatuation. He would have accorded it respectful obsequies at least. But what protest could he enter that would not lay him open to suspicions of that undying passion? It appeared to him absolutely impossible to say anything, either way. So he looked as dignified as he could, consistently with being glad the room was half dark, because he knew he was red.

His uncomfortable silence, instead of the response in kind her ladyship had hoped for, interfered a little with the development of her detachment. She judged it better to wind up the interview, and did it with spirit. "There, now, Hamilton, don't talk—because I know exactly what you are going to say. Shake hands upon it—a good shake, you know!—don't throw it away!"

How very different are those two ways of offering a hand, the tender one and the graspy one. The Countess's stopped out of its glove to emphasize the latter, and did it so frankly and effectually that it cleared the air, in which the smell of fire had been perceptible, as in a room where a match has gone out.

He had, as she said, twice very nearly called her by her old familiar name of the Romeo and Juliet days. Nevertheless, when he gave her his hand, saying:—"Perfectly right—perfectly right, Lip! That's the way to look at it," he threw in the name stiffly. It was under tutelage, not spontaneously uttered. Letting it come before would have given him a better position. But then, how if she had disallowed it? There was no end to the ticklishness of their relation.

A modus vivendi was, however, established. She could recapitulate without endangering it. "You will try to make Adrian see Gwen's motives as I see them. It is quite possible that it will make no difference in the end. If so, we must bow to the decrees of Providence, I suppose. But I am sure you agree with me that he ought not to remain in the dark. As I dare say you know, I am taking Gwen to Vienna for a time. If they are both of a mind at the end of that time—well, I suppose it can't be helped! But you must not be—I see you are not—surprised at my view of the case."

Sir Hamilton assented to everything, promised everything, saw the lady into her carriage, and returned, uncomfortable, to review his position before the drawing-room fire in solitude. He did not go upstairs to the nerve case. He would let his visitor die down before he discharged that liability. He broke a large coal, and made a flare, and rang the bell for lights, to show how little the late interview had thrown him out of gear. But it had done so. In spite of the fact that Lady Ancester was well over five-and-forty, and that he himself was four or five years older, and that she had all but hinted that the sight of him would have disillusioned her if the Earl had not—for that was what he read between her lines—she had left something indefinable behind, which he was pleased to condemn as sentimental nonsense. No doubt it was, but it was there, for all that.

Just one little tender squeeze of that beautiful hand, instead of that candid, overwhelming wrestler's grip and double-knock handshake, would have been so delightful.

He caught himself thinking more of his handsome visitor and her easy self-mastery, compared with his own awkwardness and embarrassment, than of her errand and the troublesome task she had devolved on him of illuminating his son's mind about the possible self-sacrificial motives of her daughter. His thoughts would wander back to their Romeo and Juliet period, and make comparisons between this now of worldly-wise maturities and the days when he would have been the glove upon that hand, that he might touch that cheek. He recalled his first meeting with the fascinating young beauty in her first season, at a moonlight dance on a lawn dangerously flanked with lonely sheltered avenues and whispering trees; and the soft rose-laden air of a dawn that broke on tired musicians and unexhausted dissipation, and his headlong reckless surrender to her irresistible intoxication; and, to say the truth, the Juliet-like acknowledgment it met with. He would have been better pleased, with the world as it was now, if less of that Juliet had been recognisable in this mature dame. The thought made him bite his lip. He exclaimed against his recognition perforce, and compelled himself to think of the question before the house.

Yes—he could quite understand why the girl's parents should find it difficult to say to his son:—"We know that Gwen is giving her love to make amends for a wrong, as she thinks, done by ourselves; and whatever personal sacrifice we should be glad to make as compensation for it, we have no right to allow our daughter to imperil her happiness." But he had a hazy recollection of Adrian's telling him something of the Earl himself having mooted this view of the subject at the outset of the engagement; and, hearing no more of it, had supposed the point to be disposed of. Why did Lady Ancester wish to impress it on him now?

Then it gradually became clearer, as he thought it out, that it would have been impossible to form conclusions at once. The Earl had no doubt expressed a suspicion at first. But his daughter would never have confessed her motives to him. What more likely than that her mother should gradually command her confidence, and see that Adrian could not arrive at a full appreciation of them without an ungracious persistence on the part of herself and her husband, unless it were impressed on him by some member of the young man's family? His father, naturally.

He felt perceptibly gratified that Gwen's mother should take it for granted that he would feel as she did about the injustice to her daughter of allowing her to sacrifice herself to make amends for a fault of her parents. It was a question of sensitive honour, and she had credited him rightly with possessing it. At least, he hoped so. And though he was certainly not a clever man, the Squire of Pensham was the very soul of fair play. His division of the County knew both facts. Now, it seemed to him that it would be fairer play on his part to throw his influence into the scale on the side of the Countess, and protest against the marriage unless some guarantee could be found that there was no heroic taint in the bride's motives. In this he was consciously influenced by the thought that his side would suffer by his own action, so his own motives were tainted. A chivalric instinct, unbalanced by reasoning power, is so very apt to decide—on principle—against its owner's interests. Behind this there may have been a saving clause, to the effect that the young people might be relied on to pay no attention to their seniors' wishes, or anything else. Gwen was on her way to twenty-one, and then parental authority would expire. Meanwhile a little delay would do no harm. For the present, he could only rub the facts into his son, and leave them to do their worst. He would speak to him at the next opportunity.

---

Home came Adrian and Irene, and filled the silence of the house with voices. Something was afoot, clearly; something not unpleasant, to judge by the laugh of the latter. The room-door, whose hasp never bit properly—causing Adrian to perpetrate an atrocious joke about a disappointed Cleopatra—swung wide with an unseen cause, which was revealed by a soft nose, a dog's, in contact with Sir Hamilton's hand. He acknowledged Achilles, who trotted away satisfied, to complete an examination of all the other inmates of the house, his invariable custom after an outing. He would ratify or sanction them, and drop asleep with a clear conscience.

"Hay? What's all that? What's all the rumpus?" says the Baronet, outside at the stair-top. The sounds of the voices are pleasant and welcome to him, and he courts their banishment of the past his old fiancée had dragged from its sepulchre. Bury it again and forget it! "What's all the noise about? What's all the chatterboxing?" For the good gentleman always imputes to his offspring a volubility and a plethora of language far in excess of any meaning it conveys. His own attitude, he implies, is one of weighty consideration and temperate but forcible judgment.

"What's the chatterboxing?" says the beautiful daughter, who kisses him on both sides—and she and her skirts and her voice fill the discreet country-house to the brim, and make its owner insignificant. "What's the chatterboxing, indeed? Why,—it's good news for a silly old daddy! That's what it is. Now come in and I'll sit on his knee and tell him." And by the time Adrian has felt his way to the drawing-room, the good news has been sprung upon his father by a Moenad who has dragged off her head-gear—so as not to scratch—and flung it on the sofa. And a tide of released black hair has burst loose about him. And—oh dear!—how that garden of auld lang syne has vanished!

It behoves a Baronet and a J.P., however, to bring all this excitement down to the level of mature consideration. "Well—well—well—well!" says he. "Now let's have it all over again. Begin at the beginning. You and your brother were walking up Pratchet's Lane. What were you doing in Pratchet's Lane?"

"Walking up it. You can only walk up it or down it. Very well. We were just by the big holly-tree....

"Which big holly-tree? One—thing—at—a time!"

"Don't interrupt! There is only one big holly-tree. Now you know! Well! Ply ran on in front because he caught sight of Miss Scatcherd....

"Easy—easy—easy! Where was Miss Scatcherd?"

"In front, of course! Ply dotes on Miss Scatcherd, although she's forty-seven."

"I don't know about the 'of course,'" says Adrian, leaning on his father's arm-chair. "Because I don't dote on Miss Scatcherd. Miss Scatcherd might have been coming up behind. In which case, if I had been Ply, I should have run on in front."

"Don't be spiteful! However, I know she's bony. Well—am I to get on with my story, or not?... Very good! Where did I leave off? Oh—at Miss Scatcherd! Now, papa dear, be good, and don't be solemn."

"Well—fire away!"

"Indeed, it really happened just as I told you: as we were going to the Rectory, Ply ran on in front, and I went on to rescue Miss Scatcherd, because she doesn't like being knocked down by a dog, however affectionate. And it was just then that I heard Adrian speak...."

"Did I speak?"

"Perhaps I ought to say gasp. I heard Adrian gasp. And when I turned round to see why, he was rubbing his eyes. Because he had seen Miss Scatcherd."

"How did you know?" The interest of this has made Sir Hamilton lapse his disciplines for the moment. He takes advantage of a pause, due to his son and daughter beginning to answer both at once, and each stopping for the other, to say:—"This would be the second time—the second time! Something might come of this."

"You go on!" says Irene, nodding to her brother. "Say what you said."

Adrian accepts the prolocutorship. "To the best of my recollection I said:—'Stop Ply knocking Miss Scatcherd down again!' Because he did it before, you know.... Oh yes, entirely from love, no doubt! Then I heard you say:—'How do you know it's Miss Scatcherd?' And I told you."

"Yes—yes—yes—yes! But how did you?... How much did you see?" The Baronet is excited and roused.

"Quite as much as I wished. I think I mentioned that I did not dote on Miss Scatcherd." For, the moment a piece of perversity is possible, this young man jumps at it.

"Oh, Adrian dear, don't be paradoxical and capricious when papa's so anxious. Do say what you saw!" Thus urged by his sister, the blind man describes the occurrence from his point of view, carefully and conscientiously. The care and conscience are chiefly needed to limit and circumscribe a sudden image of a lady of irreproachable demeanour besieged by an unexpected dog. So sudden that it merely appeared as a fact in space, without a background or a foothold. It came and went in a flash, Adrian said, leaving him far more puzzled to account for its disappearance than its sudden reasonless intrusion on his darkness.

As soon as the narrative ended, perversity set in. It was gratifying, said Adrian, to listen while Hope told flattering tales, but was it not as well to be on our guard against rash conclusions? Even a partial restoration of eyesight was a thing to look forward to, but would not the extent of the benefits it conferred vary according to the nature of its own limitations? For instance, it might enable him to see everything in a mist, without outlines; or, for that matter, upside down. That, however, would not signify, so long as everything else was upside down. Indeed, who could say for certain that anything ever was, or ever had been, right side up? It all turned on which side "up" was, and on whether there was a wrong side at all.

"All nonsense!" said Irene.

"Shut up, 'Re," said Adrian. "These things want thinking out. A limited vision might be restricted in other ways than by mere stupid opaque fog, and bald, insipid position in Space. Consider how much more aggravating it would be—from the point of view of Providence—to limit the vision to the selection of peculiar objects which would give offence to the Taste or Religious Convictions of its owner! Suppose that Miss Scatcherd's eyes, for instance, could only distinguish gentlemen of Unsound opinions, and couldn't see a Curate if it was ever so! And, per contra, suppose that it should only prove possible to me to receive an image of Miss Scatcherd, or her congeners....

"Is that eels?" said Irene, who wasn't listening, but getting out writing-materials. "You may go on talking, but don't expect me to answer, because I shan't. I'm going to write to Gwen all about it."

Her brother started, and became suddenly serious. "No, 'Re!" he exclaimed. "At least, not yet. I don't want Gwen to know anything about it. Don't let's have any more false hopes than we can help. Ten to one it's only a flash in the pan!... Don't cry about it, ducky darling! If it was real, it won't stop there, and we shall have something worth telling."

So Irene did not write her letter.

---

That evening the Squire was very silent, saying nothing about the long conversation he had had with Gwen's mother. His good lady did not come down to dinner, and if she asked him any questions about it, it was when he went up to dress; not in the hearing of his son or daughter. They only knew that their mother had not seen Lady Ancester when she called, and curiosity about the visitor had merged in the absorbing interest of Miss Scatcherd's sudden visibility.

But no sooner had Irene—who was the ladies, this time—departed to alleviate the lot of her excellent mamma, who may have been very ill, for anything the story knows, than Sir Hamilton told the pervading attendant-in-chief to look alive with the coffee, and get that door shut, and keep it shut, conveying his desire for undisturbed seclusion. Then he was observed by his son to be humming and hawing, somewhat in the manner of ourselves when asked to say a few words at a public dinner. This was Adrian's report to Irene later.

"Had a visitor to-day—s'pose they told you—Lady Ancester. Sorry your mother wasn't up to seeing her."

"I know. We passed her coming away. Said how-d'ye-do in a hurry. What had her ladyship got to say for herself?" Thus far was mere recognition of a self-assertion of the Baronet's, as against female triviality. He always treated any topic mooted in the presence of womankind as mere froth, and resumed it as a male interest, as though it had never been mentioned, as soon as the opposite sex had died down.

"We had some talk. Did you know she was coming?"

"Well—yes—after a fashion. Gwen's last letter said we might expect a descent from her mamma. But I had no idea she was going to be so prompt."

"She sent over to tell us, this morning. They took the letter up to your mother. I had gone over to the Hanger, to prevent Akers cutting down a tree. Man's a fool! I rather got let in for seeing her ladyship. Your mother arranged it."

"I didn't hear of it. I should have stopped. So would 'Re."

"Yes—it rather let me in for a ... tête-à-tête." Why did Sir Hamilton feel that this expression was an edged tool, that might cut his fingers? He did.

"I should have been in the way."

Another time this might have procured a rebuke for levity. Sir Hamilton perceived in it a stepping-stone to his text. "Perhaps you might," he said. But he wavered, lest that stone should not bear; adding, indecisively:—"Well—we had some talk!"

"About?" said his son. But he knew perfectly well what about.

"About Gwen and yourself. That conversation of yours with the Earl. You remember it? You told me."

"I remember it, certainly. He was perfectly right—the Earl. He's the sort of man that is right. I was horribly ashamed of myself. But Gwen set me up in my own conceit again."

His father persevered. "I understood his view to be that Gwen was under the influence of ... was influenced by ... a distorted view ... a mistaken imagination...."

"Not a doubt of it, I should think. My amour propre keeps on suggesting to me that Gwen may be of sound mind. My strong common sense replies that my amour propre may be blowed!"

"Adrian, I wish to talk to you seriously. What did you suppose I was referring to?"

"To Gwen's distorted view of your humble servant—a clear case of mistaken imagination. That, however, is a condition precedent of the position. Dan Cupid would be hard up, otherwise."

"Dan Who?"

"The little God of Love ... not Daniel Anybody! Wasn't that what the Earl meant?"

"Not at all! I was referring to his view of ... a ... his daughter's view ... of the accident ... some idea of her making up to you for.... No wonder he hesitated. It was difficult to talk to his son about it.

Adrian cleared the air with a ringing laugh. "I know! What Gwen calls the Self-Denying Ordinance!—her daddy's expression, I believe." He settled down to a more restrained and serious tone. "The subject has not been mentioned, since Lord Ancester's first conversation with me—in the consulship of Mrs. Bailey, at the Towers—not mentioned by anyone. And though the thought of it won't accept any suggestions towards its extinction, from myself, I don't see my way to ... to making it a subject of general conversation. In fact, I cannot do anything but hold my tongue. I am sure you would not wish me to say to Gwen:—'Hence! Begone! I forbid you to sacrifice yourself at My Shrine.' Now, would you?"

The Squire was at liberty to ignore poetry. He took no notice of the question, but proceeded to his second head. "Lady Ancester has a strong opinion on the subject." He never said much at a time, and this being difficult conversation, his part of it came in short lengths.

"To the effect that her daughter is throwing herself away. Quite right! It is so. She is throwing herself away."

"Lady Ancester expressed no opinion to that effect. She considers that Gwen is not acting under the influence of ... under the usual motives. That's all she said. Spoke very well of you, my boy!—I must say that."

"But...?"

"But thought Gwen ought to act only for her own sake."

"Of course she ought. Of course she ought. I see the whole turn out. Her mother considers, quite rightly, that Jephtha, Judge of Israel, ought to have been jolly well ashamed of himself. Perhaps he was. But that's neither here nor there. What does Gwen's mammy think I ought to do—ought to say—ought to pretend? That's what it comes to. Am I to refuse to accompany Gwen to the altar till she can give sureties that she is really in love, and plead the highest Spartan principles to justify my conduct? Am I to make believe that I cannot, cannot love a woman unless she produces certificates of affection based solely on the desirability of my inestimable self? I should never make anyone believe that. Why—if I thought Gwen hated me worse than poison, but was marrying me on high moral grounds to square accounts, I don't think I could humbug successfully, to that extent."

"Well, my dear boy, I am bound to confess that I do not see what you can do. I can only repeat to you her ladyship's conviction, and tell you that I believe it to be—what she says it is. I mean that she speaks because she is certain Gwen is under the influence of this—of this Quixotic motive. I can only tell you so, at her wish, and—and leave it to you. I tell you frankly that if I were in her place, I should oppose the marriage, under the circumstances."

"Why doesn't she tackle me about it herself?"

"H'm—well—h'm! I think if you look at it from her point of view ... from her point of view, you'll see there would be many difficulties ... many difficulties. Done your cigar? I suppose we ought to go and pay your mother a visit."

Yes—Adrian saw the difficulties! On his way upstairs a vivid scene passed through his head, in which an image of the Countess addressed him thus:—"My dear Mr. Torrens, Gwen does not really love you. She is only pretending, because she considers her family are responsible for your blindness. All her assurances of affection for you are untrustworthy—just her fibs! She could not play her part without them. I appeal to you as an honourable man to disbelieve every word she says, and to respect the true instinct of a maternal parent. No one grieves more sincerely than I do for your great misfortune, or is more contrite than my husband and myself because it was our keeper that shot you, but there are limits! We must draw the line at our daughter marrying a scribbler with his eyes out, on high principles." At this point the image may be said to have got the bit in its teeth, for it added:—"If Gwen squinted and had a wooden leg, nothing would please us better. But...!"

How did the growing hope of a revival of sight bear on the question? Well—both ways! May not Gwen's pity for his calamity have had something to do with her feelings towards him, without any motive that the most stodgy prose could call Quixotic?

---

CHAPTER XVIII

A DABBLER IN IMMORTALITY. ALL THEIR LIVES! WILL PHOEBE KNOW ME? STAY TO TELL HER THIS IS ME. THAT POOR OLD PERSON. HOW GWEN MET GRANNY MARRABLE ON HER WAY HOME. HER DREAD OF MORE DISCLOSINGS, AND A GREAT RELIEF. MACTE VIRTUTE, DR. NASH! GRANNY MARRABLE'S FORTITUDE. HOW GWEN NOTICED THE LIKENESS TOO, FOR THE FIRST TIME! A SHORT CHAT THE COUNTESS HAD HAD WITH SIR HAMILTON. HOW SHE WAS UNFEELING ABOUT THE OLD TWINS. WHY NOT SETTLE DOWN AND TALK IT OVER? NO AUTHENTICATED GHOST APPEARS TO A PERFECT STRANGER. A DANIEL COME TO JUDGMENT. SIR SPENCER DERRICK AND THE OPENSHAWS. GWEN'S LETTER TO HER FATHER. HOW SHE DID NOT GO TO PENSHAM, BUT BACK TO STRIDES COTTAGE

When Gwen's task came to an end, she had to think of herself. The day had been more trying even than her worst anticipations of it. But now at last she had stormed that citadel of Impossible Belief in the mind of both mother and daughter, and nothing she could do could bring them, strained and distracted by the incredible revelation, nearer to a haven of repose. She had spoken the word: the rest lay with the powers of Nature. Probably she felt what far different circumstances have caused many of us to feel, on whom the unwelcome task has devolved of bringing the news of a death. How consciously helpless we were—was it not so?—when the tale was told, and we had to leave the heart of our hearer to its lonely struggle in the dark!

This that Gwen had told was not news of death, but news of life; nevertheless, it might kill. She had little fear for the daughter or the sister; much for this new-found object of her affection who had survived so many troubles. For Gwen had to acknowledge that "old Mrs. Picture" had acquired a mysteriously strong hold upon her—its strangeness lying in its sudden development. She could, however, do nothing now to help the old tempest-tossed bark into smooth water, that would not be done as well or better by her equally storm-beaten consort, whose rigging and spars had been in such much better trim than hers when the gale struck both alike. Gwen felt, too, a great faith that the daughter's love would be, as it were, the beacon of the mother's salvation; the pilot to a sheltered haven where the seas would be at rest. She herself could do no more.

After the old lady's consciousness returned, it was long before she spoke, and Gwen had felt half afraid her speech might be gone. But then—could she herself speak? Scarcely! And Ruth Thrale, the daughter, seemed in like plight, sitting beside her mother on the bed, her usually rosy cheeks gone ashy white, her eyes fixed on the old face before her with a look that seemed to Gwen one of wonder even more than love. The stress of the hour, surely! For all the tenderness of her heart was in the hand that wandered caressingly about the mass of silver hair on the pillow, and smoothed it away from the eyes that turned from the one to the other half questioningly, but content without reply. The mother seemed physically overwhelmed by the shock, and ready to accept absolute collapse, if not indeed incapable of movement. She made no attempt to speak till later.

During the hour or half-hour that followed, Gwen and Ruth Thrale spoke but once or twice, beneath their breath. Neither could have said why. Who can say why the dwellers in a house where Death is pending speak in undertones? Not from fear of disturbance to the dying man, whose sight and hearing are waning fast. This was a silence of a like sort, though it was rather resurrection than death that imposed it.

The great clock in the kitchen, which had struck twelve when Gwen was showing the forged letter to Widow Thrale, had followed on to one and two, unnoticed. And now, when it struck three, she doubted it, and looked at her watch. "Yes," said she, bewildered. "It's right! It's actually three o'clock. I must go. I wish I could stay." She stooped over the old face on the pillow, and kissed it lovingly. "You know, dear, what has happened. Phoebe is coming—your sister Phoebe." She had a strange feeling, as she said this, of dabbling in immortality—of tampering with the grave.

Then old Maisie spoke for the first time; slowly, but clearly enough, though softly. "I think—I know—what has happened.... All our lives?... But Phoebe will come. My Ruth will fetch her. Will you not, dear?"

"Mother will come, very soon."

"That is it. She is mother—my Ruth's mother!... But I am your mother, too, dear!"

"Indeed yes—my mother—my mother—my mother!"

"I kissed you in your crib, asleep, and was not ashamed to go and leave you. I went away in the moonlight, with the little red bag that was my mother's—Phoebe's and mine! I was not ashamed to go, for the love of your father, on the cruel sea! Fifty years agone, my darling!" Gwen saw that she was speaking of her husband, and her heart stirred with anger that such undying love should still be his, the miscreant's, the cause of all. She afterwards thought that old Maisie's mind had somehow refused to receive the story of the forgery. Could she, else, have spoken thus, and gone on, as she did, to say to Gwen:—"Come here, my dear! God bless you!"? She held her hand, pressing it close to her. "I want to say to you what it is that is fretting me. Will Phoebe know me, for the girl that went away? Oh, see how I am changed!"

The last thing Gwen had expected was that the old woman should master the facts. It made her hesitate to accept this seeming ability to look them in the face as genuine. It would break down, she was convinced, and the coming of a working recognition of them would be a slow affair. But she could not say so. She could only make believe. "Why should she not know you?" she said. "She has changed, herself."

"When will she come?" said old Maisie restlessly. "She will come when you are gone. Oh, how I wish you could stay, to tell her that this is me!"

"Do you think she will doubt it? She will not, when she hears you talk of the—of your old time. I am sorry I must go, but I must." And indeed she thought so, for she did not know that her own mother had gone away from the Towers, and fancied that that good lady would resent her desertion. This affair had lasted longer than her anticipation of it.

Then old Maisie showed how partial the illumination of her mind had been. "Oh yes, my dear," she said, "I know. You have to go, of course, because of that poor old person. The old person you told me of—whom you have to tell—to tell of her sister she thought dead—what was it?" She had recovered consciousness so far as to know that Phoebe was somehow to reappear risen from the dead; and that this Ruth whom she had taken so much to heart was somehow entitled to call her mother; but what that how was, and why, was becoming a mystery as her vigour fell away and an inevitable reaction began to tell upon her.

Gwen heard it in the dazed sound of her voice; and, to her thought, assent was best to whatever the dumfoundered mind dwelt upon most readily. "Yes," said she, "I must go and tell her. She must know." Then she beckoned Widow Thrale away from the bedside. "It was her own sister I told her of," said she in an undertone. "I thought she would see quickest that way.... Do you quite understand?" A quick nod showed that her hearer had quite understood. Gwen thanked Heaven that at least she had no lack of faculties to deal with there. "Listen!" said she. "You must get her food now. You must make her eat, whether she likes it or no." She saw that for Ruth herself the kindest thing was the immediate imposition of duties, and was glad to find her so alive to the needs of the case.

Two voices of women in the kitchen without. One, Elizabeth-next-door; the other, surely, Keziah Solmes from the Towers. So much the better! "I may tell it them, my lady?" said Widow Thrale. Gwen had to think a moment, before saying:—"Yes—but they must not talk of it in the village—not yet! Go out and tell them. I will remain with your mother." It was the first time Ruth Thrale had had the fact she had succeeded in knowing in theory forced roughly upon her in practice. She started, but recovered herself to do her ladyship's bidding.

The utter amazement of Keziah and Elizabeth-next-door, as Gwen heard it, was a thing to be remembered. But she paid little attention to it. She was bidding farewell to old Mrs. Picture. The last speech she heard from her seemed to be:—"Tell my little boy and Dolly. Say I will come back to them." Then she appeared to fall asleep.

"You must get some food down her throat, somehow, Mrs. Thrale, or we shall have her sinking from exhaustion. You will stop to help, Keziah? Stop till to-morrow. I will look in at the Lodge to tell your husband. I must go now. Is Tom Kettering there?" Gwen felt she would like an affectionate farewell of Ruth Thrale, but a slight recrudescence of the Norman Conquest came in the way, due to the presence of Keziah and Elizabeth-next-door; so she had to give it up.

Tom Kettering was not there, but was reproducible at pleasure by whistles, evolved from some agent close at hand and willing to assist. Tom and the mare appeared unchanged by their long vigil, and showed neither joy nor sorrow at its coming to an end. A violent shake the latter indulged in was a mere report of progress, and Tom only touched his hat as a convention from time immemorial. There was not a trace of irony in his "Home, my lady?" though a sarcastic Jehu might have seemed to be expressing a doubt whether her ladyship meant ever to go home at all.

The road to Costrell's turned off Gwen's line of route, the main road to the Towers. A cart was just coming in sight, at the corner. Farmer Costrell's cart, driven by himself. An old woman, by his side—Granny Marrable, surely?

Gwen was simply frightened. She felt absolutely unfit for another high-tension interview. Her head might give way and she might do something foolish. But it was impossible to turn and run. It was, however, easy enough to go quickly by, with ordinary salutations. Still, it was repugnant to her to do so. But, then, what else could she do? It was settled for her.

Said Granny Marrable to her grandson-in-law:—"'Tis Gwen o' th' Towers, John, in Tom Kettering's gig. Bide here till they come up, that I may get speech of her ladyship."

"Will she stand still on th' high roo-ad, to talk to we?"

"She'll never pass me by if she sees me wishful to speak with her. Her ladyship has too good a heart."

"Vairy well, Gra-anny." John Costrell reined in his horse, and the cart and gig came abreast.

Granny Marrable spoke at once. Her voice was firm, but her face was pale and hard set. "I have been told strange news, my lady, but it must be true. It cannot be else."

"It is true. Dr. Nash told you."

"That is so. Our Dr. Nash."

"But how much? Has he told you all?"

"I will tell your ladyship." The old woman's firmness and strength were marvellous to Gwen. "He has told me that my sister that was dead is risen from the grave...."

"God's my life, Granny, what will ye be for saying next to her ladyship?" John Costrell had heard none of the story.

"It's all quite right, Mr. Costrell," said Gwen. "Granny Marrable doesn't mean really dead. She thought her dead—her sister.... Go on, Granny! That is quite right. And has Dr. Nash told you where your sister is now?"

"At my own home at Chorlton, my lady. And I am on my way there now, and will see her once more, God willing, before we die."

"Go to her—go to her! The sooner the better!... I must tell you one thing, though. She is not strong—not like you and your daughter Ruth. But you will see." The old lady began with something about her gratitude to Gwen and to her father, but Gwen cut her short. What did that matter, now? Then she assured her that old Maisie had been told everything, and was only uneasy lest her sister should not know her again, and would even doubt her identity. "But that is impossible," said Gwen. "Because she is your sister, and remembers all your childhood together."

After they had parted company, and Gwen was on her way again, relieved beyond measure to find that Dr. Nash had contrived to carry out his mission so well—though how he had done it was a mystery to her as yet—she had a misgiving that she ought to have produced the forged letter to show to Granny Marrable. Perhaps, however, she had done no harm by keeping it; as if the conviction of the two sisters of each other's identity was to turn on what is called "evidence," what would be its value to either? They would either know each other, or not; and if they did not, enough "evidence" to hang a dozen men would not stand against the deep-rooted belief in each other's death through those long years.

Besides, like Dr. Nash, she had just been quite taken aback to see—now that she came to look for it, mind you!—the amazing likeness between the old twin sisters. How came it that she had not seen it before?—for instance, when they were face to face in her presence at the door of Strides Cottage, but two or three weeks since. She dismissed the forged letter, to dwell on the enormous relief of not having another disclosure problem before her; and also on the satisfaction she would have in telling her father what a successful outcome had followed his venial transgression of opening and reading it. Altogether, her feelings were those of triumph, trampling underfoot the recollection that she had had nothing to eat since breakfast, and making a good stand against brain-whirl caused by the almost unbearable strangeness of the story.

On arriving at the Towers, she was disconcerted to find that all her solicitude about her mother's loneliness in her absence had been thrown away. She whispered to herself that it served her right for fidgeting about other people. Adrian had been perfectly justified when he said that interest in one's relations was the worst investment possible for opulent Altruism.

Well—she was better off now than she had been in the early morning, when there was all that terrible disclosure ahead. It was done—ended; for better, for worse! She might indulge now in a cowardice that shrank from seeing the two old sisters again until they were familiarised with the position. If only she might find them, on her next visit, habituated to a new modus vivendi, with the possibility of peaceful years together, to live down the long separation into nothingness! If only that might be! But was it possible? Was it conceivable even?

Anyhow, she deserved a well-earned rest from tension. And presently she would tell the whole strange story to Adrian, and show him that clever forgery.... No!—thought stopped with a cruel jerk, and her heart said:—"Shall I ever show him anything! Never! Never!"

---

"You went to Pensham, mamma?" said Gwen to her mother, the next day, as soon as an opportunity came for quiet talk.

"On my way to Poynders," said the Countess yawnfully. "But it was unlucky. Lady Torrens was keeping her room. Some sort of nervous attack. I didn't get any particulars."

Gwen suspected reticence. "You didn't see her, then?"

"Oh dear no! How should I? She was in bed, I believe."

"You saw somebody?"

"Only Sir Hamilton, for a few minutes. He doesn't seem uneasy. I don't suppose it's anything serious."

"Did you see 'Re?"

"Miss Torrens and her brother were out. Didn't come back." Her ladyship here perceived that reticence, overdone, would excite suspicion, and provoke exhaustive inquiry. "I had a short chat with Sir Hamilton. Who gave me a very good cup of tea." The excellence of the tea was, so to speak, a red herring.

Gwen refused to be thrown off the scent. "He's an old friend of yours, isn't he?" said she suggestively.

"Oh dear yes! Ages ago. He told me about some people I haven't heard of for years. I must try and call on that Mrs. What's-her-name. Do you know where Tavistock Square is?"

"Of course I do. Everybody does. Who is it lives there?"

The Countess had consulted the undersized tablets, and was repocketing them. "Mrs. Enniscorthy Hopkins," said she, in the most collateral way possible to humanity. "You wouldn't know anything about her."

"This tea has been standing," said Gwen. She refused to rise to Mrs. Enniscorthy Hopkins, whom she suspected of red-herringhood.

The Countess was compelled to be less collateral. "She was Kathleen Tyrawley," said she. "But I quite lost sight of her. One does."

"Was she interesting?"

"Ye-es.... N-no ... not very. Pretty—of that sort!"

"What sort?"

"Well—very fond of horses."

"So am I—the darlings!"

"Yes—but a girl may be very fond of horses, and yet not marry a ... Don't put milk in—only cream...."

"Marry a what?"

"Marry her riding-master." Her ladyship softened down Miss Tyrawley's groom to presentability. "But it was before you were born, child. However, no doubt it is the same, in principle."

"Hope so! Is that tea right?"

"The tea? Oh yes, the tea ... will do. No, I only saw Sir Hamilton. The son and daughter were away."

"Now, mamma, that is being unkind, and you know it. 'The son and daughter!' As if they were people!"

"Well—and what are they?"

"You know perfectly well what I mean."

As the Countess did, she averted discussion. "We won't rake the subject up, my dear Gwendolen," she said, in a manner which embodied moderation, while asserting dignity. "You know my feelings on the matter, which would, I am sure, be those of any parent—of any mother, certainly. And I may mention to you—only, please no discussion!—that Sir Hamilton entirely shares my views. He expressed himself quite clearly on the subject yesterday."

"You must have seen him for more than a few minutes to get as far as that." This was a shell in the enemy's powder-magazine.

The Countess had to adopt retrocessive strategy. "I think, my dear," she said, with dignity at a maximum, "that I have made it sufficiently clear that I do not wish to rediscuss your engagement, as your father persists in calling it. We must retain our opinions. If at the end of six months—if—it turns out that I am entirely mistaken, why, then you and your father must just settle it your own way. Now let us talk no more about it."

This conversation took place in the late afternoon of the day following Gwen's visit to Strides Cottage, and the Countess's to Pensham. All through the morning of that day her young ladyship had been feeling the effects of the strain of the previous one, followed by a night of despairing sleeplessness due to excitement. An afternoon nap, a most unusual thing with her, had rallied her to the point of sending a special invitation to her mother to join her at tea in her own private apartment; which was reasonable, as all the guests were away killing innocent birds, or hares. The Countess was aware of her daughter's fatigue and upset, but persisted in regarding its cause as over-estimated—a great deal too much made of a very simple matter. "Then that is satisfactorily settled, and there need be no further fuss." These were her words of comment on her daughter's detailed account of her day's adventures, which made themselves of use to keep hostilities in abeyance.

"I think you are unfeeling, mamma; that's flat!" was Gwen's unceremonious rejoinder.

The Countess repeated the last word impassively. It was rather as though she said to Space:—"Here is an expression. If you are by way of containing any Intelligences capable of supplying an explanation, I will hear them impartially." Receiving no reply from any Point of the Compass, she continued:—"I really cannot see what these two old ... persons have to complain of. They have every reason to be thankful that they have been spared so long. The death of either would have made all your exertions on their behalf useless. Why they cannot settle down on each side of that big fireplace at Strides Cottage, and talk it all over, I cannot imagine. It has been engraved in the Illustrated London News." This was marginal, not in the text. "They will have plenty to tell each other after such a long time."

"Mamma dear, you are hopeless!"

"Well, my dear, ask any sensible person. They have had the narrowest escape of finding it all out after each other's death, and then I suppose we should never have heard the end of it.... Yes, perhaps the way I put it was a little confused. But really the subject is so complex." Gwen complicated it still more by introducing its relations to Immortality; to which her mother took exception:—"If they were both ghosts, we should probably know nothing of them. No ghost appears to a perfect stranger—no authenticated ghost! Besides, one hopes they would be at peace in their graves."

"Oh, ah, yes, by-the-by!" said Gwen, "there wasn't to be anything till the Day of Judgment."

"I wish you wouldn't drag in Religion," said her mother. "You pick up these dreadful Freethinking ways of speech from....

"From Adrian? Of course I do. But you began it, by talking about Death and Ghosts."

"My dear, neither Death nor Ghosts are Religion, but the Day of Judgment is. Ask anybody!"

"Very well, then! Cut the Day of Judgment out, and go on with Death and Ghosts."

"We will talk," said the Countess coldly, "of something else. I do not like the tone of the conversation. What are your plans for to-morrow?"

"I don't think I shall go to Chorlton to-morrow. I shall leave the old ladies alone for a while. I think it's the best way. Don't you?"

"I don't think it can matter much, either way." The Countess was not going to come down from Olympus, for trifles. "But what are you going to do to-morrow? Go to church, I suppose?"

"Is it necessary to settle?"

"By no means. Perhaps I was wrong in taking it for granted. No doubt I should have done well—in your case—to ask for information. Are you going to church?"

"Possibly. I can settle when the time comes." Her mother made no reply, but she made it so ostentatiously that to skip off to another subject would have been to accept a wager of battle. Gwen was prepared to be conciliatory. "Is anything coming off?" she asked irreverently. "Any Bishop or anything?"

Her mother replied, with a Pacific Ocean of endurance in her voice:—"Dr. Tuxford Somers is preaching at the Abbey. If you come, pray do not be late. The carriage will be ready at a quarter to ten."

"Well—I shall have to go once or twice, so I suppose now will do for once. There's Christmas Day, of course—I don't mind that. I shall go to Chorlton, and look at the two old ladies in church. I hope Mrs. Picture will be well enough by then."

"I am sure I hope so. A whole week!" The Countess's parti pris, that the experience of the old twins was nothing to make such a fuss over, showed itself plainly in this. She passed on to a more important subject. "I understand," said she, "that you intend to go to Pensham on Monday—and stay!"

"I do," said Gwen uncompromisingly. But her mother's expression became so stony that Gwen anticipated her spoken protest, saying:—"Now, mamma dear, you know I've agreed, and we are to go abroad for six whole months. So don't look like a martyr!"

"When will you be back?" said the martyr. The fact is, she was well aware that this was a case of quid pro quo; and that Gwen was entitled, by treaty, to a perfect Saturnalia of sweet-hearting till after Christmas, in exchange for the six months of penal servitude to follow. But she preferred to indicate that the terms of the treaty had disappointed her.

"Quite uncertain," said Gwen. "I shall stop till Thursday, anyhow. And Adrian and Irene are to come here on Christmas Eve. I suppose they'll have to share the paternal plum-pudding on Christmas Day. That can't be helped. And I shall have to be here. That can't be helped either. I think it a pity the whole clan-jamfray shouldn't come here for Christmas."

"That is out of the question. Sir Hamilton has his own social obligations. Besides, it would look as if you and Mr. Torrens were definitely engaged. Which you are not."

"Suppose we talk of something else."

"Suppose we do." Her ladyship could only assent; for had she not, Shylockwise, taught her daughter that word?

The agreement that another topic should be resorted to was sufficiently complied with by a short pause before resuming the antecedent one. Gwen did this by saying:—"You will be all right without me for a few days, because Sir Spencer Derrick and his wife are due to-night, and the Openshaws, and the Pellews will be here on Monday."

"Gwendolen!" In a shocked tone of voice.

"Well—Aunt C. and Cousin Percy, then. If they are not the Pellews, they very soon will be. They are coming on Monday, anyhow."

"But not by the same train!"

"I should come by the same train, if I were they. And in the same carriage. And tip the guard to keep everybody else out. Much better do it candidly than pretend they've met by accident. I should."

The Countess thought she really had better change to another subject. She dropped this one as far off as possible. "When do you expect to see your two old interesting twins again?" said she conciliatorily. For she felt that reasoning with her beautiful but irregular daughter was hopeless. The young lady explained that her next visit to Chorlton would be by way of an expedition from Pensham. Adrian and Irene would drive her over. It was not morally much farther from Pensham than from the Towers, although some arithmetical appearances were against it. And she particularly wanted Adrian to see old Mrs. Picture. And then, like a sudden sad cadence in music, came the thought:—"But he cannot see old Mrs. Picture."

---

Keziah Solmes did not come back till quite late in the evening. Her report of the state of things at Strides Cottage was manifestly vitiated by an unrestrained optimism. If she was to be believed, the sudden revelation to each other of the old twin sisters had had no specially perturbing effect on either. Gwen spent much of the evening writing a long letter to her father at Bath, giving a full account of her day's work, and ending:—"I do hope the dear old soul will bear it. Mrs. Solmes has just given me a most promising report of her. I cannot suppose her constant references to the Benevolence of Providence to be altogether euphemisms in the interest of the Almighty. I am borrowing Adrian's language—you will see that. I think Keziah is convinced that Mrs. Prichard will rally, and that the twins may live to be nonagenarians together. I must confess to being very anxious about her myself. She looked to me as if a breath of air might blow her away. I shall not see her again for a day or two, but I know they will send for me if I am wanted. Dr. Nash is to see to that. What a serviceable man he is!" She went on to say, after a few more particulars of Keziah's report, that she was going to Pensham on Monday, and should not come back before the Earl's own return to the Towers. Mamma would do perfectly well without her, and it was only fair, considering her own concessions.

But Gwen did not go to church next day.

Dr. Nash had been sent for to Strides Cottage at a very early hour, having been prevented from fulfilling a promise to go overnight. He must have seen some new cause for uneasiness, although he disclaimed any grounds of alarm. For he wrote off at once to her young ladyship, after a careful examination of his patient:—"Mrs. Prichard certainly is very feeble. I think it only right that you should know this at once. But you need not be frightened. Probably it is no more than was to be expected." That was the wording of his letter, received by Gwen as she sat at breakfast with some new arrivals and the Colonel, and the dregs of the shooting-party. She was not at all sorry to get a complete change of ideas and associations, although the subjects of conversation were painful enough, turning on the reports of mixed disaster and success in the Crimea that were making the close of '54 lurid and memorable for future history. Gwen glanced at Dr. Nash's letter, gave hurried directions to the servant to tell Tom Kettering to be in readiness to drive her at once to Chorlton, and made short work of breakfast and her adieux to the assembled company.

---

If events would only pay attention to the convenience of storytellers, they would never happen at the same time. It would make consecutive narrative much more practicable. It would have been better—some may say—for this story to follow Granny Marrable to Strides Cottage, and to leave Gwen to come to Dr. Nash's summons next day. It might then have harked back to the foregoing chat between her and her mother, or omitted it altogether. Its author prefers the course it has taken.

---

CHAPTER XIX

WHAT DID GRANNY MARRABLE THINK ON THE ROAD? HER ARRIVAL, AND HOW KEZIAH TOLD JOHN COSTRELL, WHO WHISTLED. THE MEETING, WHICH NONE SAW. HOW COULD THIS BE MAISIE? GRANNY MARRABLE'S SHAKEN FAITH, RUTH'S MIXED FILIALITIES. HOW OLD MAISIE AWOKE AND FELT CHILLY. HOW SHE SLEPT TEN SECONDS MORE AND DREAMED FOR HOURS. HOW OLD PHOEBE HAD DRAWN A VERY SMALL TOOTH OF MAISIE'S, OVER SIXTY YEARS AGO

Keziah Solmes was literal, not imaginative. She was able to describe any outward seeming of old Phoebe, or of Ruth. But what could she know, or guess, of the stunned bewilderment of their minds? When asked by Gwen what each of the old twins had said at sight of the other—for she had been present, if not at their meeting, a few moments later—she seemed at a loss for a report of definite speech. But, oh yes!—in reply to a suggestion from Gwen—they had called each other by name, that for sure they did! "But 'twas a wonderment to me, my lady, that neither one should cry out loud, for the sorrow of all that long time ago." So said old Keziah, sounding a true note in this reference to the sadness inherent in mere lapse of years. Gwen could and did endorse Keziah, on that score; but there was no wonderment in her mind at their silence. Rather, she was at a loss to conceive or invent a single phrase that either could or would have spoken.

Least of all could independent thought imagine the anticipations of old Phoebe during that strange ride through the falling twilight of the short winter's day. Did she articulate to herself that each minute on the road was bringing her nearer to a strange mystery that was in truth—that must be—the very selfsame sister that her eyes last saw now fifty years ago, even the very same that had called her, a mere baby, to see the heron that flew away? Yes—the same Maisie as much as she herself was the same Phoebe! Did her brain reel to think of the days when she took her own image in an unexpected mirror for her sister—kissed the cold glass with a shudder of horror before she found her mistake? Did she wonder now if this Mrs. Prichard could seem to her another self, as Maisie had wondered would she seem to her? Would all be changed and chill, and the old music of their past be silence, or at best the jangle of a broken chord? Would this latter end of Life, for both, be nothing but a joint anticipation of the grave? Gwen tried to sound the plummet of thought in an inconceivable surrounding, to guess at something she herself might think were she impossibly conditioned thus, and failed.

The story, too, must be content to fail. All it can guarantee is facts; and speculation recoils from the attempt to see into old Phoebe's soul as she dismounts from the farmer's cart, at the door beyond which was the thing to baffle all belief; to stultify all those bygone years, and stamp them as delusions.

Whatever she thought, her words were clear and free from trepidation, and John Costrell repeated them after her, making them the equivalent of printed instructions. "If yow are ba-adly wanted, Granny, I'm to coom for ye with ne'er a minute's loss o' time. That wull I. And for what I be to tell the missus, I bean't to say owt."

No—that would not do! The early return of the cart, without the Granny, had to be somehow accounted for. Nothing had been said to Maisie junior, by her, of not returning to supper. "Bide there a minute till I tell ye, John," said she, and went towards the door.

Keziah Solmes was coming out, having heard the cart. She started, with the exclamation:—"Why, God-a-mercy, 'tis the Granny herself!" and made as though to beat a retreat into the house, no doubt thinking to warn Widow Thrale within. Old Phoebe stopped her, saying, quite firmly:—"I know, Cousin Keziah. Tell me, how is Mrs. Prichard?"

Keziah, taken aback, lost presence of mind. "What can ye know o' Mrs. Prichard, Granny?" said she sillily. She said this because she could not see how the information had travelled.

"How is she?" old Phoebe repeated. And something in her voice said:—"Answer straight!" At least, so Keziah thought, and replied:—"The worser by the bad shake she's had, I lay." Neither made any reference to Mrs. Prichard's newly discovered identity. For though, as we have seen, Keziah knew all about it, she felt that the time had not yet come for free speech. Granny Marrable turned to John Costrell, saying in the same clear, unhesitating way:—"You may say to Maisie that her mother wants a helping hand with old Mrs. Prichard, but I'll come in the morning. You'll say no further than that, John;"—and passed on into the house.

John replied:—"I'll see to it, Granny," and grasped the situation, evidently. Keziah remained, and as soon as the old lady was out of hearing, said to him:—"This be a stra-ange stary coom to light, Master Costrell. Only to think of it! The Gra-anny's twin, thought dead now, fowerty years agone!"

"Thou'lt be knowing mower o' the stary than I, belike, Mrs. Solmes," said John. "I'm only the better by a bare word or so, so far, from speech o' the Gra-anny with her yoong la-adyship o' the Towers, but now, on the roo-ad. The Gra-anny she was main silent, coom'n' along."

"There's nowt to wonder at in that, Master Costrell. For there's th' stary, as I tell it ye. Fowerty years agone and more, she was dead by all accounts, out in the Colonies, and counted her sister dead as well. And twenty years past she's been living in London town, and ne'er a one known it. And now she's come by a chance to this very house!"

"She'd never coom anigh to this place?"

"Sakes alive, no! 'Twas all afower Gra-anny Marrable come here to marry Farmer Marrable—he was her second, ye know. I was a bit of a chit then. And Ruth Thrale was fower or five years yoonger. She was all one as if she was the Gra-anny's own child. But she was noa such a thing."

Then it became clear that the word or so had been very bare indeed. "She was an orphan, I ta-ak it," said John indifferently.

"There, now!" said Keziah. "I was ma-akin' a'most sure you didn't see the right of it, Master Costrell. And I wasn't far wrong, that once!"

"Maybe I'm out, but I do-an't see rightly where. A girl's an orphan, with ne'er a fa-ather nor a moother. Maybe one o' them was living? Will that square it?"

"One o' them's living still. And none so vairy far from where we stand. Can ye ma-ak nowt o' that, Master Costrell?"

John was a little slow; it was his bucolic mind. "None so vairy far from where we stand?" he repeated, in the dark.

"Hearken to me tell ye, man alive! She's in yander cottage, in the bedroom out across th' pa-assage. And the two o' them they've met by now. Are ye any nearer, Master Costrell?"

For a moment no idea fructified. Then astonishment caught and held him. "Not unless," he exclaimed, "not unless you are meaning that this old la-ady is Widow Thrale's mother!"

"You've gotten hold of it now, Master Costrell."

"But 'tis impossible—'tis impossible! If she were she would be my wife's grandmother!—her grandmother that died in Australia.... Well, Keziah Solmes, ye may nod and look wise—but....

"But that is th' vairy thing she is, safe and sure, John Costrell. I told ye—Australia. Australia be the Colonies."

John gave the longest whistle a single breath would support. Why he was ready to accept the relation of old Phoebe and Maisie, and revolt against his wife's inevitable granddaughtership, Heaven only knows! "But I'm not to say a word of it to the mistress," said he, meaning his wife.

"The Gra-anny said so, and she'll be right.... Was that her voice?..." A sound had come from the cottage. Keziah might be wanted. She wished the farmer good-night; and he drove off, no longer mystified, but dumfoundered with what had removed his mystification.

---

Old Phoebe had passed on into the house. She was satisfied that her message would account quite reasonably for the vacant seat in the returning cart. Besides, medical sanction—Dr. Nash's—had been given for her absence.

Now that the moment was close, a great terror came upon her, and she trembled. She knew that Ruth, her daughter for so long, was beyond that closed door across the passage, with ... With whom? With what?

Who can say except he be a twin that has lost a twin, what more of soul-stress had to be borne by these two than would have been his lot, or ours, in their place? And the severance of Death itself could not have been more complete than theirs for forty-odd years past; nor the reunion beyond the grave, that Gwen had likened theirs to, be stranger. Indeed, one is tempted to imagine that inconceivable palliations may attend conditions of which our ignorance can form no image. On this side one only knows that such a meeting is all the sadder for the shadow of Decay.

She could hardly believe herself the same as when, so few days since, she quitted this old room, that still remained unchanged; so intensely the same as when she, and her memories in it were left alone with a Past that seemed unchangeable, but for the ever-growing cloud of Time. There was the old clock, ticking by the dresser, not missing its record of the short life of every second that would never come again. There on the hearth was the log that might seem cold, but always treasured a spark to be rekindled; and the indomitable bellows, time-defying, that never failed to find it out and make it grow to flame. There was the old iron kettle, all blackness without and crystal purity within, singing the same song that it began a long lifetime since, and showing the same impatience under neglect. There on the dresser was the same dinner-service that had survived till breakage and neglect of its brethren had made it a rarity; and on the wall that persevering naval battle her husband's great-grandmother's needle had immortalised a century and a half ago. The only change she saw was the beadwork tablecloth wrapped over the mill-model, in its place above the hearth. Otherwise there was no change.

And here was she, face to face with resurrection—that was how she thought of it—all her brain in a whirl, unfit to allot its proper place to the most insignificant fact; all her heart stunned by a cataclysm she had no wits to give a name to. She had come with a rare courage and endurance to be at close quarters with this mystery, whatever it was, at once. On the very verge of full knowledge of it, this terror had come upon her, and she stood trembling, sick with dread undefined, glad she need not speak or call out. It would pass, and then she would call to Ruth, whose voice she could hear in the room beyond. There was another voice, too, a musical one, and low. Whose could it be? Not her lost sister's—not Maisie's! Her voice was never like that.

The cat came purring round her to welcome her back. The great bulldog trotted in from the yard behind, considered her a moment, and passed out to the front, attracted by the voices of Keziah and John Costrell. Having weighed them, duly and carefully, he trotted back past Granny Marrable, to give one short bark at the bedroom door, and return to the yard behind, his usual headquarters. Then Ruth came from the bedroom, hearing the movement and speech without.

She was terribly taken aback. "Oh, mother dearest," she said, betrayed into speaking her inner thought, "you have come too soon. You cannot know."

"I know," said Granny Marrable. "I will tell you presently. Now take me to her."

Ruth saw she meant that she could not trust her feet. What wonder at that? If she really knew the truth, what wonder at anything? She gave the support of her arm to the door, across the passage. Then the need for it seemed to cease, and the Granny, becoming her strong old self again, said with her own voice:—"That will do, dear child! Leave me to go on." She seemed to mean:—"Go on alone." That was what Ruth took her speech for. She herself held back; so none saw the first meeting between the twins.

Presently, as she stood there in suspense, she heard the words:—"Who is it outside, Ruth?" in Mrs. Prichard's voice, weak but controlled. Then the reply, through a breath that caught:—"Ruth is outside." Then the weaker voice, questioning:—"Then who?... then who?..." But no answer was given.

For, to Ruth's great wonderment, Granny Marrable came back in extreme trepidation, crying out through sobs:—"Oh, how can this be Maisie? Oh, how can this be Maisie?" To which Ruth's reply was:—"Oh, mother dear, who can she be if she is not my mother?" And though the wording was at fault, it is hard to see how she could have framed her question otherwise.

But old Phoebe had cried out loud enough to be heard by Keziah, speaking with John Costrell out in front, and it was quite audible in the room she had just left. That was easy to understand. But it was less so that old Maisie should have risen unassisted from the bed where she had lain since morning, and followed her.

"Oh, Phoebe, Phoebe darling, do not say that! Do not look at me to deny me, dearest. I know that this is you, and that we are here, together. Wait—wait and it will come!" This was what Keziah remembered hearing as she came back into the house. She crossed the kitchen, and saw, beyond Widow Thrale in the passage, that the two old sisters were in each other's arms.

Old Phoebe, strong in self-command and moral fortitude, and at the same time unable to stand against the overwhelming evidence of an almost incredible fact, had nevertheless been unprepared, by any distinct image of what the beautiful young creature of fifty years ago had become, to accept the reality that encountered her when at last she met it face to face.

Old Maisie's position was different. She had already fought and won her battle against the changes Time had brought about, and her mind no longer recoiled from the ruinous discolorations of decay. She had been helped in this battle by a strong ally, the love engendered for her own daughter while she was still ignorant of her identity. She had found her outward seeming a stepping-stone to a true conception of the octogenarian, last seen in the early summer of a glorious womanhood. Ruth Thrale's autumn, however much she still retained of a comely maturity, had been in those days the budding springtime of a child of four. Come what come might of the ravages of Time and Change, old Maisie was prepared for it, after accepting such a change as that. Did she know, and acknowledge to herself the advantage this had been to her, that time when she had said to Gwen:—"How I wish you could stay, to tell her that this is me!"

But the momentary unexpected strength that had enabled old Maisie to rise from the bed could not last. She had only just power left to say:—"I am Maisie! I am Maisie!" before speech failed; and her daughter had to be prompt, close at hand though she was, to prevent her falling. They got her back to the bed, frightened by what seemed unconsciousness, but relieved a moment after by her saying:—"I was only dizzy. Is this Phoebe's hand?" They were not seriously alarmed about her then.

She remained very still, a hand of her sister and daughter in each of hers, and the twilight grew, but none spoke a word. Keziah, at a hint from Ruth, attended to the preparation of supper in the front-room. This living unfed through hours of tension had to come to an end sometime. They knew that her silence was by choice, from a pressure of the hand of either from time to time. It seemed to repeat her last words:—"I am Maisie. I am Maisie."

That silence was welcome to them, for neither would have said a word by choice. They could but sit speechless, stunned by the Past. Would they ever be able to talk of it at all? A short parting gives those who travel together on the road through Life a good spell of cheerful chat, and each is overbrimming with the tale of adventure, grave or gay, of the folk they have chanced upon, the inns they have slept at, a many trifles with a leaven of seriousness not too weighty for speech. How is it when the ways divided half a century ago, and no tidings came to hand of either for the most part of a lifetime? How when either has believed the other dead, through all those years? Neither old Phoebe nor Ruth could possibly have felt the thing otherwise. But, that apart, silence was easiest.

Presently, it was evident that she was sleeping, peacefully enough, still holding her sister and daughter by the hand. As soon as Ruth felt the fingers slacken, she spoke, under her breath:

"How came you to know of it?"

"Dr. Nash. I spoke with her ladyship on the way, and she said it was true."

"What did she say was true?"

Granny Marrable had to think. What was it Gwen had said? She continued, feeling for her memories:—"I said to Gwen o' the Towers 'twas my dead sister come from the grave, and Dr. Nash had spoken to it. And John Costrell would have me unsay my word, but her ladyship bore me out, though 'twas but a way of speech." She paused a moment; then, before Ruth could frame an inquiry as to how much she knew of the story from either Dr. Nash or Gwen, went on, her eyes fixed, with a look that had terror in it, on the figure on the bed:—"If this be Maisie, was she not dead to me—my sister? Oh, how can this be Maisie?" Her mind was still in a turmoil of bewilderment and doubt.

Then Ruth's speech was again at fault, and yet she saw nothing strange in it. "Oh, mother dearest, this must be my mother. How else could she know? Had you but heard her talk as I did, of the old mill!—and there she was a-knowing of it all, and I could think her mad! Oh, mother dear, the fool that I was not to see she must be my mother!"

"It comes and goes, child," said Granny Marrable tremulously, "that she is your mother, not dead as I have known her. But it is all your life. I mind how the letter came that told it. After your grandfather's death. And all a lie!"

"Her ladyship will tell you that, mother, as she told it to me. I have not the heart to think it, but it was my father's work. God have mercy on him!"

"God have mercy on him, for his sin! But how had he the cruelty? What wrong had I done him?"

"Mother, I pray that I may one day see the light upon it. God spare us a while, just for to know the meaning of it all." It was a confession of the hopelessness of any attempt to grapple with it then.

Keziah Solmes, while preparing some supper, looked in once, twice, at the watchers beside the still sleeping figure on the bed. They were not speaking, and never took their eyes from the placid, colourless face and snow-white hair loose on the pillow; but they gave her the idea of dazed bewilderment, waiting for the mists to clear and let them dare to move again. The fog-bound steamer on the ocean stands still, or barely cuts the water. It is known, on board, that the path will reopen—but when?

The third time Keziah looked in at them, the room being all dark but for a wood-flicker from an unreplenished grate, she gathered courage to say that supper was ready. Ruth Thrale started up from where she half sat, half lay, beside the sleeper, exclaiming:—"She's eaten nothing since the morning. Mother, she'll sink for want of food."

"Now, the Lord forgive me!" said Granny Marrable. "To think I've had my dinner to-day, and she's been starving!" For, of course, the midday meal was all over at Costrell's, in normal peace, when Dr. Nash came in laden with the strange news, and at a loss to tell it.

The withdrawal of her daughter's hand waked the sleeper with a start. "I was dreaming so nicely," said she. "But I'm cold. Oh dear—what is it?... I thought I was in Sapps Court, with my little Dave and Dolly...." She seemed slow to catch again the thread of the life she had fallen asleep on. Vitality was very low, evidently, and she met an admonition that she must eat something with:—"Nothing but milk, please!" It refreshed her, for though she fell back on the pillow with her eyes closed, she spoke again a moment after.

The thing happened thus. Keziah, authoritatively, insistent, would have Ruth eat, or try to eat, some supper. Old Phoebe was in no need of it, and sat on beside old Maisie, who must have dreamed again—one of those sudden long experiences a few seconds will give to a momentary sleep. For she opened her eyes to say, with a much greater strength in her voice:—"I was dreaming of Dolly again, but Dolly wasn't Dolly this time ... only, she was Dolly, somehow!..." Then it was clear that she was quite in the dark, for the time being, about the events of the past few hours. For she continued:—"She was Dolly and my sister Phoebe—both at once—when Phoebe was a little girl—my Phoebe that was drowned. But Phoebe was older than that when she drew my tooth, as Dolly did in my dream."

Old Phoebe, it must be borne in mind, although intellectually convinced that this could be none other than her sister, had never experienced the conviction that only the revival of joint memories could bring. This reference to an incident only known to themselves, long forgotten by her and now flashed suddenly on her out of the past, made her faith that this was Maisie, in very truth, a reality. But she could not speak.

The dream-gods kept their hold on the half-awakened mind, too old for any alacrity in shaking them off. The old voice wandered on, every word telling on its hearer and rousing a memory. "We must have been eight then. Phoebe tied a thread of silk round the tooth, and the other end to the drawer-knob ... it was such a little tooth ... long and long before you were born, my dear...." Her knowledge of the present was on its way back, and she thought the hand that held hers was her new-found daughter's. "It was the drawer where the knitting-wool was kept."

If you who read this are old, can you not remember among the surroundings of your childhood things too trivial for the maturities of that date to give a passing thought to, that nevertheless bulked large to you then, and have never quite lost their impressiveness since? Such a one, to old Phoebe, was "the drawer where the knitting-wool was kept." Some trifle of the sort was sure to strike home its proof of her sister's identity. Chance lighted on this one, and it served its turn.

Ruth heard her cry out—a cry cut short by her mother's:—"Oh, Phoebe, Phoebe, I know it all now, and you'll know me." She started up from a hurried compliance with her Cousin Keziah's wish that she should eat, and went back quickly to the bedroom, to see the two old sisters again locked in each other's arms.

They may have been but dimly alive to how it all had come about, but they knew themselves and each other—twins wrenched asunder half a century since, each of whom had thought the other dead for over forty years.

---

CHAPTER XX

HOW GRANNY MARRABLE THOUGHT SHE OUGHT NOT TO GO TO SLEEP, BUT DID. HOW A CRICKET WAS STILL AT IT, WHEN SHE WAKED. HOW MAISIE WAKED TOO. HOW THEY REMEMBERED THINGS TOGETHER, IN THE NIGHT. A SKULL TWENTY-SEVEN INCHES ROUND. HOW PHOEBE COULD NOT FORGIVE HER BROTHER-IN-LAW, GOD OR NO! HOW IT HAD ALL BEEN MAISIE'S FAULT. THE OTHER LETTER, IN THE WORKBOX, BEHIND THE SCISSORS. THE STORY OF THE SCORPION. ALL TRUE! ONLY IT WAS MRS. STENNIS, WHO DIED IN AGONY. ELIZABETH-NEXT-DOOR'S IMMOVABLE HUSBAND. HOW GRANNY MARRABLE WAS RELIEVED ABOUT THAT SCORPION. HOW MAISIE'S HUSBAND HAD REALLY HAD A DEVIL—A BLACK MAN'S—WHICH MAISIE'S SON HAD INHERITED. A NEW INFECTION IN THINE EYE. HOW RUTH WENT FOR THE DOCTOR. HOW HE RECOMMENDED GWEN, AS WELL AS THE MIXTURE

The two old twins knew it all now, so far as it would ever be a matter of knowledge. They had got at the heart of each other's identity, before either really understood the cruel machination that had cancelled the life of either for the other.

Ruth Thrale left them alone together, and went back to force herself to eat. Keziah wanted to get back to her old man, and how could she go, unless Ruth kept in trim to attend to her two charges? Who could say that old Phoebe, at eighty, would not give in under the strain? Ruth had always a happy faculty of self-forgetfulness; and now, badly as she had felt the shock, she so completely lost sight of herself in the thought of the greater trouble of the principal actors, as to be fully alive to the one great need ahead, that of guarding and preserving what was left of the old life, the tending of which had come so strangely upon her. She refused Keziah's offer to remain on. Elizabeth-next-door, she said, was always at hand for emergencies.

Keziah stayed late enough to see all arranged for the night, ending with a more or less successful effort to get old Maisie to swallow arrowroot. She helped Ruth to establish the Granny in her own high-backed chair beside her sister—for neither would relinquish the other's hand—and took advantage of a very late return of Brantock, the carrier, to convey her home, where she arrived after midnight.

All know the feeling that surely must have been that of at least one of the old sisters, that sleep ought to be for some mysterious reason combated, or nonsuited rather, when the mind is at odds with grave events. One rises rebellious against its power, when it steals a march on wakefulness, catching the keenest vigilance unawares. There was no reason why Granny Marrable should not sleep in her own arm-chair—which she would say was every bit as good as bed, and used accordingly—except that yielding meant surrender of the faculties to unconsciousness of a problem not yet understood, with the sickening prospect of finding it unanswered on awakening. That seemed to be reason enough for many resentful recoils from the very portals of sleep; serving no end, as Maisie had been overcome without a contest, and lay still as an effigy on a tomb. A vague fear that she might die unwatched, looking so like Death already, may have touched Phoebe's mind. But fears and unsolved riddles alike melted away and vanished in the end; and when Ruth Thrale, an hour later, starting restless from her own couch near by, looked in to satisfy herself that all was well, both might have been leagues away in a dream-world, for any consciousness they showed of her presence.

That was on the stroke of one; and for two full hours after all was silence, but for the records of the clock at its intervals, and the cricket dwelling on the same theme our forefathers heard and gave no heed to, a thousand years ago. Then old Phoebe woke to wonder, for a blank moment, what had happened that she should be sitting there alone, with the lazy flicker of a charred faggot helping out a dim, industrious rushlight in a shade. But only till she saw that she was not alone. It all came back then. The figure on the bed!—not dead, surely?

No—for the hand she held was warm enough to reassure her. It had been the terror of a moment, that this changed creature, with memories that none but Maisie could have known, had flashed into her life to vanish from it, and leave her bewildered, almost without a word of that inexplicable past. Only of a moment, for the hand she held tightened on hers, and the still face that was, and was not, her dead sister's turned to her, looked at her open-eyed, and spoke.

"I think I am not dreaming now, but I was.... I was dreaming of Phoebe, years ago.... But you are Phoebe. Say that I am Maisie, that I may hear you. Say it!"

"Oh, my darling!—I know you are Maisie. But it is so hard to know."

"Yes—it is all so hard to know—so hard to think! But I know it is true.... Oh, Phoebe, where do you think I was but now, in my dream?... Yes, where?—What place?... Guess!"

"I cannot tell ... back in the old time?"

"Back in the old time—back in the old place. I was shelling peas to help old Keturah—old Keturah that had had three husbands, and her old husband then was the sexton, and he had buried them all three! We were there, under her porch ... with the honeysuckle all in flower—and, oh, the smell of it in the heat!—it was all there in my dream! And you were there. Oh, Phoebe darling, how beautiful you were! We were seventeen."

"Ah, my dear, I know when that was. 'Twas the day they came—came first. Oh, God be good to us!"

"Oh, Phoebe dear, why be so heartbroken? It was a merry time. Thank God for it with me, darling!... Ay, I know—all over now!..."

"I mind it well, dear. They came up on their horses."

"Thornton and Ralph. And made a pretext they would like to see inside the Church. Because old Keturah had the key."

"But 'twas an untruth! Little care they had for inside the Church! 'Twas ourselves, and they knew it."

"Oh, Phoebe!—but we knew it too! I had no chance to dream how we showed them the Church and the crypt, for I woke up. Ah, but 'tis long ago now!—sixty-two—sixty-three years! I wonder, is the stack of bones in the crypt now that was then? There was a big skull that measured twenty-seven inches."

"That it was! Twenty-seven. Now, to think of us young creatures handling those old bones!"

"Then it was not long but they came again on their horses, and this time it was that their father the Squire would see father righted in his lawsuit about the upper waters of the millstream. That was how Thornton made a friend of father. And then it was we played them our trick, to say which was which. We changed our frocks, and they were none the wiser."

A recollection stirred in old Phoebe's mind, that could almost bring a smile to her lips, even now. "Ralph never was any the wiser. He went away to the Indies, and died there.... But not afore he told to my husband how Thornton came to tell us apart.... How did he? Why, darling, 'twas the way you would give him all your hand, and I stinted him of mine."

"You never loved him, Phoebe."

"Was I not in the right of it, Maisie?" She then felt the words were hasty, and would have been glad to recall them. She waited for an answer, but none came. The fire was all but out, and the morning chill was in the air. She rose from the bedside and crossed the room to help it from extinction. But she felt very shaky on her feet.

A little rearrangement convinced the fire that it had been premature; and an outlying faggot, brought into hotchpot, decided as an after-thought that it could flare. "I am coming back," said Granny Marrable. She was afraid her sister would think she was going to be left alone. But there was no need, for when she reached her chair again—and she was glad to do so—old Maisie was just as she had left her, quite tranquil and seeming collected, but with her eyes open, watching the welcome light of the new flicker. One strange thing in this interview was that her weakness seemed better able to endure the strain of the position than her sister's strength.

She picked up the thread of the conversation where that interlude of the fire had left it. "You never loved Thornton, Phoebe dearest. But he was mine, for my love. He was kind and good to me, all those days out there in the bush, till I lost him. He was a lawbreaker, I know, but he paid his penalty. And was I not to forgive, when I loved him? God forgives, Phoebe." Half of what she had come to know had slipped away from her already; and, though she was accepting her sister as a living reality, the forged letter, the cause of all, was forgotten.

Granny Marrable, on the contrary, kept in all her bewilderment a firm hold on the wickedness of Daverill the father. It was he that had done it all, and no other. Conceivably, her having set eyes on Daverill the son had made this hold the firmer. To her the name meant treachery and cruelty. Even in this worst plight of a mind in Chaos, she could not bear to see the rugged edges of a truth trimmed off, to soften judgment of a wicked deed. But had she been at her best, she might have borne it this time to spare her sister the pain of sharing her knowledge, if such ignorance was possible. As it was, she could not help saying:—"God forgives, Maisie, and I would have forgiven, if I could have had you back when he was past the need of you. Oh, to think of the long years we might still have had, but for his deception!"

"My dear, it may be you are right. But all my head is gone for thinking. You are there, and that is all I know. How could I?... What is it all?"

The despair in her voice did not unnerve her sister more. Rather, if anything, it strengthened her, as did anything that drew her own mind out of itself to think only of her fellow-sufferer. She could but answer, hesitatingly:—"My dear, was I not here all the while you thought me dead?... If you had known ... oh, if you had known!... you might have come." She could not keep back the sound of her despair in her own voice.

Maisie started spasmodically from her pillow.

"Oh, God have mercy on me! Save me, Phoebe, save me!" she cried. She clung with both hands to her sister, and gasped for breath. Then the paroxysm of her excitement passed, and she sank back, whispering aloud in broken speech:—"I mean ... it came back to me ... the tale ... the letter.... Oh, but it cannot be true!... Tell it me again—tell me what you know."

Phoebe's response flagged. What could her old brain be said to know, yet, in such a whirl? "I'll try, my dear, to say it out right, for you to hear. But 'tis a hard thing to know, and 'tis hard to have to know it. Dr. Nash said it to me, that it was Thornton, your husband. And our young lady of the Towers—she, my dear, you know, that is Lady Gwendolen Rivers—said it to me again." Old Maisie clung closer to the hand she held, and trembled so that Phoebe stopped, saying:—"Ought I to tell?"

"Yes—go on! You know, dear, I know it all—half know it—but I cannot hold it for long—it goes. Go on!"

"He wrote to me—he wrote to you—saying, we were dead. O God, forgive him for his cruelty! Why, oh why?" She fixed her eyes on her sister, and seemed to wait for an answer to the question.

And yet she wondered in her heart when the answer came. It came with a light that broke through the speaker's face, a sound of relief in her words:—"It was his love for me, Phoebe dearest—it was his love for me! He would not have me go from him to my sister in England, even for the time I would have wanted, to see her again. The fault was mine, dear, the fault was mine! I was ever on at him—plaguing—plaguing him to spare me for the time. Oh—'twas I that did it!"

Let her believe it! Let her see a merit in it for the man she loved! That was Phoebe's thought.

"He was always good to me," Maisie continued. "He never thought of what might come of it. All his desire was I should not leave him. Oh, Phoebe, Phoebe, if only I might have died there and then, out in the Colony!"

"To see me no more? Not this once? I thank God that has spared ye to me, Maisie, just but to hear your voice and hold your hand and kiss your face. If I be dreaming, I be dreaming. Only I would not wake, not I. But I can scarce bear myself for the wonderment of it all. How could you come back alone—my Maisie, alone and old!—back again to England—in a ship—through the storms?" For all the mind that Granny Marrable had left after the bewildering shock was aching to know more.

Old Maisie was almost too weak for anything like curiosity about the past; she simply submitted—acquiesced. This was her sister, not dead by some miracle. When in dreams we see again the departed, do we speak of the interim? Surely never? Neither did Maisie. She could not even look forward to knowing more. She could talk on, with no difficulty of speech—indeed, seemed talkative. She could reply now to Phoebe's question:—"But, my dear, I was not alone, nor old. I was not much older than my Ruth that I have found.... Where is she?—she is not gone?" She looked round, frightened, trying to raise herself.

"She is gone away to sleep. It is night, you know. There goes the clock. Four. She will come again.... But, oh, Maisie, was it as long ago as that? 'Tis but a very little while back Ruth turned fifty."

"Is my girl turned of fifty, then?—yes! it must be so. Fifty years past I landed ashore in Hobart Town, and it was a babe of four I had to leave behind. Well—I was a bit older. I was fifty-seven when I lost my son." This seemed to mean the death of some son unknown to Granny Marrable. The convict was never farther from her mind. "'Tis twenty-five years I have been in England—all of twenty-five years, Phoebe."

"Oh, God have pity on us all! Twenty-five years!" It was a cry of pain turned into words. Had she had to say what stung her most, she would probably have said the thought that Maisie might have seen her daughter's wedding, or at least the babyhood of her children. So much there was to tell!—would she live to hear it? And so much to hear!—would she live to tell it? She could not understand her sister's words that followed:—"All of twenty years alone," referring to the period since her son's transportation. It was really longer. But memory of figures is insecure in hours of trial.

Maisie continued:—"When I came back, I went straight to our old home, long ago—to Darenth Mill, to hear what I might, and old Keturah was dead, and her husband was dead, and ne'er a soul knew aught to tell me. And there was father's grave in the churchyard, and no other. So what could I think but what the letter said, that all were drowned in the cruel sea, your husband Nicholas, and my little one, all three?"

"And the letter said that—the letter he made up?"

"The letter said that, and I read it. It had black seals, and I broke them and read it. And it was from father, and said you were drowned ... drowned ... Yes!—Phoebe drowned ... and my little Ruth, and ... Oh, Phoebe, how can this be you?" The panic came again in her voice, and again she clutched spasmodically at the hand she held. But it passed, leaving her only able to speak faintly. "I kept it in my table-drawer.... It must be there still." She had only half got the truth.

Granny Marrable tried to make it clear, so far as she could. "You forget, dear. Her ladyship has the letter, and Dr. Nash knows. Lady Gwendolen who brought you here...."

It was a happy reference. A light broke over the old face on the pillow, and there was ease in the voice that said:—"She is one of God's Angels. I knew it by her golden hair. When will she come?"

"Very soon. To-morrow, perhaps. 'Twas her ladyship told you—was it not? Oh, you remember?"

"My dear, she told it me like a story, and her face was white. But it was all clear to me then, for I could not know who the bad man was—the bad man who made two sisters each think the other dead. And I was for helping her to tell them. Oh, may God bless her for her beautiful face—so pale it was! And then she told me 'twas written by my husband." Some new puzzle confronted her, and she repeated, haltingly:—"By ... my ... husband!" Then quite suddenly, struck by a new idea:—"But was it? How could she know?"

"My dear, she showed it to her father, the Earl, and they were of one mind. His lordship read the letter. Dr. Nash told me. But it was Thornton's own letter to me that said you were dead. I have got it still." She was stopped by the return of Ruth Thrale, who had been half waked by her mother's raised voice five minutes since, and had struggled to complete consciousness under the sense of some burden of duty awaiting her outside the happy oblivion of her stinted sleep. "How has she been?" was her question on entering.

Granny Marrable could not give any clear account of the past hour of talk; it was growing hazy to her, as reaction after excitement told, more and more. Ruth asked no further questions, and urged her to go and lie down—was ready to force her to do it, but she conceded the point, and was just going, when her sister stopped her, speaking clearly, without moving on the pillow.

"What was the letter?"

"What letter is she speaking of?" said Ruth.

Granny Marrable said with an effort:—"The letter that said she was dead."

"Show it to me—show it me now, with the light! You have got it."

"Yes. I said to her that I had got it. But it is put away." This was under Granny Marrable's breath, that old Maisie should not hear.

But she heard, and turned her head. "Oh, Phoebe, let me see it! Can it not be got? Cannot Ruth get it?" She seemed feverishly alive, for the moment, to all that was passing.

Ruth, thinking it would be better to satisfy her if possible, said:—"Is it hard to find? Could I not get it?" To which old Phoebe replied:—"I know where it is to lay hands on at once. But I grudge setting eyes on it now, and that's the truth." Ruth wondered at this—it made her mother's eagerness to see it seem the stranger. The story is always on the edge of calling old Maisie Ruth's "new mother." Her mind was reeling under the consciousness of two mothers with a like claim—a bewildering thought! She wavered between them, and was relieved when the speaker continued:—"You may unlock my old workbox over yonder. The letter be inside the lid, behind the scissors. I'll begone to lie down a bit on your bed, child!" Was old Phoebe running away from that letter?

Ruth knew the trick of that workbox of old. It brought back her early childhood to find the key concealed in a little slot beneath it; hidden behind a corner of green cloth beyond suspicion; that opened, for all that, when the edge was coaxed with a finger-nail. It had been her first experience of a secret, and a fascination hung about it still. That confused image of a second mother, growing dimmer year by year in spite of a perfunctory system of messages maintained in the correspondence of the parted twins, had never utterly vanished; and it had clung about this workbox, a present from Maisie to Phoebe, even into these later years. It crossed Ruth's mind as she found the key, how, a year ago, when the interior of this box was shown to Dave Wardle by his country Granny, his delight in it, and its smell of otto of roses that never failed, had stirred forgotten memories; and this recollection, with the mystery of that vanished mother still on earth—close at hand, there in the room!—made her almost dread to raise the box-lid. But she dared it, and found the letter, though her brain whirled at the entanglements of life and time, and she winced at the past as though scorched by a spiritual flame. It took her breath away to think what she had sought and found; the hideous instrument of a wickedness almost inconceivable—her own father's!

"Oh, how I hope it is that! Bring it—bring it, my dear, my Ruth—my Ruth for me, now! Yes—show it me with the light, like that." Thus old Maisie, struggling to raise herself on the bed, but with a dangerous spot of colour on her cheek, lately so pale, that said fever. Ruth trembled to admit the word to her mind; for, think of her mother's age, and the strain upon her, worse than her own!

Nevertheless, it was best to indulge this strong wish; might, indeed, be dangerous to oppose it. Ruth bolstered up the weak old frame with pillows, and lit two candles to give the letter its best chance to be read. She found her mother's spectacles, though in doubt whether they could enable her to read the dim writing, written with a vanishing ink, even paler than the forged letter Gwen and her father had unearthed. Possibly the ink had run short, and was diluted.

Old Maisie strove to read the writing, gasping with an eagerness her daughter found it hard to understand; but failed to decipher anything beyond, "My dear Sister-in-law." She dropped the letter, saying feebly:—"Read—you read!"

Then Ruth read:—

"'I take up my pen to write you fuller particulars of the great calamity that has befallen me. For I am, as my previous letter will have told you, if it has reached you ere this, a widower. I am endeavouring to bear with resignation the lot it has pleased God to visit upon me, but in the first agonies of my grief at the loss of my beloved helpmeet I was so overwhelmed as to be scarce able to put pen to paper. I am now more calm and resigned to His will, and will endeavour to supply the omission.

"'My dear Maisie was in perfect health and spirits when she went to visit a friend, Mary Ann Stennis, the wife of a sheep-farmer, less than thirty miles from where I now write, on the Upper Derwent, one of the few women in this wild country that was a fit associate for her. She was to have started home in a few days' time, but the horse that should have carried her, the only one she could ride, being a timid horsewoman, went lame and made a delay, but for which delay it may be God would have spared her to me. But His will be done! It seems she was playing with the baby of a native black, there being a camp or tribe of them near at hand, she being greatly diverted with the little monster, when its sister, but little older than itself, found a scorpion beneath a stone, and set it to bite its little brother. Thereupon Maisie, always courageous and kindhearted, must needs snatch at this most dangerous vermin, to throw it at a distance from the children....'"

Old Maisie interrupted the reader. Her face was intent, and her eyes gleamed with an unhealthy, feverish light. "Stop, my dear," said she. "This is all true."

"All true!" Surely her mind was giving way. So thought Ruth, and shuddered at the gruesome thought. "Mother—mother—how can it be true?"

"All quite true, my dear, but for one thing! All true but for who it was! It was not I—it was Mary Ann was at play with little Saku. And the scorpion bit her hand, and she died of the bite.... Yes—go on! Read it all!" For Ruth had begun:—"Shall I—must I?" as though the reading it was unendurable.

She resumed, with an effort:—

"'But got bitten in the arm. At first she made light of the wound, for the reptile was so small. But it became badly inflamed, and no doctor was at hand. The black mother of Saku, the baby, prayed to be allowed to summon the conjurer doctor of the tribe, who would suck the wound. But Maisie would not have this, so only external applications were made ...'"

Old Maisie interrupted:—"That is not so," she said. "Roomoro, the doctor, sucked hard at the bite, and spat out the poison in a hole in the ground, to bury the evil spirit. But it was no good. Poor Mary Ann Stennis died a week after. I mind it well."

Ruth thought to herself:—"Is this a feverish dream?" and wavered on the answer. The tale her mother told of the black medicine-man was nightmare-like. All this, fifty years ago! Her head swam too much for speech, reading apart. She could continue, mechanically:—

"' ... Only external applications were made, which proved useless, as is almost invariably the case with poisonous bites. Next day it became evident that the poison was spreading up the arm, and a black runner was despatched to summon me, but he could not cover the ground in less than three hours, and when he arrived I was on my way to Bothwell, some twenty miles in another direction, so he did not overtake me until the evening. I was then detained a day, so that it was over forty-eight hours before I arrived at Stennis's. It was then too late for effectual remedy, and my dear wife died in my arms within a week of the scorpion bite....'"

"That is not true—it was over a week." Was Maisie really alive to the facts, to be caught by so small a point? She had seen a simple thing that could be said. That is all the story can think.

Ruth said:—"Here is more—only a little!" and continued:—

"'I am thankful to say that, considering the nature of the case, her sufferings were slight, and she passed away peacefully, desiring with her last breath that I should convey to you the assurance of her unchanged affection.'

"It is untrue—it is untrue!" moaned Maisie. "Mary Ann died in great pain, from the poison of the bite working in the blood." She seemed to grasp very little of the facts, for she added:—"But was he not good, to hide the pain for Phoebe's sake?" Her mind was catching at fragments, to understand, and failed.

There was another letter, which Ruth opened, of an earlier date. It was a merely formal announcement of the death. She put back the letters in the workbox-lid, behind the scissors; replaced the workbox on its table as before, and returned to her mother. She was glad to find her still, with her eyes closed; but with that red spot on her cheek, unchanged. It was best to favour every approach of sleep, and this might be one. Ruth sat silent, all her faculties crippled, and every feeling stunned, by what she had gone through since Gwen's first arrival yesterday.

This terrible night had worn itself out, and she knew that that clock-warning meant six, when the stroke should come. But there was no daylight yet. Those movements in the kitchen must be Elizabeth-next-door, come according to promise. That was what the guardian-dog from without meant, pushing his way through the bedroom-door, reporting an incomer whom he knew, and had sanctioned. He communicated the fact to his satisfaction, and returned to his post, leaving his mistress the better for his human sympathy, which seemed to claim knowledge of passing event. It comforted her to feel that the day was in hand, and that its light would come. Who could say but its ending might find her convinced that this was all true? Blank, sickening doubts of the meaning of everything flitted across her mind, and she longed to settle down to realities, to be able to love this new mother without flinching. For that was what she felt, that the mystery of this resurrection seared or burnt her. One thing only soothed her—that this was dear old Mrs. Prichard whom she had learned to love before its bewilderments were sprung upon her. That made it easier to bear.

Presently she roused herself, for, was not this morning? A grey twilight, not over-misty for the time of year, was what a raised window-curtain showed her, and she let it fall to deal with it in earnest, and relieve the blind from duty. Then she made sure, by the new light, that all was well with old Maisie—mere silence, no insensibility—and went out to speak with Elizabeth-next-door, and get more wood for the fire. But first she blew out the candles and the rushlight, already dying spasmodically.

Elizabeth-next-door was a strengthening influence, able to look facts in the face. She almost elided forewords and inquiries, to come to her strong point, the way she had used the strange story to produce surprise in her husband; a worthy man, but imperturbable by anything short of earthquakes or thunderbolts. "Ye may sa-ay your vairy worst to Sam," said Elizabeth, "and he'll just sa-ay back, 'Think a doan't knaw that,' he'll say, 'afower ever yow were born?' and just gwarn with his sooper. And I give ye my word, Widow Thrale, I no swooner told it him than there he sat! An' if he come down on our ta-able wi' th' fla-at of his ha-and once, that he did thrice and mower, afower he could sa-ay one word. He did, and went nigh to break it, but it be o-ak two-inch thick a'mo-ast. Then a said, 'twas enough to wa-aken oop a ma-an all through the night, he did!" He seemed, however, not to have suffered in this way, for his wife added:—"Wa-aken him oop? Not Sam, I lay! Ta-akes a souse o' cold pig to wa-aken up Sam afower t' marnin!" Ruth felt braced by this bringing of the event within human possibilities. Improbable possibilities surprise. Impossible events stun.

She co-operated in domesticities with her useful neighbour, glancing once or twice at the figure on the bed, and reinforced in the belief that all was safe there, for the time. For she saw what seemed slight natural movement, for ease. Presently she went to hear how it fared with her other mother, her normal one. The cross purposes of her relations to the two old sisters were an entanglement of perplexities.

Granny Marrable, asleep when Ruth looked stealthily in at her, was waked by a creak with which the door just contrived to disappoint hopes of a noiseless escape. She called after her:—"Yes, who's that?" Whereupon Ruth returned. It was their first real word alone since the disclosure.

"Oh, mother, have you slept?" She kissed the old worn-out face tenderly; feeling somehow the reserve of strength behind the response she met. "Oh, can you—can you—make it out?... Yes, she is lying still. She has seen that letter." She dropped her voice, and shuddered to name it.

"My dear," said Granny Marrable, answering her question, "I cannot say truly yet that I can make it out. But I thank God for letting me be able to know that this must be Maisie. For I know her for Maisie, when she talks of the bygone time. And that letter—God is good, for that! For it was that told of how she died—that wicked poison-bite! My child, it has never gone quite out of my heart to think your mother died so far away in such pain—never in all these years! And now I know it for an untruth. I thank God for that, at least!"

"She says," said Ruth, checkmated in an attempt to use any name she could call her real mother by, without some self-blame for the utterance, "she says the story is one-half true, but 'twas her best friend died of the bite—not she! But she died in great suffering."

"Ah—the poor thing! Mary Ann Stennis."

"That was the name."

"Will she be able to tell more? Will she tell us who her husband was?"

"Her husband!" Ruth thought this was new trouble—that the Granny's head had given way under the strain. "Her husband was my father, mother," said she. "Think!"

But old Phoebe was quite clear. "I am all right, child," said she reassuringly. "Her second husband. Marrable was my second, you know, else I would still have been Cropredy. Why is she not Daverill?"

Ruth was really the less clear of the two. "Oh yes!" said she wonderingly. "She is Mrs. Prichard, still."

"Please God we shall know all!... What was that?"

"I must go to her.... Come!" For old Maisie had called out. Her daughter went back to her quickly, and Granny Marrable followed, not far behind.

"Come, dear, come.... I called for you to know.... Come, Phoebe, come near, and let me tell you.... He was not so wicked.... Oh no, oh no—it was none of his own doing—I shall be able ... directly...." Thus old Maisie, gasping for breath, and falling back on the pillow from which she had part risen. The hectic flush in her face was greater, and her eyes were wild under her tangle of beautiful silver hair. Both were afraid for her, for each knew what fever might, mean. They might lose her, almost without a renewal of life together.

Still, it might be no more than the agitation of a moment, a passing phase. They tried to pacify her. How could the letter be none of Daverill's own doing? But she would not be soothed—would say the thing she had set her mind to say, but failed to find the words or breath for. What was it she was trying to say? Was it about the letter?

Elizabeth-next-door came into the room, tentatively. Ostensible reason, inquiry about breakfast; actual reason, curiosity. Sounds of speech under stress had aroused, and a glance at old Maisie intensified it. Widow Thrale would come directly, but for the moment was intent on hearing what Mrs. Prichard was saying. To Elizabeth, Maisie continued Mrs. Prichard.

She would not leave unsaid this thing she was bent on:—"No, dear! No, dear! It does not hurt me to talk, but I want time.... I will tell you ... I must tell you.... I know it.... It was not his own doing.... He was set on to do it by a devil that possessed him.... There are devils loose among the blacks...."

The pulse in the hand Ruth held was easy to find. Yes, that was fever! Ruth left her to speak with Elizabeth, and the hand went over to its fellow, in Granny Marrable's.

"Phoebe, dearest, that is so—and in those days there were a many blacks. But they were fewer and fewer after that, and none in our part when we came away, my son and I.... Phoebe!"

"What, dearest?"

"You must say nothing of him to Ruth. He was her brother."

"Say nothing of him to Ruth—why not?" She had lost sight of her adventure with the convict, and did not identify him. She may have fancied some other son accompanied her sister home.

"Yes—yes—nothing to her! He is not fit to speak of—not fit to think of.... Do not ask about him. Forget him! I do not know if he be alive or dead."

Then an image of the convict, or madman, flashed across Phoebe's mind. She dared not talk of him now, with that wild light and hectic flush in her sister's face; it would only make bad worse. But a recollection of her first association of him with the maniac in the Gadarene tombs was quick on the heels of this image, and prompted her to say:—"Had no evil spirit power over him, then, as well as his father?"

The wild expression on old Maisie's face died down, and gave place to one that was peace itself by comparison. "I see it all now," said she. "Yes—you are right! It was after his father's death he became so wicked." It was the devil that possessed his father, driven out to seek a home, and finding it in the son. That was apparently what her words implied, but there was too much of delirium in her speech and seeming to justify their being taken as expressing a serious thought.

Old Phoebe sat beside her, trying now and again with quiet voice and manner to soothe and hush away the terrible memories of the audacious deception to which each owed a lifelong loss of the other. But when fever seizes on the blood, it will not relax its hold for words.

One effect of this was good, in a sense. It is true, as the poet said, that one fire burns out another's burning—or at any rate that one pain is deadened by another anguish—and it was a Godsend to Granny Marrable and Ruth Thrale that an acupression of immediate anxiety should come to counteract their bewilderment, and to extinguish for the time the conflagration of a thousand questions—whys, whens, and wherefores innumerable—in their overburdened minds. Visible fever in the delicate frame, to which it seemed the slightest shock might mean death, was a summons to them to put aside every possible thought but that of preserving what Time had spared so long, though Chance had been so cruel an oppressor. It would be the cruellest stroke of all that she should be thus strangely restored to them, only to be snatched away in an hour.

Presently she seemed quieter; the fever came in gusts, and rose and fell. She had once or twice seemed almost incoherent, but it passed away. Meanwhile Granny Marrable's memory of that madman or criminal, who had at least known the woman he claimed as his mother well enough to be mystified by her twin sister, rankled in her mind, and made it harder and harder for her to postpone speech about him. She would not tell the incident—she was clear of that—but would it harm Maisie to talk of him? She asked herself the question the next time her sister referred to him, and could not refrain from letting her speech about him finish.

It came of her mind drifting back to that crazy notion of an evil spirit wandering to seek a home; as the hermit-crab, dispossessed of one shell, goes in search of another. After a lull which had looked for a moment like coming sleep, she said with an astonishing calmness:—"But do you not see, Phoebe dear, do you not see how good his father must have been, to do no worse than he did? See what the devil that possessed him could do with Ralph—my youngest, he was; Isaac died—a good boy, quite a good boy, till I lost his father! Oh—see what he came to do!"

"He ... he was sent to prison, was he not?" After saying it, old Phoebe was afraid she might have to tell the whole tale of how she knew it. But she need not have feared. Old Maisie was in a kind of dreamland, only half-cognisant of what was going on about her.

Her faint voice wandered on. "I was not thinking of that. That was nothing! He stole some money, and it cost him dear.... No!—it was worse than that—a bad thing!... It was not the girl's fault.... Emma was a good girl...."

Granny Marrable was injudicious. But it was an automatic want of judgment, bred of mind-strain. She could not help saying:—"Was that Emma Drax?" For the name, which she had heard from the convict, had hung on her mind, always setting her to work to fashion some horrible story for its owner.

"Yes—Emma Drax.... They found her guilty.... I do not mean that.... What is it I mean?... I mean they laid it all at her door.... Men do!" This seemed half wandering, and Granny Marrable hoped it meant a return of sleep. She was disappointed. For old Maisie became more restless and hot, starting convulsively, catching at her hand, and exclaiming:—"But how came you to know?—how came you to know? You were not there then. Oh, Phoebe dearest, you were not there then." She kept on saying this, and Granny Marrable despaired of finding words to explain, under such circumstances. The tale of her meeting with the convict was too complex. She thought to herself that she might say that Maisie had spoken the name as a dream-word, waking. But that would have been a fib, and fibs were not her line.

---

"I went myself to get him," said Ruth, reappearing after a longer absence than old Phoebe had anticipated. She was removing an out-of-door cloak, and an extempore headwrap, when she entered the room. "How is she?" she asked.

Old Phoebe shook her head doubtfully. "Whom did you go for, child? The doctor? I'm glad."

"I thought it better.... Mother darling!—how are you?" She knelt by the bed, held the burning hands, looked into the wild eyes. "Yes—I did quite right," she said.

---

Dr. Nash came, not many minutes later. Whether the mixture to be taken every two hours, fifty years ago, was the same as would have been given now, does not concern the story. It, or the reassurance of the doctor's visit, had a sedative effect; and old Maisie seemed to sleep, to the great satisfaction of her nurses. What really did credit to his professional skill was that he perceived that a visit from Lady Gwendolen would be beneficial. A message was sent at once to John Costrell, saying that an accompanying letter was to be taken promptly to the Towers, to catch her ladyship before she went out. We have seen that it reached her in time.

"You found that all I told you was true, Granny Marrable," said the doctor, after promising to return in time to catch her ladyship.

"I shall live to believe it true, doctor, please God!"

"Tut tut! You see that it is true."

"Yes, indeed, and I know that yonder is Maisie, come back to life. I know it by thinking; but 'tis all I can do, not to think her still dead."

"She can talk, I suppose—recollects things? Things when you were kids?"

"God 'a' mercy, yes, doctor! Why—hasn't she told me how she drew my tooth, with a bit of silk and a candle, and knew which drawer-knob it was, and the days she saw her husband first, a-horseback?... Oh, merciful Heavens, how had he the heart?"

"Some chaps have the Devil in 'em, and that's the truth!"

"That's what she says. She just made my flesh creep, a-telling how the devils come out of the black savages, to seize on Christians!"

But the doctor was not prepared to be taken at his word, in this way. Devils are good toys for speech, but they are not to be real. "Lot of rum superstitions in those parts!" said he. "Now look you here, ma'am! When I come back, I shall expect to hear that you and your daughter.... Oh ah!—she's not your daughter! What the deuce is she?"

"Ruth has always been my niece, but we have gone near to forget it, times and again. 'Tis so many a long year!"

"Well—I shall expect to hear that you and your niece have had a substantial breakfast. You understand—substantial! And you must make her take milk, or gruel. You'll find she won't eat."

"Beef-tea?"

"No—at least, have some ready, in case. But her temperature is too high. Especially at her time of life!" The doctor walked briskly away. He had not had the gig out, for such a short distance.

---

CHAPTER XXI

CHRISTMAS AND THE GREEK KALENDS. O NOBIS PRAETERITOS! THE WRITING-TABLE BACK. AN INFLEXIBLE GOVERNOR. HOW MR. JERRY DID NOT GO TO THE WORKHOUSE. BUT HOW CAME M'RIAR TO BE SO SHORT? THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA. UNCLE MO'S COLDBATH FIELDS FRIEND, AND HIS ALLOWANCE. UNCLE MO ON KEEPING ONE'S WORD. AND KEEPING ITS MEANING. JERRY'S CONSCIENTIOUS TREACHERY, AND HIS INTERVIEW WITH MR. ROWE. HOW M'RIAR HAD PROMISED LOVE, HONOUR, AND OBEDIENCE TO A THING A DEVIL HAD TAKEN A LONG LEASE OF. HOW SHE SENT A NOTE TO IT, BY MICHAEL RAGSTROAR. WHO REALISED THREE-HALFPENCE. HOW MISS HAWKINS, JEALOUSY MAD, TINKERED AUNT M'RIAR'S NOTE. EVE'S CIVILITY TO THE SERPENT. MUCH ABOUT NORFOLK ISLAND. DAVERILL'S SECOND VISIT TO ENGLAND, AND ITS CAUSES

Sapps Court was looking forward to Christmas with mixed feelings, considered as a Court. The feelings of each resident were in some cases quite defined or definable; as for instance Dave's and Dolly's. The children had required from their seniors a trustworthy assurance of the date of Mrs. Prichard's return, and had only succeeded in obtaining from Aunt M'riar a vague statement. Mrs. Prichard was a-coming some day, and that was plenty for children to know at their time of life. They might have remained humbly contented with their ignorance, if Uncle Mo had not added:—"So's Christmas!" meaning thereby the metaphorical Christmas used as an equivalent of the Greek Kalends. He overlooked, for rhetorical purposes, the near approach of the actual festival; and Dave and Dolly accepted this as fixing the date of Mrs. Prichard's return, to a nicety. The event was looked forward to as millennial; as a restoration of a golden age before her departure. For no child is so young as not to laudare a tempus actum; indeed, it is a fiction that almost begins with speech, that the restoration of the Past is the first duty of the Future.

Dolly never tired of recasting the arrangement of the tea-festivity that was to celebrate the event, discovering in each new disposition of the insufficient cups and unstable teapot a fresh satisfaction to gloat over, and imputing feelings in sympathy with her own to her offspring Gweng. It was fortunate for Gweng that her mamma understood her so thoroughly, as otherwise her fixed expression of a maximum of joy at all things in Heaven and Earth gave no clue to any emotions due to events of the moment. Even when her eyes were closed by manipulation of her spinal cord, and opened suddenly on a new and brilliant combination, any candid spectator must have admitted her stoicism—rapturous perhaps, but still stoicism. It was alleged—by her mamma—that she shed tears when Dave selfishly obstructed her line of sight. This was disputed by Dave, whom contact with an unfeeling World was hardening to a cruel literalism.

Dave, when he was not scheming a display of recent Academical acquirements to Mrs. Prichard, dwelt a good deal on the bad faith of the postman, who had not brought him the two letters he certainly had a right to expect, one from each of his Grannies. He had treasured the anticipation of reading their respective expressions of joyful gratitude at their discovery of their relationship, and no letter had come! Small blame to Dave that he laid this at the door of the postman; others have done the self-same thing, on the other side of their teens! The only adverse possibility that crossed his infant mind was that his Grannies were sorry, not glad; because really grown-up people were so queer, you never could be even with them. The laceration of a lost half-century was a thing that could not enter into the calculations of a septennarian. He had not tried Time, and Time had not tried him. He had odd misgivings, now and again, that there might be in this matter something outside his experience. But he did not indulge in useless speculation. The proximity of Christmas made it unnecessary.

Mrs. Burr and Aunt M'riar accepted the season as one beneficial to trade; production taking the form of a profusion of little muslin dresses for small girls at Christmas Trees and parties with a Conjurer—dresses in which the fullest possibilities of the human flounce became accomplished facts, and the last word was said about bows of coloured ribbons. To look at them was to breathe an involuntary prayer for eiderdown enclosures that would keep the poppet inside warm without disparagement to her glorious finery. Sapps Court under their influence became eloquent of quadrilles; "Les Rats" and the Lancers, jangled by four hands eternally on pianos no powers of sleep could outwit, and no execration do justice to. They murmured tales of crackers with mottoes; also of too much rich cake and trifle and lemonade, and consequences. So much space was needed to preserve them unsoiled and uncrushed until consigned to their purchasers, that Mrs. Burr and Aunt M'riar felt grateful for the unrestricted run of Mrs. Prichard's apartment, although both also felt anxious to see her at home again.

Mrs. Prichard's writing-table came back, done beautiful. Only the young man he refused to leave it without the money. He was compelled to this course by the idiosyncrasies of his employer. "You see," said he to Uncle Mo, with an appearance of concentrating accuracy by a shrewd insight, "it's like this it is, just like I tell you. Our Governor he's as good a feller—in hisself mind you!—as you'll come across this side o' Whitechapel. Only he's just got this one pecooliarity—like a bee has in his bonnet, as the sayin' is—he won't give no credit, not so much as to his own wife; or his medical adwiser, if you come to that. 'Cash across invoice'—that's his motter. And as for moving of him, you might just as easy move Mongblong." It is not impossible that this young man's familiarity with Mont Blanc was more apparent than real; perhaps founded on Albert Smith's entertainment of that name, which was popular at that time in London. The young man went on to say that he himself was trustful to a fault, and that if it depended on him, a'most any arrangement could be come to. But you had to take a party as you found him, and there it was!

Uncle Mo said:—"If you'd said you was a-coming with it, mate, I'd have made a p'int of having the cash ready. My salary's doo to-morrow." He was looking rather ruefully at an insufficient sum in the palm of his hand, the scrapings of more than one pocket.

The young man said:—"It's the Governor, Mr. Moses. But if you'll square the 'ire of the trolley, I'll run it back to the shop, and you can say when you're ready for it."

Uncle Mo seemed very reluctant to allow the bird to go back into the bush. He went to the stairfoot, and called to Aunt M'riar, upstairs, making ribbons into rosettes, and giving Dolly the snippings. He never took his eye off the coins in his palm, as though to maintain them as integral factors of the business in hand. "Got any small change, M'riar?" said he.

"How much do you want, Mo?"

"Six. And three. Can you do six-and three?"

"Stop till I see, Mo." Aunt M'riar descended from above, and went into her bedroom. But she did not find six-and-three. For she came out saying:—"I can't only do five-and-nine, Mo. Can't you make out with that?"

Uncle Mo still looked at the twelve-and-nine he already had in hand, as though it was a peculiar twelve-and-nine, that might consent for once to make nineteen shillings, the sum required, when added to Aunt M'riar's contribution; but he was obliged to yield to the inflexible nature of Arithmetic. "Sixpence short, I make it," said he. Then to the young man whose employer was like Mont Blanc:—"You'll have to fetch it round again to-morrow, any time after two o'clock." This was, however, rendered unnecessary by the appearance of Mr. Jerry, who was able to contribute the six-and-three, without, as he said, going to the workhouse. So Mrs. Prichard's old table, with a new leg so nobody could ever have told, and a touch of fresh polish as good as new, was restored to its old place, to join in the general anticipation of its owner's return.

But however M'riar come to be so short of cash Uncle Mo, smoking an afternoon pipe as of old with Mr. Jerry, could not say, not if the Emperor of Roosher was to ask him. Not that shortness of cash was unusual in Sapps Court, but that he had supposed that M'riar was rather better off than usual, owing to recent liquidations by the firm for whom she and Mrs. Burr were at work upstairs. Mr. Jerry urged him on no account to fret his kidneys about mundane trifles of this sort. Everything, without exception, came to the same thing in the end, and weak concessions to monetary anxiety only provided food for Repentance.

Uncle Mo explained that his uneasiness was not due to ways and means, or the want of them, but to a misgiving that Aunt M'riar's money was "got from her."

Now in his frequent confabs with Mr. Jerry, Uncle Mo had let fall many suggestions of the sinister influence at work on Aunt M'riar; and Mr. Jerry, being a shrewd observer, and collating these suggestions with what had come to him otherwise, had formed his own opinions about the nature of this influence. So it was no wonder that in answer to Uncle Mo he nodded his head very frequently, as one who not only assents to a fact, but rather lays claim to having been its first discoverer. "What did I tell you, Mo?" said he.

"Concernuating? Of? What?" said Uncle Mo in three separate sentences, each one accompanied by a tap of his pipe-bowl on the wooden table at The Sun parlour. The third qualified it for refilling. You will see, if you are attentive and observant, that this was Mo's first pipe that afternoon; as, if the ashes had been hot, he would not have emptied them on that table, but rather on the hob, or in the brazen spittoon.

"Him," said Mr. Jerry, too briefly. For he felt bound to add:—"Coldbath Fields. Anyone giving information that will lead to apprehension of, will receive the above reward. Your friend, you know!"

"My friend's the man, Jerry. Supposin'—just for argewment—I fist that friend o' mine Monday morning, I'll make him an allowance'll last him over Sunday. You wouldn't think it of me, Jerry, but I'm a bad-tempered man, underneath the skin. And when I see our old girl M'riar run away with like by an infernal scoundrel.... Well, Jerry, I lose my temper! That I do." And Uncle Mo seemed to need the pipe he was lighting, to calm him.

"He's where her money goes, Mo—that's it, ain't it?"

"That's about it, sir. So p'hraps when I say I don't know how M'riar come to be so short of cash, I ought to say I do know. Because I do know, as flat as ever so much Gospel." So the Emperor of Russia might not have remained unenlightened.

Mr. Jerry reflected. "You say he hasn't been near the Court again, Mo?"

"Not since that last time I told you about. What M'riar told me of. When he showed his knife to frighten her. I couldn't be off telling Sim Rowe, at the Station, about it, because of the children; and he's keeping an eye. But the beggar's not been anigh the Court since. Nor I don't suppose he'll come."

"But when ever does he see M'riar, to get at her savings?—that's what I'd like to know. Eh, Mo?"

"M'riar ain't tied to the house. She's free to come and go. I don't take kindly to prying and spying on her."

A long chat which followed evolved a clear view of the position. After Mo's interview with Aunt M'riar just before Gwen's visit, he had applied to his friend the Police-Inspector, with the result that the Court had been the subject of a continuous veiled vigilance. He had, however, been so far swayed by the distress of Aunt M'riar at the possibility that she might actually witness the capture of her criminal husband, that he never revealed to Simeon Rowe that she had an interest in defeating his enterprise. The consequence was that every plain-clothes emissary put himself into direct personal communication with her, thereby ensuring the absence of Daverill from Sapps Court. She was of course guilty of a certain amount of duplicity in all this, and it weighed heavily on her conscience. But there was something to be said by way of excuse. He was—or had been—her husband, and she did not know the worst of his crimes. Had she done so, she might possibly have been ready to give him up to justice. But as Mo had told her this much, that his last achievement might lead him to the condemned cell, and its sequel, and she nevertheless shrank from betraying him, probably nothing short of the knowledge of the age and sex of his last victim would have caused her to do so. She had in her mind an image of a good, honest, old-fashioned murder; a strained episode in some burglary; perhaps not premeditated, but brought about by an indiscreet interruption of a fussy householder. There are felonies and felonies.

Mr. Jerry's conversation with Uncle Mo in the Sun parlour gave him an insight into this. "Look'ee here, Mo," said he. "So long as the Court's watched, so long this here gentleman won't come anigh it. He's dodged the London police long enough to be too clever for that. But so long as he keeps touch with M'riar, you've got touch of him."

Uncle Mo seemed to consider this profoundly. "Not if I keep square with M'riar," said he at last.

"How do you make that out, Mo?"

"I've as good as promised the old girl that she shan't have any hand in it. She's out of it."

"Then keep her out of it. But only you give the tip to Sim Rowe that M'riar's in with him, and that he's putting the screw on her, and Sim he'll do the rest. Twig?" Conscious casuistry always closes one eye, and Mr. Jerry closed his.

"That's one idea of keeping square, Jerry, but it ain't mine."

"What's wrong with it, Mo?" Mr. Jerry's confidence in his suggestion had flagged, and his eye had reopened slowly.

"M'riar's not to have any hand in it—that's her stipulation. According-ly to my ideas, Jerry, either you take advantage, or you don't. Don't's the word, this time. If I bring M'riar in at all, it's all one which of two ways I do it. She's out of it."

Mr. Jerry began, feebly:—"You can't do more than keep your word, Mo...."

"Yes, you can, Jerry. You can keep your meanin'. And you can do more than that. You can keep to what the other party thought you meant, when you know. I know, this time. I ain't in a Court o' Justice, Jerry, dodgin' about, and I know when I'm square, by the feel. M'riar's out of it, and she shall stop out." Uncle Mo was not referring only to the evasions of witnesses on oath, which he regarded as natural, but to a general habit of untruth, and subtle perversion of obvious meanings, which he ascribed not only to counsel learned in the Law, but to the Bench itself.

"Don't you want this chap to dance the Newgate hornpipe, Mo?"

"Don't I, neither?" Uncle Mo smoked peacefully, gazing on the fire. The silhouette of a hanged man, kicking, floated before his mind's eye, and soothed him. But he made a reservation. "After him and me have had a quiet half-an-hour together!"

Mr. Jerry was suddenly conscious of a new danger. "I say, Mo," said he. "None of that, if you please!"

"None o' what?"

"This customer's not your sort. He's a bad kind. Bad before he was first lagged, and none the better for the company he's kept since! You're an elderly man now, Mo, and I'll go bail you haven't so much as put on the gloves for ten years past. And suppose you had, ever so! Who's to know he hasn't got a Colt in his pocket, or a bowie-knife?" Those of us who remember the fifties will recall how tightly revolvers clung to the name of their patentee, and the sort of moral turpitude that attached to their use. They were regarded as giving a mean advantage to murderers; who otherwise, if they murdered fair, and were respectably hanged, merely filled rôles necessary to History and the Drama.

"Couldn't say about the barking-iron," said Uncle Mo. "He's got a nasty sort of a knife, because he was flourishing of it out once to frighten M'riar. I'll give him that." Meaning—the advantage of the weapon. A trivial concession from a survivor of the best days of the Fancy! "Ye see, Jerry," he continued, "he'll have to come within arm's length, to use it. I'll see to him! Him and his carving-knives!"

But Mr. Jerry was far from easy about his friend, who seemed to him over-confident. He had passed his life in sporting circles, and though he himself had seen more of jockeys than prizefighters, their respective circumferences intersected; and more than one case had come to his knowledge of a veteran of the Ring unconscious of his decadence, who had boastfully defied a junior, and made the painful discovery of the degree to which youth can outclass age. This was scarcely a case of youth or extreme age, but the twenty years that parted them were all-sufficient.

He began to seek in his inner conscience excuses for a course of action which would—he was quite candid with himself—have a close resemblance to treachery. But would not a little straightforward treachery be not only very expedient, but rather moral? Were high principles a sine qua non to such a humble individual as himself, a "bookmaker" on race-courses, a billiard-marker elsewhere in their breathing-times? Though indeed Mr. Jerry in his chequered life had seen many other phases of employment—chiefly, whenever he had the choice, within the zone of horsiness. For he had a mysterious sympathetic knowledge of the horse. If pressed to give an account of himself, he was often compelled to admit that he was doing nothing particular, but was on the lookout. He might indicate that he was getting sick of this sort of thing, and would take the next chance that turned up; would, as it were, close with Fate. There had never been a moment in his sixty odd years of life—for he was very little Uncle Mo's junior—when he had not been on the eve of a lucrative permanency. It had never come; and never could, in the nature of things. Nevertheless, the evanescencies that came and went and chequered his career were not quite unremunerative, though they were hardly lucrative. If he was ever hard up, he certainly never confessed to it.

He, however, looking back on his own antecedents to determine from them how straitlaced a morality conscience called for, decided, in view of the possibility of a collision between his friend and this ex-convict, that he would be quite justified in treating Aunt M'riar's feelings as negligible, set against the risk incurred by deferring to them as his friend had done. No doubt Mo's confidence had been reposed in him under the seal of an honourable secrecy, but to honour it under the circumstances seemed to him to be "cutting it rather fine." He resolved to sacrifice his integrity on the altar of friendship, and sought out Mr. Simeon Rowe, who will be remembered as the Thames Policeman who was rowing stroke at Hammersmith that day when his chief, Ibbetson, lost his life in the attempt to capture Daverill; and who had more recently been identified by Mo as the son of an old friend. Jerry made a full communication of the case as known to him; giving as his own motive for doing so, the wish to shield Mo from the possible consequences of his own rash over-confidence.

"I collect from what you tell me," said the Police-Inspector, "that my men have been going on the wrong tack. That's about it, Mr. Alibone, isn't it?"

"That's one way of putting it, Mr. Rowe. Anyhow, they were bound to be let in. Why, who was to guess Aunt M'riar? And the reason!"

"They'll have to look a little sharper, that's all." It suited the Inspector to lay the blame of failure on his subordinates. This is a prerogative of seniors in office. Successes are officially credited to the foresight of headquarters—failures debited to the incompetence of subordinates. Mr. Rowe's attitude was merely human. He expressed as much acknowledgment of indebtedness to Mr. Jerry as was consistent with official dignity, adding without emotion:—"I've been suspecting some game of the kind." However, he unbent so far as to admit that this culprit had given a sight of trouble; and, as Mr. Jerry was an old acquaintance, resumed some incidents of the convict's career, not without admiration. But it was admiration of a purely professional sort, consistent with strong moral loathing of its object. "He's a born devil, if ever there was one," said he. "I must say I like him. Why—look how he slipped through their fingers at Clerkenwell! That was after we caught him at Hammersmith. That was genius, sir, nothing short of genius!"

"Dressed himself in his own warder's clothes, didn't he, and just walked over the course? What's become of your man he knocked on the head with his leg-iron?"

"Oh—him? He's got his pension, you know. But he's not good for any sort of work. He's alive—that's all! Yes—when Mr. Wix pays his next visit at the Old Bailey, there'll be several charges against him. He'll make a good show. I'll give him three months." By which he meant that, with all allowances made for detention and trial, Mr. Wix would end his career at the time stated. He went on to refer to other incidents of which the story has cognisance. He had been inclined to be down on his old chief Ibbetson, who was drowned in his attempt to capture Wix, because he had availed himself of a helping hand held out to him to drag its owner into custody. Well—he would think so still if it had not been for some delicate shades of character Mr. Wix had revealed since. How did he, Simeon Rowe, know what Ibbetson knew against the ex-convict? Some Walthamstow business, as like as not! It was wonderful what a faculty this man had for slipping through your fingers. He had been all but caught by one of our men, in the country, only the other day. He was at the railway-station waiting for the up-train, due in a quarter of an hour, and he saw our man driving up in a gig. At this point Mr. Rowe stopped, looking amused.

"Did he run?" said Mr. Jerry.

"Not he! He made a mistake in his train. Jumped into the Manchester express that was just leaving, and got carried off before our man reached the station. At Manchester he explained his mistake, and used his return ticket without extra charge to come back to London. Our man knew he would do that, and waited for him at Euston. But he knew one better. Missed his train again at Harrow—just got out for a minute, you know, when it stopped—and walked the rest of the way!"

Ralph Daverill must have had a curious insight into human nature, to know by the amount of his inspection of that police-officer—the one who had ridden after him from Grantley Thorpe—whether he would pursue him to Manchester or try to capture him at Euston. How could he tell that the officer was not clever enough to know exactly how clever his quarry would decide he was?

---

Aunt M'riar, haunted always by a nightmare—by the terrible dream of a scaffold, and on it the man who had been her husband, with all the attendant horrors familiar to an age when public executions still gratified its human, or inhuman interest—was unable to get relief by confiding her trouble to others. She dared to say no more than what she had already said to Uncle Mo, as she knew he was in communication with his friend the police-officer and she wanted only just as much to be disclosed about the convict as would safeguard Sapps Court from another of his visits, but at the same time would not lead to his capture. If she had thought his suggestions of intimidation serious, no doubt she would have put aside her scruples, and made it her first object that he should be brought to justice. But she regarded them as empty threats, uttered solely to extort money.

She knew she could rely on Mo's kindness of heart to stretch many points to meet her feelings, but she felt very uncertain whether even his kind-heartedness would go the length of her demand for it. He might consider that a wife's feelings for a husband—and such a husband!—might be carried too far, might even be classified as superstition, that last infirmity of incorrect minds. If she could only make sure that the convict should never show his face again in Sapps Court, she would sacrifice her small remainders of money, earned in runs of luck, to keep him at a distance. An attitude of compromise between complete repudiation of him, and misleading his pursuers, was at least possible. But it involved a slight amount of duplicity in dealing with Mo, and this made Aunt M'riar supremely uncomfortable. She was perfectly miserable about it. But there!—had she not committed herself to an impracticable constancy, with a real altar and a real parson? That was it. She had promised, five-and-twenty years ago, to love, honour, and obey a self-engrossed pleasure-seeker, and time and crime and the canker of a gaol had developed a devil in him, who was by now a fine representative sample—a "record devil" our modern advanced speech might have called him—who had fairly stamped out whatever uncongenial trace of good may have existed originally in the premises he had secured on an indefinite lease. It was superstition on Aunt M'riar's part, but of a sort that is aided and abetted by a system that has served the purposes of the priesthoods all the world over since the world began, and means to last your time and mine—the more's the pity!

It was the day after her conversation with Mo about the convict—the day, that is, after Gwen's last visit to Sapps Court—that Aunt M'riar said to Dave, just departing to absorb erudition at his School, that if he should see Michael Ragstroar he might tell him she had a note for his, Michael's, aunt at Hammersmith; and if he was a-going there Sunday, he might just every bit as well make himself useful, and carry it and save the postage. Dave said:—"Whoy shouldn't oy carry it?" An aspiration crushed by Aunt M'riar with:—"Because you're seven!" So Dave, whose nature was as docile as his eyes were blue, undertook to deliver the message; and Michael presented himself in consequence, just after Uncle Mo had took a turn out to see for a newspaper, for to know some more of what was going on in the Crimaera. It was just as well Uncle Mo had, because when it's two, you don't have to consider. If this is obscure, Aunt M'riar, who used the phrase, is responsible, not the story. Its opinion is, that she meant that the absence of a third person left her freer to speak. Perhaps if Mo had been present she would merely have handed Micky the letter directed to his aunt, which would have been palpably no concern of Uncle Mo's, inquirin' and askin' questions.

As it was, she accompanied it with verbal instructions:—"Now you know what you've got to do, young Micky. You've just got to give this letter to your great-aunt Treadwell. And when she sees inside of it, she'll find it ain't for her, but a party."

"What sort of a party, that's the p'int? Don't b'leeve my great-aunt knows no parties. Them she knows is inside of her farmily. Nevoos, sim'lar to myself as you might say. Or hequal value." An Academical degree would have qualified Micky to say "or its equivalent." The expression he used had its source in exchange transactions of turnips and carrots and greens, anticipating varied calls for each in different markets.

"She may know the address of the lady she'll find in this envelope. And if she don't, all you got to do is to bring the letter back."

"Suppose she don't know the address and I do, am I to tell her, or 'old my tongue?"

"Now which do you think? I do declare you boys I never! Nor yet anyone else! Why, if she don't know the address and you do, all you got to do then is take the letter and leave it."

"Without any address wrote? Wery good! 'Ave it your own way, missis. 'And it over."

Aunt M'riar handed it over. But before Micky was half-way up the Court, she called him back. "Maybe you know the party's name? Miss Julia Hawkins—on the waterside, Hammersmith."

"Her! Not know her! Juliarawkins. Why, she's next door!"

"But do you know her—to speak to?"

"Rarther! We're on torkin terms, me and Juliar. Werry often stop I do, to pass the time of day with Jooliar." An intensification in the accent on the name seemed to add to his claim to familiarity with its owner. "Keeps the little tiddley-wink next door. Licensed 'ouse. That's where they took Wix—him as got out of quod—him as come down the Court to look up a widder."

Aunt M'riar considered a moment whether it would not be better to instruct Micky to find out Daverill and deliver her letter to him in person. She decided on adhering to the convict's instructions. If she had understood his past relations with Miss Hawkins she might have decided otherwise. She affected not to hear Micky's allusion to him, merely enjoining the boy to hand her letter in over the bar to its Egeria. "You won't have any call for to trouble your aunt," said she. For she felt that the fewer the cooks, the better the broth. Questioned as to when he would deliver the letter, Micky appeared to turn over in his mind a voluminous register of appointments. But he could stand them all over, to oblige, and would see if he couldn't make it convenient to go over Sunday morning. Nothing was impossible to a good business head.

As the appointments had absolutely no existence except in his imagination—though perhaps costermonging, at its lowest ebb, still claimed his services—he was able to make it very convenient indeed to visit his Aunt Elizabeth. History repeats itself, and the incident of the half-and-half happened again, point for point, until settlement-time came, and then a variation crept in.

"I got a letter for you, missis," said Micky.

"Sure it ain't for somebody else? Let's have a look at it."

"No 'urry! Tork it over first—that's my marxim! Look ye here. Miss Juliar, this is my way of putting of it. Here's three-halfpence, over the beer. Here's the corner of the letter, stickin' out of my porket. Now which'll you have, the letter or the three-halfpence? Make your ch'ice. All square and no deception!"

"Well—the impidence of the child! Who's to know the letter's for me onlest I see the direction? Who gave it you to give me?"

"Miss Wardle down our Court. Same I told you of—where the old widder-woman hangs out. Him the police are after's mother!" Micky was so confident of the success of this communication that he began picking up the three-halfpence to restore them to his pocket, and stood holding the corner of the letter to draw it out as soon as his terms were accepted. The acceptance came unconditionally, with a nod; and Micky departed with his jug.

What were the contents of this letter to Mr. Wix, care of Miss Julia Hawkins, at The Pigeons? That was all the direction on the envelope, originally covered by another, addressed to Micky's great-aunt. It was worded as Daverill had worded it in a hurried parting word to Aunt M'riar, given when Gwen's knock had cut his visit short. This letter, in an uneducated woman's hand, excited Miss Hawkins's curiosity. Of course it might only be from the old woman he supposed to be his mother. If so, there did not seem to be any reasonable objection to her reading it. If otherwise, she felt that there were many reasonable objections to leaving it unread. Anyhow there was a kettle steaming on the fire in the bar, and if she held the letter over the spout to see if it would open easy, she would be still in a position to shut it up again and deliver it with a guiltless conscience. Eve, no doubt, felt that she could handle the apple and go on resisting temptation, so as not to seem rude to the Serpent. The steam was not wanted for long, the envelope flap curling up in a most obliging manner, and leaving all clear for investigation. Miss Hawkins laid the letter down to dry quite dry, before fingering it. Remember to bear this in mind in opening other people's letters this way. The slightest touch on paper moistened by steam may remain as a tell-tale.

This woman was so cautious that she left the paper untouched where she had laid it on the table while she conferred with a recently installed potboy on points of commercial economy. When she returned it was dry beyond suspicion, and she drew the letter out to see if it contained anything she need hesitate to read. She felt that she was keeping in view what is due to the sensitive conscience of an honourable person.

The note she read was short, written so that the lines fell thus:—

"Ralph Daverill—The police are
on the look out for you and it is now not
safe to come to the Court—This is written
by your wife to say you will run
great risk of being took if you come—
For you to know who I am I write my name—
Polly Daverill.
Sapps Court Dec 9 1854."

The lines were ill-spaced, so that blanks were left as shown. At the end of the second, a crowded line, the word not was blurred on the paper-edge, and looked like a repetition of the previous word.

One does not see without thought, why this letter sent its reader's heart beating furiously. Why should she turn scarlet with anger and all but draw blood from a bitten lip? She knew perfectly well that this gutter Don Juan's depravity could boast as many victims as his enforced prison life had left possible to him. But no particular one had ever become concrete to her, and jealousy of a multitude, no one better off than herself, had never rankled. Jealousy of Heaven-knows-who is a wishy-washy passion. Supply a definite object, and it may become vitriolic. Polly Daverill, whoever she was, was definite, and might be the wife the convict had acknowledged—or rather claimed—when he first made Miss Julia's acquaintance, over twenty years ago.

The lip was perhaps saved from bloodletting by an idea which crossed the mind of the biter. A look of satisfaction grew and grew as she contemplated the letter; not for its meaning—that was soon clear. It was something in the handwriting; something that made her hide half-words with a finger-point, and vary her angle of inspection. Then she said, aloud to herself:—"Yes!" as though she had come to a decision.

She examined an inkstand that the dried ink of ages had encrusted, beyond redemption, in a sunken cavity of restraint in an inktray overstocked with extinct and senile pens. Its residuum of black fluid had been glutinous ever since Miss Julia had known it; ever since she had written, as a student, that Bounty Commanded Esteem all down one page of a copybook. The pens were quill pens past mending, or overwhelmed by too heartfelt nibs; or magnum bonums whose upstrokes were morally as wide as Portland Place, or parvum malums that perforated syllables and spluttered. The penwiper was non-absorbent, and generally contrived to return the drop it refused to partake of on the hands of incautious scribes, who rarely obtained soap and hot water time enough to do any good.

Miss Julia first remedied the ink. A memory of breakfast unremoved still hung about the parlour table—a teapot and a slop basin. The former supplied a diluent, the latter a haven for the indisputably used-up quill whose feather served to incorporate it with the black coagulum. With the resultant fluid you could make a mark about the same blackness as what the letter was, using by preference the newest magnum bonum pen, which was all right in itself, only stuck on an old wooden handle that scribes of recent years had gnawed.

What this woman's jealous violence was prompting her to do was to alter this letter so as to encourage its recipient to put himself in danger of capture. It was an easy task, as the only words she had to insert could be copies from what was already written. The first line required the word not at the end, the fourth the word no. The only other change needed was the erasure of the word not, in the second line, which already looked like an accidental repetition of now. Was an erasure advisable? she decided against it, cleverly. She merely drew her pen through the not, leaving the first two letters intentionally visible, and blurring the last. She then re-enveloped the letter, much pleased with the result, and wrote a short note in pencil to accompany it; then hunted up an envelope large enough to take both, and directed it to W. at the Post Office, East Croydon. This was the last address the convict had given. Where he was actually living she did not know.

Her own letter to him was:—"The enclosed has come for you. I write this in pencil because I cannot find any ink." It was a little stroke of genius worthy of her correspondent's father. Nothing but clairvoyance could have bred suspicion in him. Micky reappeared that evening in Sapps Court, and found an opportunity to convey to Aunt M'riar that he had obeyed his instructions. He did so with an air of mystery and an undertone of intelligence, saying briefly:—"That party, missis! She's got the letter."

"Did you give it her?" said Aunt M'riar.

"I see to it that she got it," said Micky with reserve. "You'll find it all correct, just as I say." This attitude was more important than the bald, unqualified statement that he had left the letter when he fetched the beer, and Micky enjoyed himself over it proportionately.

---

Aunt M'riar was easier in her mind, as she felt pretty confident that the letter would reach its destination. She had killed two birds with one stone—so she believed. She had saved Daverill from the police, so far at least as their watchfulness of Sapps Court was concerned, and had also saved Uncle Mo from possible collision with him, an event she dreaded even more than a repetition of those hideous interviews with a creature that neither was nor was not her husband; a thing with a spurious identity; a horrible outgrowth from a stem on which her own life had once been grafted. Could woman think a worse thought of man than hers of him, when she thanked God that at least the only fruit of that graft had been nipped in the bud? And yet no such thought had crossed her mind in all these years in which he had been to her no more than a memory. A memory of a dissolute, imperfect creature—yes! but lovable enough for all that. Not indeed without a sort of charm for any passing friend, quite short of any spell akin to love. How could this monstrous personality have grown upon him, yet left him indisputably the same man? The dreadful change in the identity of the maniac—the maniac proper, the victim of brain-disease—is at least complete; so complete often as to force the idea of possession on minds reluctant to receive it. This man remained himself, but it was as though this identity had been saturated with evil—had soaked it up as the sponge soaks water. There was nothing in the old self M'riar remembered to make her glad his child was not born alive. There was everything in his seeming of to-day to make her shudder at the thought that it might have lived.

The cause of the change is not far to seek. He had lived for twenty years in Norfolk Island as a convict; for fourteen years certainly as an inmate of the prisons, even if a period of qualified liberty preceded his discharge and return to Sydney. He was by that time practically damned beyond redemption, and his brilliant career as a bushranger followed as a matter of course.

Those who have read anything of the story of the penal settlements in the early part of last century may—even must—remember the tale told by the Catholic priest who went to give absolution to a whole gang of convicts who were to be hanged for mutiny. He carried with him a boon—a message of mercy—for half the number; for they had been pardoned; that is to say, had permission now to live on as denizens of a hell on earth. As it turned out, the only message of mercy he had to give was the one contained or implied in an official absolution from sin, and it is possible that belief in its validity occasioned the outburst of rejoicing that greeted its announcement. For there was no rejoicing among the recipients of His Majesty's clemency—heart-broken silence alone, and chill despair! For they were to remain on the rack, while their more fortunate fellows could look forward to a joyous gallows, with possibilities beyond, from which Hell had been officially excluded. It is but right to add that the Reverend Father did not ascribe the exultant satisfaction of his clients—if that is the word—to anything but the anticipation of escape from torture. He was too truthful.

If the nearest dates the story has obtained are trustworthy, Daverill's actual term in Norfolk Island may have been fourteen years; it certainly came to an end in the early forties. But he must have been there at the time of the above incident, as it happened circa 1836-37. The powers of the sea-girt tropical Paradise to sterilise every Divine impulse must have been at their best in his time, and he seems to have been a favourable subject for the virus of diabolism, which was got by Good Intentions out of Expediency. The latter must have been carrying on with Cowardice, though, to account for Respectability's choice, for her convicts, of an excruciating life rather than a painless death. Possibly the Cowardice of the whole Christian world, which accounts Death the greatest of possible evils.

The life of a bushranger in New South Wales, which fills in the end of his Australian career, did not tend to the development of any stray germ of a soul that the prison-fires had not scorched out of old Maisie's son. Small wonder it was so! Conceive the glorious freedom of wickedness unrestrained, after the stived-up atmosphere of the gaol, with its maddening Sunday chapel and its hideous possibilities of public torture for any revolt against the unendurable routine. We, nowadays, read with a shudder of the enormities that were common in the prisons of past times—we, who only know of their modern substitutes. For the last traces of torture, such as was common long after the moyen âge, as generally understood, have vanished from the administration of our gaols before a vivified spirit of Christianity, and the enlightenment consequent on the Advance of Science.[A] After fourteen years of such a life, how glorious must have been the opportunities the freedom of the Bush afforded to an instinctive miscreant, still in the prime of life, and artificially debarred for so long from the indulgence of a natural bent for wickedness; not yet ennuyé by the monotony of crime in practice, which often leads to a reaction, occasionally accompanied by worldly success. There was, however, about Daverill a redeeming point. He was incorrigibly bad. He never played false to his father the Devil, and the lusts of his father he did do, to the very last, never disgracing himself by the slightest wavering towards repentance.

[A] This appears to have been written about 1910.

Probably his return from Sydney to England was as much an escape from his own associates in crime, with whom some dishonourable transactions had made him unpopular, as a flight from the officers of Justice. A story is told, too intricate to follow out, of a close resemblance between himself and a friend in his line of business. This was utilised ingeniously for the establishment of alibi's, the name of Wix being adopted by both. Daverill had, however, really behaved in a very shady way, having achieved this man's execution for a capital crime of his own. Ibbetson, the Thames police-sergeant whose death he occasioned later, was no doubt in Sydney at this time, and may have identified him from having been present at the hanging of his counterpart, whose protestations that he was the wrong man of course received no attention, and whose attempt to prove an alibi failed miserably. Daverill had supplied the defence with a perfectly fictitious account of himself and his whereabouts at the time of the commission of the crime, which of course fell to pieces on the testimony of witnesses implicated, who knew nothing whatever of the events described.

There is no reason whatever to suppose that a desire to see his mother again had anything to do with his return. The probability is that he never gave her a thought until the money he had brought with him ran out—or, more accurately, the money he got by selling, at a great sacrifice, the jewels he brought from Australia sewed into the belt he wore in lieu of braces. The most valuable diamond ring should have brought him thousands, but he had to be content with hundreds. He had drawn it off an amputated finger, whose owner he left to bleed to death in the bush. It had already been stolen twice, and in each case had brought ill-luck to its new possessor.

All this of Daverill is irrelevant to the story, except in so far as it absolves Aunt M'riar of the slightest selfish motive in her conduct throughout. The man, as he stood, could only be an object of horror and aversion to her. The memory of what he had once been remained; and crystallized, as it were, into a fixed idea of a sacramental obligation towards a man whose sole claim upon her was his gratification at her expense. She had been instructed that marriage was God's ordinance, and so forth; and was per se reciprocal. She had sacrificed herself to him; therefore he had sacrificed himself to her. A halo of mysterious sanctity hung about her obligations to him, and seemed to forbid too close an analysis of their nature. An old conjugation of the indicative mood, present tense, backed by the third person singular's capital, floated justifications from Holy Writ of the worst stereotyped iniquity of civilisation.

---

CHAPTER XXII

HOW GWEN STAYED AWAY FROM CHURCH, BUT SENT HER LOVE TO LADY MILLICENT ANSTIE-DUNCOMBE. HOW TOM MIGHT COME AGAIN AT FIVE, AND GAVE MRS. LAMPREY A LIFT. NOT EXACTLY DELIRIUM. THE BLACK WITCH-DOCTOR. WERE DAVE AND DOLLY ALL TRUE? WHAT GWEN HAD TO PRETEND. DAVE'S OTHER LETTER. STARING FACTS IN THE FACE. GWEN'S COMPARISON OF THE TWINS. MIGHT GWEN SEE THE AUSTRALIAN LETTER? OLD KETURAH'S HUSBAND THE SEXTON. HOW GRANNY MARRABLE AND RUTH WENT TO CHURCH, BY REQUEST, AND HOW RUTH SAW THE LIKENESS. HOW OLD MAISIE COULD NOT BE EVEN WITH UNCLE NICHOLAS. CHAOS. HOW OLD MRS. PICTURE RECEIVED DAVE'S INVITATION TO TEA. JONES'S BULL

"You'll have to attend divine service without your daughter, mamma," said Gwen, speaking through the door of her mother's apartment, en passant. It was a compliance with a rule of domestic courtesy which was always observed by this singular couple. A sort of affection seemed to maintain itself between them as a legitimate basis for dissension, a luxury which they could not otherwise have enjoyed. "I'm called away to my old lady."

"Is she ill?"

"Well—Dr. Nash has written to say that I need not be frightened."

"But then—why go? If he says you need not be frightened?"

"That's exactly why I'm going. As if I didn't understand doctors!"

"I knew you wouldn't come to Church. Am I to give your love to Lady Millicent Anstie-Duncombe if I see her, or not? She's sure to ask after you."

"Some of it. Not too much. Give the rest to Dr. Tuxford Somers." The Countess's suggestion of entire despair at this daughter was almost imperceptible, but entirely conclusive.

"Well—he's married! Why shouldn't I?"

"As you please, my dear!"

The Countess appeared to decline further discussion. She said:—"Don't be very late—you are coming back to lunch, of course?"

"If I can. It depends."

"My dear! With Sir Spencer Derrick here, and the Openshaws!"

"I'll be back if I can. Can't say more than that! Good-bye!" And the Countess had to be content. The story is rather sorry for her, for it is a bore to have a lot of guests on one's hands, without due family support.

---

The grey mare's long stride left John Costrell's fat cob a mile behind, in less than two. Her hoofs made music on the hard road for another two, and then were assourdi by a swansdown coverlid of large snowflakes that disappointed the day's hopes of being fine, and made her sulky with the sun, extinguishing his light. The gig drew up at Strides Cottage in a whitening world, and Tom Kettering had to button up the seats under their oilskin passenger-cases, in anticipation of a long wait.

But Tom had not a long wait, for in a quarter of an hour after her young ladyship had vanished into Strides Cottage, she returned, telling him she was going to be late, and should not want him. He might drive back to the Towers, and—stop a minute!—might give this card to her mother. She scribbled on one of her own cards that she would not be back to lunch, and told Tom he might come again about five. Tom touched his hat as a warrior might have touched his sword-hilt.

Widow Thrale, who had accompanied Gwen, and returned with her into the house, was the very ghost of her past self of yesterday morning. Twenty-four hours ago she looked less than her real age by ten years; now she had overpassed it by half that time at least. So said to Tom Kettering a young woman with a sharp manner, whom he picked up and gave a lift to on his way back. Tom's taciturnity abated in conversation with Mrs. Lamprey, and he really seemed to come out of his Trappist seclusion to hear what she had to tell about this mystery at the Cottage. She had plenty, founded on conversations between the doctor and his sister, whose housekeeper you will remember she was.

"Why—I'd only just left Widow Thrale when you drove past. Your aunt she stayed till ever so late last night,"—Tom was Mrs. Solmes's nephew—"and went home with Carrier Brantock. Didn't you see her?"

"Just for a word, this morning. She hadn't so much to tell as you'd think. But it come to this—that this old Goody Prichard's own sister to Granny Marrable. Got lost in Australia somehow. Anyhow, she's there now, at the Cottage. No getting out o' that! Only what bothers me is—how ever she came to turn up in her sister's house, and ne'er a one of 'em to know the other from Queen Anne!"

"We've got to take that in the lump, Thomas. I expect your Aunt Keziah she'll say it was Providence. I say it was just a chance, and Dr. Nash he says the same. You ask him!"

Tom considered thoughtfully, and decided. "I expect it was just a chance," said he. "Things happen of theirselves, if you let 'em alone. Anyhow, it hasn't happened above this once." That was a great relief, and Tom seemed to breathe the freer for it.

"I haven't a word to say against Providence," said Mrs. Lamprey. "On the contrary I go to Church every Sunday, and no one can find fault. So does Dr. Nash, to please Miss Euphemia. But one has to consider what's reasonable. What I say is:—if it was Providence, what was to prevent its happening twenty years ago? Nothing stood in the way, that I see."

Tom shook his head, to show that neither did he see what stood in the way of a more sensible and practical Divine ordination of events. "Might have took place any time ago, in reason," said he. "Anyhow, it hasn't. It's happened now." Tom seemed always to be seeking relief from oppressive problems, and looking facts in the face. "I'm not so sure," he continued, abating the mare slightly to favour conversation, "that I've got all the scoring right. This old lady she went out to Australia?"

"Yes—fifty years ago." Mrs. Lamprey told what she knew, but not nearly all the facts as the story knows them. She had not got the convict incidents correctly from the conversation of Dr. Nash with his sister. Remember that he had only known it since yesterday morning. Mrs. Lamprey's version did not take long to tell.

"What I look at is this," said Tom, seeming to stroke with his whiplash the thing he looked at, on the mare's back. "Won't it turn old Granny Marrable wrong-side-up, seeing her time of life. Not the other old Goody—she's been all the way to Australia and back!" This only meant that nothing could surprise one who had such an experience. As to the effect on Granny Marrable, Mrs. Lamprey said no—quite the reverse. Once it was Providence, there you stuck, and there was no moving you! There was some obscurity about this saying; but no doubt its esoteric meaning was, that once you accounted for anything by direct Divine interposition, you stood committed to a controversial attitude which would render you an obstructive to liberal thought.

This little conversation was presently cut short by Mrs. Lamprey's arrival at her destination, a roadside inn where she had an aunt by marriage.

---

Ruth Thrale had a bad report to give as she and her young ladyship recrossed the kitchen. It was summed up in the word Fever, restrained by "Not exactly delirium." Granny Marrable came out to meet them, and threw in a word or two of additional restraint. What they had at first thought delirium had turned out quite temperate and sane on closer examination.

"A deal about Australia, and the black witch-doctor," said Granny Marrable. "Now, if one could turn her mind off that, it might be best for her, and she would drop off, quiet." Perhaps her ladyship coming would do her good. The old lady ended with concession about the fever—was not quite sure Maisie had known her just now when she spoke to her.

"Poor old darling!" said Gwen. "You know, Granny, we must expect a little of this sort of thing. We couldn't hope to get off scot-free. Have you had some sleep, yourself? Has she slept, Ruth?"

"Oh yes. Mother got some sleep in the chair beside—beside her, till four o'clock. Then she lay down, and had a good sleep, lying down. Didn't you, mother?"

"You may be easy about me, child. I've done very well."

"And yourself, Ruth?" By now, Gwen always called Widow Thrale "Ruth."

"Who—I? I had quite a long sleep, while mother sat by—by her." This dreadful difficulty of what to call old Maisie! Her daughter was always at odds with it.

Gwen passed on into the bedroom. Just at the door she paused. "You wait outside, and hear," said she. They held back, in the passage, silent.

Old Maisie's voice, on the pillow; audible, not articulate. Two frail hands stretched out in welcome. Two grave eyes, made wild by the surrounding tangle of loose white hair. Those were Gwen's impressions as she approached the bed.

The voice grew articulate. "Oh, my darling, I knew you would come. I want you close, to tell me...."

"Yes, dear!—to tell you what?"

"I want you to tell me whether one of the things is a dream."

"One of which things, dear?" One has to be a hard old stager not to feel his flesh creep at delirium. Gwen had to fight against a shudder.

"There are so many, you know, now that they all come back at once. Tell me, darling, were my little boy and girl real, who came up into my room and played and gave me tea out of small cups? I called them Dave and Dolly. Dolly was very small. Oh, Dolly!" Dolly's size, and her tenderness on one's knee, were, so to speak, audible in the voice that became tender to apostrophise her.

"Dave and Dolly Wardle? Of course they are real! As real as you or me! There they are in Sapps Court, with Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar. And Susan Burr," Then such a nice scheme crossed Gwen's mind.

But old Maisie seemed adrift, not able to be sure of any memory; past and present at war in her mind, either intolerant of the other. "Then tell me, dear," said she. "Is the other real too? Is it not a thing I have dreamed, a thing I have dreamed in the night, here in Widow Thrale's cottage ... where I came in the cart ... where I came from the great house where the sweet old gentleman was, that was your father ... where I could see out over the tree lands ... where my Ruth came to me?..." The affection for her daughter, that had struck root firmly in her heart, remained a solid fact, whether she was thinking of her as before or after the revelation of her identity.

Gwen sat beside her on the bed-edge, her arm round her head on its pillow, her free hand soothing the restless fingers that would not be still. "What is it you think you have dreamed, Mrs. Picture dear?" said she.

"It was all a dream, I think. Just a mad dream—but then—but then—did not my Ruth think I was mad?..."

"But what was it? Tell it to me, now, quietly."

"It was that my Phoebe—my sister—oh, my dear sister!—dead so many years ago—sat by me here, as you sit now—and we talked and talked of the old time—and our young Squire, so beautiful, upon his horse.... Oh, but then—but then!..." She checked herself suddenly, and a look of horror came in her face; then went on:—"No, listen! There was an awful thing in the dream—a bad thing—about a letter.... Oh, how can I tell it?..."

Gwen caught at the pause to speak, saying gently but firmly:—"Dear Mrs. Picture, it was no dream, but all true. Believe me, I know. When you are quite well and strong, I will tell you all over again about the letter, and how my dear old father found it all out for you. And I tell you what! You shall come and live here with your sister and daughter, instead of Sapps Court.... Oh no—you shall have Dave and Dolly. They shall come too." This was Gwen's scheme, but it was no older than the mention just made of it. "I can do these things," she added. "Papa lets me do what I choose."

Old Maisie lay back, looking at the beautiful face in a kind of wonderment. The feeling it gave her that she was in the hands of some superior power was the most favourable one possible in a case where fever was the result of mental disquiet. Presently the strain on the face abated, and the wild look in the eyes. The lids drooped, then closed over them. Something like sleep followed, leaving Gwen free to rejoin old Phoebe and Ruth, outside. They were still close at hand.

"Did you hear all that?" said Gwen. It appeared that they had, or the greater part. The account of how the night had passed was postponed, owing to the arrival of Dr. Nash.

"I would sooner give her no drugs of any sort," said he, when he had taken a good look at the patient. "I will leave something for her to take if she doesn't get sleep naturally. Otherwise the choice is between giving her something harmless to make her believe she is taking medicine, and telling her she has nothing whatever the matter with her. I incline to the last. Get her to take food whenever you can. Always have something ready for her whenever's there a chance. I expect you to see to that, Widow Thrale. And, Lady Gwendolen, you are good for her—remember that! You've got to pretend you're God Almighty—do you understand?" It goes without saying that by this time no one else was within hearing.

"I understand perfectly," said Gwen. "That little doze she had just now was because I pledged myself and my father to the reality of the whole thing. She had got to think it was all a dream."

She suppressed, as the sort of thing for London, a thought that came into her head at this moment, that it was the first time the family coronet had been of the slightest use to any living creature! Not here, with the hush of the Feudal System still on the land, and the old church at Chorlton's monotonous belfry calling its flock to celebrate the Third Sunday in Advent. For next Sunday was Christmas Eve, and old Maisie's eighty-first birthday. Next Monday was old Phoebe's, with just the stroke of midnight between them.

Gwen seized the opportunity to get from Dr. Nash a fuller account of his disclosure to old Phoebe. He told her what we know already.

"Only I'm due at the other end of the village," said he, ending up. He looked at his watch. "I've got five minutes.... Yes—it was the small boy's letter that did the job. I had been hammering away at the old lady to get the thin of the wedge in, and I assure you it was useless. Worse than useless! So I gave it up. But I suspect that some shot of mine hit the mark, without my seeing it. Something had made her susceptible. And when the kid's letter came, that did it. I wasn't there."

"Oh—then you only heard...."

"I was called back. I found the old body gone off in a faint, and the letter on the floor—at least, on the baby. I've got it in my pocket, I do believe.... No, I haven't!"

"What's this on the window-ledge? This is Dave's hand." But Gwen saw that it was directed to "Old Mrs. Picture Strides Cotage Chorlton under bradBury." She opened it without remorse, and the doctor said:—"Of course! He wrote two. That one's to t'other old lady. Just the same, I expect."

It was, word for word. But it had a short postscript:—"When you come back me and Dolly shall give you tea it is stood ready and grany maroBone too."

"Poor little people!" said Gwen. "How they will feel it! But I mustn't keep you, doctor."

And then, after a word or two to Widow Thrale, Dr. Nash drove off through the snow, now thickening.

Gwen, you see, was quite alive to the situation; perhaps indeed she was ready to put a worse construction on it than the doctor. He had seen so many a spark of life, far nearer extinction than old Maisie's, flicker up and grow and grow, and end by steady burning through its appointed time, that no amount of mere attenuation frightened him. Gwen, on the other hand, could not bring herself to believe that any creature so frail would stand the strain of such an earthquake of sensibilities. Unless indeed some change for the better showed itself in a few hours, she must succumb. Probably she was only relieving the tension of her own feelings by looking facts fiercely in the face. It is a common attitude of inexperience, under like circumstances. Dr. Nash certainly had said to her that "the strength was well maintained." But do we not all of us accept that phrase as an ill-omen—a vulture in the desert? No—no! Look the facts in the face! Glare at them!

Returning to the bedside, where Granny Marrable was sitting in her arm-chair beside her sister, who was quiet—possibly sleeping—she took the opportunity to note the changes that Time had wrought in each twin. The moment she came to look for them, she began to marvel that she had never seen the similarities; for instance, scarcely a month since, when the two were face to face outside this house, and each looked at the other, and neither said or thought:—"How like myself!" Was it possible that they were really more unlike then?—that the storm which had passed over both had told more, relatively, on the healthy village dame, kept blooming by a life whose cares were little more than healthy excitements, than on the mere derelict of so many storms, any one enough to send it to the bottom? There was little work left for Time or Calamity to do on that old face on the pillow; while even this four-and-twenty-hours of overwrought excitement had left its mark upon old Phoebe. Gwen saw that the faces were the same, past dispute, as soon as she compared them point by point.

Once seen, the thing grew, and became strange and unearthly, almost a discomfort. Gwen went back into the kitchen, where she found Ruth, affecting some housework but without much heart in it. She too was showing the effects of the night and day just passed, her heavy eyelids fighting with their weight, not successfully; her restless hands protesting against yawns; trying to curb rebellious lips, in vain.

"I can see the likeness now," said Gwen, thinking it best to talk.

"Between mother and—my mother?" was Ruth's reply. How else could she have said it, without beginning to call old Phoebe her aunt?

Gwen saw the embarrassment, and skipped explanation. "Why not call her Mrs. Picture—little Dave's name?" Then she felt this was a mistake, and added:—"No, I suppose that wouldn't do!"

"Something will come, to say, in time. One's head goes, now." Ruth went on to speak of her childish recollection of the news of her mother's death—quite a vivid memory—when she was nearly nine years old. "I was quite a big little maid when the letter came. We got it out, you know, just now. And, oh, how sick it made me!"

"I should like so much to see it," said Gwen. Her young ladyship's lightest wish was law, and Ruth nearly went to seek the letter. Gwen had to be very emphatic that another time would do, to stop her.

"Then I will get it out presently, and give it to your ladyship to take away and read," said Ruth, and went back to what she was saying. "That is how I came to be able to call her my mother, at once. I mean the moment I knew she was not Mrs. Prichard. Now that I know it, I keep looking at her dear old face to make it out the same face that I kept on thinking my mother in Australia had, all the time I thought she was living there away from us. And if I had never known she died—I mean had we never thought her dead—I would have gone on thinking the same face. Oh, such a beautiful young face! Exactly like what mother's was then!—the same face for her that it was when I last saw it...."

"I see. And when you look at your—your aunt's face, you naturally do not look for what she was forty years ago."

"That is it, your ladyship. Because I have had mother to go by, all the time. She has always been the same she was last week—last month—last year—any time. What must it be to her, to see me what I am!"

"I don't believe it is harder for her to think about than it is for you. She is feverish now, and that makes her wander. People are always worse in the morning. Dr. Nash says so. I thought yesterday she seemed so clear—almost understood it all." Thus Gwen, not over-sure of her facts.

"She was worse," said Ruth, thinking back into the recent events, "that evening I showed her the mill. That was her bad time. Who knows but that has made it easier for her now? I shouldn't wonder.... And to think that I thought her mad, and never guessed who I was, myself, all that time."

"Was that the model?" said Gwen, thinking that anything the mind could rest on might make the thing more real for Ruth. "Do you know I have only half seen it? I should so like to see it again. Why have you covered it up?" A few words explained this, and the mill was again put on the table. If the little dolly figures had only possessed faculties, they would have wondered why, after all these years, they were awakening such an interest among the big movable creatures outside the glass. How they would have wondered at Gwen's next words:—"And those two have lived to be eighty years old and are in the next room!"

Then she was not sure she had not made matters worse. "Oh dear!" said Widow Thrale, "it is all impossible—impossible! This was old when I was a child."

Gwen was not prepared to submit to Time's tyranny. "What does it matter?" said she intrepidly. "There is no need for possibility, that I can see. She is here, and the thing to think of now is—how can we keep her? It will all seem natural in three weeks. See now, how they know one another, and talk of old times already. She may live another five—ten—fifteen years. Who can say?"

"She is talking to mother now, I think," said Widow Thrale, listening. For the voices of the twins came from the bedroom. "Suppose we go back!"

"Yes—and you look at the two faces together, this time."

"I will look," was the reply, with a shade of doubt in it that added:—"I may not see the resemblance."

Gwen went first. The two old faces were close together as they entered, and she could see, more plainly than she had ever seen it yet, their amazing similarity. She could see how much thinner old Maisie was of the two. It was very visible in the hand that touched her sister's, which was strong and substantial by comparison.

The monotonous bells at Chorlton Church had said all they could to convince its congregation that the time had come for praise and prayer; and had broken into impatient thrills and jerks that seemed to say:—"If you don't come for this, nothing will fetch you!" The wicked man who had been waiting to go for a brisk walk as soon as the others had turned away from their wickedness, and were safe in their pews making the responses, was getting on his thickest overcoat and choosing which stick he would have, or had already decided that the coast was clear, and had started. Old Maisie's face on the pillow was attentive to the bells. She looked less feverish, and they were giving her pleasure.

What was that she was saying, about some bells? "Old Keturah's husband the sexton used to ring them. You remember him, Phoebe darling?—him and his wart. We thought it would slice off with a knife, like the topnoddy on a new loaf if one was greedy.... And you remember how we went up his ladder into the belfry, and I was frightened because it jumped?"

Old Phoebe remembered. "Yes, indeed! And old Jacob saying if he could clamber up at ninety-four, we could at fourteen. Then we pulled the bells. After that he would let us ring the curfew."

Just at that moment the last jerk cut off the last thrill of the chimes at Chorlton, and the big bell started thoughtfully to say it was eleven o'clock. Old Maisie seemed suddenly disquieted. "Phoebe darling!" she said. And then, touching her sister's hand, with a frightened voice:—"This is Phoebe, is it not?... No, it is not my eyes—it is my head goes!" For Gwen had said:—"Yes, this is your sister. Do you not see her?" She then went on:—"My dear—my dear!—I am keeping you from church. I want not to. I want not to."

"Never mind church for one day, dear," said Granny Marrable. "Parson he won't blame me, stopping away this once. More by token, if he does miss seeing me, he'll just think I'm at Denby's."

"But, Phoebe—Phoebe!—think of long ago, how I would try to persuade you to stop away just once, to please me—just only once! And now.... She seemed to have set her heart on her sister's going; a sort of not very explicable tribute to "auld lang syne."

Gwen caught what seemed a clue to her meaning. "I see," said she. "You want to make up for it now. Isn't that it?"

"Yes—yes—yes! And Ruth must go with her to take care of her.... Oh, Phoebe, why should you be so much stronger than me?" She meant perhaps, why should her sister's strength be taken for granted?

Gwen looked at Granny Marrable, who was hesitating. Her look meant:—"Yes—go! Why not?" A nod thrown in meant:—"Better go!" She looked round for Ruth, to get her sanction or support, but Ruth was no longer in the room. "What has become of Mrs. Thrale?" said Gwen.

Ruth had vanished into the front-room, and there Gwen found her, looking white. "I saw it," said she. "And it frightened me. I am a fool—why have I not seen it before?"

Gwen said:—"Oh, I see! You mean the likeness? Yes—it's—it's startling!" Then she told of old Maisie's sudden whim about the service at Chorlton Church. "As your ladyship thinks best!" said Ruth. Her ladyship did think it best, on the whole. It would be best to comply with every whim—could only have a sedative effect. She herself would remain beside "your mother" while the two were away. Would they not be very late? Oh, that didn't matter! Besides, everyone was late. Granny Marrable and Ruth were soon in trim for a hasty departure. But as they went away Ruth slipped into Lady Gwen's hand the accursed letter, as promised. She had brought it out into the daylight again, unwillingly enough.

That was how it came about that Gwen found herself alone with old Maisie that morning.

"My dear—my dear!" said the old lady, as soon as Gwen was settled down beside her, "if it had not been for you, I should have died and never seen them—my sister and my Ruth.... I think I am sure that it is they, come back.... It is—oh, it is—my Phoebe and my little girl.... Oh, say it is. I like you to say it." She caught Gwen by the arm, speaking low and quickly, almost whispering.

"Of course it is. And they have gone to church. They will be back to dinner at one. Perhaps you will be strong enough to sit up at table.... Oh no!—that certainly is not them back again. I think it is Elizabeth—from next door; I don't know her name—putting the meat down to roast.... Yes—she has her own Sunday dinner to attend to, but she says she can be in both houses at once. I heard her say so to your sister." Gwen felt it desirable to dwell on the relationship, when chances occurred.

"Elizabeth-next-door. I remember her when Ruth was Widow Thrale—it seems so long ago now!... Yes—I wished Phoebe to go to church, because she always wished to go. Besides, it made it like then."

"'Made it like then?'" Gwen was not sure she followed this.

"Yes—like then, when the mill was, and our father. Only before I married and went away he made us go with him, always. He was very strict. It was after that I would persuade Phoebe to leave me behind when she went on Sunday. It was when she was married to Uncle Nicholas who was drowned. We always called him Uncle Nicholas, because of my little Ruth."

Gwen thought a moment whether anything would be gained by clearing up this confusion. Old Maisie's belief in "Uncle Nicholas's" death by drowning, fifty years ago, clung to her mind, as a portion of a chaotic past no visible surrounding challenged. It was quite negligible—that was Gwen's decision. She held her tongue.

But nothing of the Chaos was negligible. Every memory was entangled with another. A sort of affright seemed to seize upon old Maisie, making her hand tighten suddenly on Gwen's arm. "Oh, how was that—how was that?" she cried. "They were together—all together!"

"It was only what the letter said," answered Gwen. "It was all a made-up story. Uncle Nicholas was not drowned, any more than your sister, or your child."

"Oh dear!" Old Maisie's hand went to her forehead, as though it stunned her to think.

"They will tell you when he died, soon, when you have got more settled. I don't know."

"He must be dead, because Phoebe is a widow."

"She is the widow of the husband she married after his death. That is why her name is Marrable, not ... Cropworthy—was it?"

"Not Cropworthy—Cropredy. Such a funny name we thought it.... But then—Phoebe must think...."

"Think what?"

"Must think I married again. Because I am Mrs. Prichard."

"Perhaps she does think so. Why are you Mrs. Prichard? Don't tell me now if it tires you to talk."

"It does not tire me. It is easier to talk than to think. I took the name of Prichard because I wanted it all forgotten."

"About your husband having been—in prison?"

"Oh no, no! I was not ashamed about that. He was wrong, but it was only money. It was my son.... Oh yes—he was transported too—but that was after.... It was only a theft. I cannot talk about my son." Gwen felt that she shuddered, and that danger lay that way. The fever might return. She cast about for anything that would divert the conversation from that terrible son. Dave and Dolly, naturally.

"Stop a minute," said she. "You have never seen Dave's letter that he wrote to say he knew all about it." And she went away to the front room to get it.

A peaceful joint was turning both ways at the right speed by itself. The cat, uninterested, was consulting her own comfort, and the cricket was persevering for ever in his original statement. Saucepans were simmering in conformity, with perfect faith in the reappearance of the human disposer of their events, in due course. Dave's letter lay where Gwen had left it, between the flower-pots on the window-shelf. She picked it up and went back with it to the bedside.

"You must have your spectacles and read it yourself. Can you? Where shall I find them?"

"I think my Ruth has put them in the watch-pocket with my watch, over my head here." She could make no effort to reach them, but Gwen drew out both watch and glasses. "What a pretty old watch!" said she.

It pleased the old lady to hear her watch admired. "I had it when I went out to my husband." She added inexplicably:—"The man brought it back to me for the reward. He had not sold it." Then she told, clearly enough, the tale you may remember her telling to Aunt M'riar; about the convict at Chatham, who brought her a letter from her husband on the river hulk. "Over fifty years ago now, and it still goes. Only it loses—and gains.... But show me my boy's letter." She got her glasses on, with Gwen's help, and read. The word "cistern" was obscure. She quite understood what followed, saying:—"Oh, yes—so much longer ago than Dolly's birthday! And we did—we did—think we were dead and buried. The darling boy!"

"He means each thought the other was. I told him." Gwen saw that the old face looked happy, and was pleased. She began to think she would be easy in her mind at Pensham, to-morrow, about old Mrs. Picture, and able to tell the story to her blind lover with a light heart.

Old Maisie had come to the postscript. "What is this at the end?" said she. "'The tea is stood ready' for me. And for Granny Marrowbone too." Gwen saw the old face looking happier than she had seen it yet, and was glad to answer:—"Yes—I saw the tea 'stood ready' by your chair. All but the real sugar and milk. Dolly sits beside it on the floor—all her leisure time I believe—and dreams of bliss to come. Dave sympathizes at heart, but affects superiority. It's his manhood." Old Maisie said again:—"The darling children!" and kept on looking at the letter.

Gwen's satisfaction at this was to be dashed slightly. For she found herself asked, to her surprise, "Who is Granny Marrowbone?" She replied:—"Of course Dave wants his other Granny, from the country." She waited for an assent, but none came.

Instead, old Maisie said reflectively, as though recalling an incident of some interest:—"Oh yes!—Granny Marrowbone was his other Granny in the country, where he went to stay, and saw Jones's Bull. I think she must be a nice old lady." Gwen said nothing. Better pass this by; it would be forgotten.

But the strong individuality of that Bull came in the way. Had not they visited him together only the other day? He struck confusion into memory and oblivion alike. The face Gwen saw, when the letter that hid it fell on the coverlid, was almost terrified. "Oh, see the things I say!" cried old Maisie, in great distress of mind. "How am I ever to know it right?" She clung to Gwen's hand in a sort of panic. In a few moments she said, in an awed sort of voice:—"Was that Phoebe, then, that I saw when we stopped at the Cottage, in the carriage, after the Bull?"

"Yes, dear! And you are in the Cottage now. And Phoebe is coming back soon. And Ruth."

---

CHAPTER XXIII

CATHERINE WHEELS. CENTIPEDES. CENTENARIANS. BACKGAMMON. IT. HEREAFTER CORNER. LADY KATHERINE STUARTLAVEROCK. BISHOP BERKELEY. THE COUNTESS'S VISIT REVIEWED. A CODEX OF HUMAN WEAKNESS. AN EXPOSITION OF SELFISHNESS. HOW ADRIAN WOULD HOLD ON LIKE GRIM DEATH. A BELDAM, CRONE, HAG, OR DOWDY. SUICIDE. THE LITTLE BOTTLE OF INDIAN POISON. MORE SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS. GWEN'S DAILY BULLETINS. ONESIMUS. TURTLE SOUP AND CHAMPAGNE. FOXBOURNE. HOW THEY WENT TO CHORLTON, AND ANOTHER DOG SMELT ACHILLES

As he who has godfathered a Catherine Wheel stands at a respectful distance while it spits and fizzes, so may the story that reunites lovers who have been more than a week apart. The parallel, however, does not hold good throughout, for the Catherine Wheel usually gets stuck after ignition, and has to be stimulated judiciously, while lovers—if worth the name—go off at sight. In many cases—oh, so many!—the behaviour of the Catherine Wheel is painfully true to life. Its fire-spin flags and dies and perishes, and nothing is left of it but a pitiful black core that gives a last spasmodic jump and is for ever still!

Fireworks are only referred to here in connection with the former property. When Gwen reappeared at Pensham, Miss Torrens—this is her own expression—"cleared out" until her brother and her visitor "came to their senses." The Catherine Wheel, in their case, had by that time settled down from a tempest of flame-spray to a steady lamplight, endurable by bystanders. The story need not wait quite so long, but may avail itself of the first return of sanity.

"Dearest—are you really going to stop till Saturday?"

"If you think we shan't quarrel. Four whole days and a bit at each end! I think it's tempting Providence."

"Why not stop over Sunday, and make an honourable week of it and no stinting?"

"Because I have a papa coming back to his ancestral home, on Saturday evening, and he will come back boiled and low from Bath waters, inside and out, and he'll want a daughter to give him tone. He gets rid of the gout, but....

"But. Exactly! It's the insoluble residuum that comes back. However, you will be here till Friday night."

"Can't even promise that! I may be sent for."

"Why?... Oh, I know—the old lady. How is she? Tell me more about her. Tell me lots about her."

Whereupon Gwen, who had been looking forward to doing so, started on an exhaustive narrative of her visit to Strides Cottage. She had not got far when Irene thought it safe to return—hearing probably the narrative tone of voice—and then she had to tell it all over again.

"When I left the Cottage yesterday at about three o'clock," said Gwen, in conclusion, "she was so much better that I felt quite hopeful about her."

"Quite hopeful about her?" Irene repeated. "But if she has nothing the matter with her, except old age, why be anything but hopeful?"

"You would see if you saw her. She looks as if a puff of wind would blow her away like thistledown."

"That," Adrian said, "is a good sign. There is no guarantee of a long life like attenuation. Bloated people die shortly after you make their acquaintance. No, no—for true vitality, give me your skeleton! A healthy old age really sets in as soon as one is spoken of as still living."

"Oh dear, yes!" said Irene. "I'm sure Gwen's description sounds exactly like this old lady becoming a ... There!—I've forgotten the word! Something between a centipede and a Unitarian...."

"Centenarian?"

"Exactly. See what a good thing it is to have a brother that knows things. A person a hundred years old. I tell you, Gwen dear, my own belief is these two old ladies mean to be centenarians, and if we live long enough we shall read about them in the newspapers. And they will have a letter from Royalty!"

In the evening Gwen got Adrian, whose sanguine expressions were not serious, on a more sane and responsible line of thought. His lady-mother, with whom this story is destined never to become acquainted, retired early, after shedding a lurid radiance of symptoms on the family circle; and it, as a dutiful circle, had given her its blessing and dropped a tear by implication over her early departure from it. Sir Hamilton had involved his daughter in a vortex of backgammon, a game draught-players detest, and vice versa, because the two games are even as Box and Cox, in homes possessing only one board. So Gwen and Adrian had themselves to themselves, and wanted nothing more. Her eyes rested now and then with a new curiosity on the Baronet, deep in his game at the far end of the room. She was looking at him by the light of his handsome daughter's saucy speculation about that romantic passage in the lives of himself and her mamma. Suppose—she was saying to herself, with monstrous logic—he had been my papa, and I had had to play backgammon with him!

She was recalled from one such excursion of fancy by Adrian saying:—"Are you sure it would not have been better for the old twins—or one of them—to die and the other never be any the wiser?"

Said Gwen:—"I am not sure. How can I be? But it was absolutely impossible to leave them there, knowing it, unconscious of each other's existence."

Adrian replied:—"It was impossible. I see that. But suppose they had remained in ignorance—in the natural order of events I mean—and the London one had died unknown to her sister, would it not have been better than this reunion, with all its tempest of pain and raking up of old memories, and quite possibly an early separation by death?"

"I think not, on the whole. Because, suppose one had died, and the other had come to know of her death afterwards!"

"I am supposing the contrary. Suppose both had continued in ignorance! How then?"

It was not a question to answer off-hand. Gwen pondered; then said abruptly:—"It depends on whether we go on or stop. Now doesn't it?"

"As bogys? That question always crops up. If we stop I don't see how there can be any doubt on the matter. Much better they should have died in ignorance. The old Australian goody was quite contented, as I understand, at Scraps Court, with her little boy and girl to make tea for her. And the old body at Chorlton and her daughter would have gone on quite happily. They didn't want to be excoriated by a discovery."

"Yes—that is what it has been. Excoriation by a discovery. I'm not at all sure you're right—but I'll make you a present of it. Let's consider it settled that death in ignorance would have been the best thing for them."

"Very well!—what next?"

"What next? Why, of course, suppose we don't stop, but go on! You often say it is ten to one against it."

"So it is. I can't say I'm sorry, on the whole."

"That's neither here nor there. Ten to one against is one to ten for. Any man on the turf will tell you that."

"And any Senior Wrangler will confirm it."

"Very well, then! There we are. Suppose my dear old Mrs. Picture and Granny Marrable had turned up as ghosts, on the other side...."

"I see. You've got me in Hereafter Corner, and you don't intend to let me out."

"Not till you tell me whether they would have been happy or miserable about it, those two ghosts. In your opinion, of course! Don't run away with the idea that I think you infallible."

"There are occasions on which I do not think myself infallible. For instance, when I have to decide an apparently insoluble problem without data of any sort. Your expression 'turned up as ghosts, on the other side,' immediately suggests one."

"You can say whether you think they would have been happy or miserable about having been in England together over twenty years, and never known it. That's simple enough!"

"Don't be in a hurry! There are complications. If they knew they were ghosts, they might become interested in the novelty of their position, and be inclined to accept accomplished facts. Recrimination would be waste of time. If they didn't know....

"Goose!—they would be sure to know."

"The only information I have goes to prove the contrary. When Voltaire's ghost came and spirit-rapped, or whatever you call it....

"I know. One turns tables, and it's very silly."

"... they said triumphantly that they supposed, now he was dead, he was convinced of another existence. And he—or it—rapped out:—'There is only one existence. I am not dead.' So he didn't know he was a ghost."

Gwen seemed tolerant of Voltaire, as a pourparler. "Perhaps," she said thoughtfully, "he found he jammed up against the other ghosts instead of coinciding with them.... You know Lady Katherine Stuartlaverock tried to kiss her lover's ghost, and he gave, and she went through."

"A very interesting incident," said Adrian. "If she had been a ghost, too, she would, as you say, have jammed. If Dr. Johnson had known that story, he would have been more reasonable about Bishop Berkeley.... What did he say about him? Why, he kicked a cask, and said if the Bishop could do that, and not be convinced of the reality of matter, he would be a fool, Sir. I wonder if one said 'Sir,' as often as Dr. Johnson, one would be allowed to talk as much nonsense."

"Boswell must have made that story."

"Very likely. But Boswell made Sam Johnson. Just as we only know of the existence of Matter through our senses, so we only know of Sam's existence through Bozzy. I am conscious that I am becoming prosy. Let's get back to the old ladies."

"Well—it was you that doddered away from them, to talk about Voltaire's bogy. If they didn't know they were ghosts, what then?"

"If they didn't know they were ghosts, the discovery would have been just as excoriating as it has been here. Possibly worse, because—what does one know? Now your full-blown disembodied spirit ... Mind you, this is only my idea, and may be quite groundless!..."

"Now you've apologized, go on! 'Your full-blown disembodied spirit'....

"... may be so absorbed in the sudden and strange surprise of the change—Browning—as to be quite unable to partake of excruciation, even with a twin sister.... It is very disagreeable to think of, I admit. But so is nearly every concrete form in which one clothes an imaginary other-worldliness."

"Why is it disagreeable to think of being able to shake off one's troubles, and forget all about them. I like it."

"Well, I admit that I was beginning to say that I thought these two venerable ladies, meeting as ghosts—not spectres you know, in which case each would frighten t'other and both would run away—would probably be as superior to painful memories on this side as the emancipated butterfly is to its forgotten wiggles as a chrysalis. But it has dawned upon me that Perfect Beings won't wash, and that the Blessed have drawbacks, and that their Choir would pall. I am inclined to back out, and decide that the two of them would have been more miserable if the discovery had come upon them post mortem than they will be now—in a little time at least. At first of course it must be maddening to think of the twenty odd years they have been cheated out of. Really the Divine Disposer of Events might have had a little consideration for the Dramatis Personæ." He jumped to another topic. "You know your mamma paid our papa a visit last—last Thursday, wasn't it?—yes, Thursday!"

"Oh yes—I heard all about it. She had a short chat with him, and he gave her a very good cup of tea. He told her about some very old acquaintances whom she hadn't heard of for years who live in Tavistock Square."

"Was that all?"

"No. The lady very-old acquaintance had been a Miss Tyrawley, and had married her riding-master."

"Was that all?"

"No. She called you and 'Re 'the son and daughter.' Then she talked of our 'engagement as your father persists in calling it.' My blood boiled for quite five minutes."

"All that sounds—very usual! Was there nothing else? That was very little for such a long visit."

"How long was the visit?"

"Much too long for what you've told me. Think of something else!"

Now Gwen had been keeping something back. Under pressure she let it out. "Well—mamma thought fit to say that your father entirely shared her views! Was that true?"

"Which of her views?... I suppose I know, though! I should say it was half-true—truish, suppose we call it!" Then Adrian began to feel he had been rash. How was he to explain to Gwen that his father thought she was perhaps—to borrow his own phrase—"sacrificing herself on his shrine"? It would be like calling on her to attest her passion for him. Now a young lady is at liberty to make any quantity of ardent protestations off her own bat, as the cricketers say; but a lover cannot solicit testimonials, to be produced if called for by parents or guardians. However, Gwen had no intention of leaving explanation to him. She continued:—

"When my mother said that your father entirely shared her views, I know which she meant, perfectly well. She has got a foolish idea into her head—and so has my dear old papa, so she's not alone—that I am marrying you to make up to you for ... for the accident." She found it harder and harder to speak of the nature of the accident. This once, she must do it, coûte que coûte. She went on, speaking low that nothing should reach the backgammon-players. "They say it was our fault that old Stephen shot you.... Well!—it was...."

"My darling, I have frequently pointed out the large share the Primum Mobile had in the matter, to say nothing of the undoubted influence of Destiny...."

"Silly man—I am talking seriously. I don't know that it really matters whether it was or wasn't—wasn't our fault, I mean—so long as they think I think it was. That's the point. Now, the question is, did or did not my superior mamma descend on your comme-il-faut parent to drum this idea into him, and get him on her side?"

"Am I supposed to know?"

"Yes."

"Then I will be frank with you. Always be frank with mad bulls who butt you into corners and won't let you out. Your mamma's communications with my papa had the effect you indicate, and he took me into his confidence the same evening. He too questions the purity of your motives in marrying me, alleging that they are vitiated by a spirit of self-sacrifice, tainted by the baneful influence of unselfishness. He is alive to the possibility that you hate me cordially, but are pretending."

"Oh, my dearest, I wish I did hate you.... Why?—why of course then it would really be a sacrifice, and something to boast of. As it is.... Well—I'm consulting my own convenience, and I ... I am the best judge of my own affairs. It suits me to ... to lead you to the altar, and I shall do it. As for what other people think, all I can say is, I will thank Europe to mind its own business."

Then Adrian said:—"I am conscious of the purity of my own motives. I believe it would be impossible to discover a case of a Selfishness more unalloyed than mine, if all the records of Human Weakness were carefully re-read by experts at the British Museum. I am assuming the existence of some Digest or Codex of the rather extensive material...."

"Don't go off to that. I always have such difficulty in keeping you to the point. How selfish are you, and why?"

"I doubt if I can succeed in telling you how selfish I am, but there's no harm in trying." Speech hung fire for a moment, to seek for words; then found them. "I am a thing in the dark, with an object, and I call it Gwen. I am an atom adrift in a huge black silence, and it crushes my soul, and I am misery itself. Then I hear the voice that I call Gwen's, and forthwith I am happy beyond the wildest dreams of the Poets—though really that isn't saying much, because their wildest dreams are usually unintelligible, and frequently ungrammatical...."

"Never mind them! Go on with how selfish you are."

"Can't you let a poor beggar get to the end of his parenthesis? I was endeavouring to sketch the situation, as a preliminary to going on with how selfish I am. I was remarking that however dissatisfied I feel with the Most High, however sulky I am with the want of foresight in the Primum Mobile—or his indifference to my interests; it comes to the same thing—however inclined to cry out against the darkness, the darkness that once was light, I no sooner hear that voice that I call Gwen's than I am at least in the seven-hundredth heaven of happiness. When I hear that voice, I am all Christian forgiveness towards my Maker. When it goes, my heart is dumb and the darkness gains upon me. That I beg to state, is a simple prosaic statement of an everyday fact. When I have added that the powers that I ascribe to the voice that I know to be Gwen's are also inherent in the hand that I believe to be Gwen's.... Don't pull it away!"

"I only wanted to look at it. Just to see why you shouldn't know it was mine, as well as the voice."

"I know I couldn't be mistaken about the voice. I don't think I could be wrong about the hand, but I don't know that I couldn't."

"Well—now you've got it again! Now go on. Go on to how selfish you are—that's what I want!"

"I will endeavour to do so. I hope my imperfect indication of my view of my own position...."

"Don't be prosy. It is not fair to expect any girl to keep a popular lecturer's head in her lap...."

"I agree—I agree. It was my desire to be strictly practical. I will come to the point. I want to make it perfectly clear that you are my life...."

"Don't get too loud!"

"All right!... that you are my life—my life—my glorious life! I want you to see and know that but for you I am nothing—a wisp of straw blown about by all the winds of Heaven—a mere unit of consciousness in a blank, black void. See what comes of it! Here was I, before this unfortunate result of what is from my point of view a lamentable miscarriage of Destiny, a tolerably well-informed ... English male!... Well—what else am I?... Sonneteer, suppose we say...."

"Goose—suppose we say—or gander!"

"All right! Here was I, before this mishap, not a scrap more brutally self-indulgent and inconsiderate of everybody else than the ruck of my fellow-ganders, and now look at me!"

"Well—I'm looking at you!"

"Am I showing the slightest consideration for you? Am I not showing the most cynical disregard of your welfare in life?"

"How?"

"By allowing you to throw yourself away upon me."

"It is no concern of yours what I do with myself. I do not intend you to have any voice in the matter. Besides—just be good enough to tell me, please!—suppose you made up your mind not to allow me, how would you set about it?"

This was a poser, and the gentleman was practically obliged to acknowledge it. "I couldn't say off-hand," said he. "I should have to consult materfamiliases in Good Society, and look up precedents. Several will occur at once to the student of Lemprière, some of which might be more to the point than anything Holy Writ offers in illustration. But all the cases I can recall at a moment's notice are vitiated by the motives of their male actors. These motives were pure—they were pure self-indulgence. In fact, their attitude towards their would-be charmers had the character of a sauve-qui-peut. It was founded on strong personal dislike, and has lent itself to Composition in the hands of the Old Masters...."

"Now I don't know what you are talking about. Answer my question and don't prevaricate. How would you set about it?"

"How indeed?" There was a note of seriousness in Adrian's voice, and Gwen welcomed it, saying:—"That's right!—stop talking nonsense and tell me." It became more audible as he continued:—"You are only asking me because you know I cannot answer. Was ever a case known of a man who cried off because the lady's relatives thought she didn't care about him? What did he do? Did he write her a letter, asking her to consider everything at an end between them until she could produce satisfactory evidence of an unequivocal sehnsucht of the exactly right quality—premier crû—when her restatement of the case would receive careful consideration? Rubbish!"

"Not rubbish at all! He wrote her that letter and she wrote back requesting him to look out for another young woman at his earliest convenience, because she wasn't his sort. She did, indeed! But she certainly was rather an unfortunate young woman, to be trothplight to such a very good and conscientious young man."

"Rem tetigisti acu," said Adrian. "Never mind what that means. It's Latin.... Well then!—it means you've hit it. The whole gist of the matter lies in my being neither good nor conscientious. I am a mass of double-dyed selfishness. I would not give you up—it's very sad, but it's true!—even for your own sake. I would not lose a word from your lips, a touch of your hand, an hour of your presence, to have back my eyesight and with it all else the world has to give, all else than this dear self that I may never see...."

"I'm glad you said may."

"Yes, of course it's may. We mustn't forget that. But, dearest, I tell you this, that if I were to get my sight again, and your august mammy's impression were to turn out true after all, and you come to be aware that, pity apart, your humble servant was not such a very...."

"What should you do if I did?"

"Shall I tell you? I should show the cloven foot. I should betray the unreasoning greed of my soul. I should never let you go, even if I had to resort to the brutality of keeping you to your word. I should simply hold on like grim death. Would you hate me for it?"

"N-no! I'm not sure that I should. We should see." Certainly the beautiful face that looked down at the eyes that could not see it showed no visible displeasure—quite the reverse. "But suppose I did! Suppose is a game that two can play at."

"Very proper, and shows you understand the nature of an hypothesis. What should I do?... What should I do?"

Gwen offered help to his perplexity. "And suppose that when you came to see your bargain you had found out your mistake! Suppose that Arthur's Bridge turned out all an Arabian Night! Suppose that the ... well—satisfactory personnel your imagination has concocted turned out to be that of a beldam, crone, hag, or dowdy! How then?"

Instead of replying, Adrian drew his hands gently over the face above him, caressingly over the glorious mass of golden hair and round the columnar throat Bronzino would have left reluctantly alone. Said Irene, from the other end of the room:—"Are you trying Mesmeric experiments, you two?"

"He's only doing it to make sure I'm not a beldam," said Gwen innocently. But to Adrian she added under her breath:—"It's only Irene, so it doesn't matter. Only it shows how cautious one has to be." The Baronet, attracted for one moment from his fascinating dice, contributed a fragment to the conversation, and died away into backgammon. "Hey—eh!—what's that?" said he. "Mesmerism—Mesmerism—why, you don't mean to say you believe in that nonsense!" After which Gwen and Adrian were free to go on wherever they left off, if they could find the place.

She found it first. "Yes—I know. 'Beldam, crone, hag, or dowdy!' Of course. What I mean is—if it dawned on you that you were mistaken about my identity ... I want you to be serious, because the thing is possible ... what would you do?"

"There are so many supposes. Suppose you hated me and I thought you a beldam! Practice would seem to suggest fresh fields and pastures new.... But oh, the muddy, damp fields and the desolate, barren pastures.... I know one thing I should do. I should wish myself back here in the dark, with my feet spoiling the sofa cushion, and my head in the lap of my dear delusion—my heavenly delusion. God avert my disillusionment! I would not have my eyesight back at the price."

"Don't get excited! Remember we are only pretending."

"Not at all! I am being serious, because the thing is possible. Do you know I can imagine nothing worse than waking from a dream such as I have dreamt. It would be really the worst—worse than if you were to die, or change...."

"I can't see that."

"Clearly. I should not have the one great resource."

"What resource?... Oh, I see!—you are working round to suicide. I thought we should come to that."

"Naturally, one who is not alive to the purely imaginary evil of non-existence turns to his felo de se as his sheet-anchor. Persons who conceive that the large number of non-existent persons have a legitimate grievance, on the score of never having been created at all, will think otherwise. We must agree to differ."

"But how very unreasonable of you not to kill yourself!—I mean in the case of my not—not visualising well...."

"Quite the reverse. Most reasonable. We are supposing three courses open to Destiny. One, to kill you, lawlessly—Destiny being notoriously lawless. Another to make you change your mind. A third to make me change mine. The reasonableness of suicide in the first case is obvious, if Death is not annihilation. I should catch you up. In the second, all the Hereafters in the Universe would be no worse for me than Life in the dark, without you, here and now. In the third case I should have no one but myself to thank for a weak concession to Destiny, and it would be most unfair to kill myself without your consent, freely given. And I am by no means sure that by giving that consent you would not be legally an accomplice in my felo de se. Themis is a colossal Meddlesome Matty with her fingers in every pie."

"Bother Themis! What a lot of nonsense! However, there was one gleam of reason. You are alive to the fact that I should not consent to your suicide. Or anyone else's. I think it's wrong to kill oneself."

"So do I. But it might be a luxury I should not deny myself under some circumstances. I don't know that Hamlet would influence me. A certain amount of nervousness about Eternity is inseparable from our want of authentic information. I should hope for a healthy and effectual extinction. Failing that, I should disclaim all responsibility. I should point out that it lay, not with me, but my Maker. I should dwell on the fact that Creators that make Hereafters are alone answerable for the consequences; that I had never been consulted as to my own wishes about birth and parentage; and that I should be equally contented to be annulled, and, as Mrs. Bailey would have said, ill-convenience nobody...."

"Do you know why I am letting you go on?"

"Because of my Religious Tone? Because of my Good Taste? Or why?"

"Because I sometimes suspect you of being in earnest about suicide."

"I am quite in earnest."

"Very well, then. Now attend to me. I'm going to insist on your making me a promise."

"Then I shall have to make it. But I don't know till I hear it whether I shall promise to keep it."

"That's included."

"But no promise to keep my promise to keep it's included."

"Yes it is. If you keep on, I shall keep on. So you had better stop. What you've got to promise is not to commit suicide under any circumstances whatever."

"Not under any circumstances whatever? That seems to me rather harsh and arbitrary."

"Not at all. Give me your promise."

"H'm—well!—I'm an amiable, tractable sort of cove.... But I think I am entitled to one little reservation."

"It must be a very little one."

"Anything one gives one's fiancée is returned when she breaks one off. When you break me off I shall consider the promise given back—cancelled."

"Ye-es! Perhaps that is fair, on the whole. Only I think I deserve a small consideration for allowing it."

"I can't refuse to hear what it is."

"Give me that little bottle of Indian poison. To take care of for you, you know. I'll give it back if I break you off. Honour bright!"

"I shouldn't want it till then, probably. And if I did, I could afford sixpence for Prussic acid. Fancy being able to kill oneself, or one's friends, for sixpence! It must have come to a lot more than that in the Middle Ages. We have every reason to be thankful we are Modern...."

"Don't go from the point. Will you give up the little bottle of Indian poison, or not?"

"Not. At least, not now! If I hand it to you at the altar, when you have led me there won't that do?"

Gwen considered, judicially, and appeared to be in favour of accepting the compromise. "Only remember!" said she, "if you don't produce that bottle at the altar—with the poison in it still; no cheating!—I shall cry off, in the very jaws of matrimony." She paused a moment, lest she should have left a flaw in the contract, then added:—"Whether I have led you there or not, you know! Very likely you will walk up the aisle by yourself."

If Adrian had really determined to conceal the Miss Scatcherd incident from Gwen, so as not to foster false hopes, he should have worded his reply differently. For no sooner had he said:—"Well—we are all hoping so," than Gwen exclaimed:—"Then there has been more Septimius Severus." Adrian accepted this without protest, as ordinary human speech; and the story feels confident that if its reader will be on the watch, he will very soon chance across something quite as unlike book-talk in Nature. Adrian merely said:—"How on earth did you guess that?" Gwen replied:—"Because you said, 'We are all hoping so'—not 'We hope so.' Can't you see the difference?"

Anyway, Gwen's guess was an accomplished fact, and it was no use pretending it was wrong. Said Adrian therefore:—"Yes—there was a little more Septimius Severus. I had rather made up my mind not to talk about it, in case you should think too much of it." He then narrated the Miss Scatcherd incident, checked and corrected by Irene from afar. The narrator minimised the points in favour of his flash of vision, while his commentator's corrections showed an opposite bias.

Gwen was, strange to say, really uneasy about that little bottle of Indian poison. Whether there was anything prophetic in this uneasiness, it is difficult to determine. The decision of common sense will probably be that she knew that Poets were not to be trusted, and she wished to be on the safe side. By "common sense" we mean the faculty which instinctively selects the common prejudices of its age as oriflammes to follow on Life's battlefield. Hopkins the witch-finder's common sense suggested pricking all over to find an insensible flesh-patch, in which case the prickee was a witch. We prefer to keep an open mind about Lady Gwendolen Rivers' foreboding anent that little bottle of Indian poison, until vivisection has shown us, more plainly than at present, how brain secretes Man's soul. We are aware that this language is Browning's.

---

Gwen remained at Pensham until the end of the week. Events occurred, no doubt, but, with one exception, they are outside the story. That exception was a visit to Chorlton, in order that Adrian should not remain a stranger to the interesting old twins. His interest would have been stronger no doubt could he have really seen them. Even as it was he was keenly alive to the way in which old Mrs. Prichard seemed to have fascinated Gwen, and was eager to make as much acquaintance with her as his limitations left possible to him.

Gwen contrived to arrange that she should receive every day from Chorlton not only a line from Ruth Thrale, but an official bulletin from Dr. Nash.

The first of these despatches arrived on the Tuesday afternoon, she having told her correspondents that that would be soon enough. It disappointed her. She had left the old lady so much revived by the small quantity of provisions that did duty for a Sunday dinner, that she had jumped to the conclusion that another day would see her sitting up before the fire as she had seen her in the celebrated chair with cushions at Sapps Court. It was therefore rather a damper to be told by Dr. Nash that he had felt that absolute rest continued necessary, and that he had not been able to sanction any attempt to get Mrs. Prichard up for any length of time.

Gwen turned for consolation to Widow Thrale's letter. It was a model of reserve—would not say too much. "My mother" had talked a good deal with herself and "mother" till late, but had slept fairly well, and if she was tired this morning it was no more than Dr. Nash said we were to expect. She had had a "peaceful day" yesterday, talking constantly with "mother" of their childhood, but never referring to "my father" nor Australia. Dr. Nash had said the improvement would be slow. No reference was made to any possibility of getting her into her clothes and a return to normal life.

Gwen recognised the bearer of the letters, a young native of Chorlton, when she gave him the reply she had written, with a special letter she had ready for "dear old Mrs. Picture." "I know you," said she. "How's your Bull? I hope he won't kill Farmer Jones or anyone while you're not there to whistle to him." To which the youth answered:—"Who-ap not! Sarve they roi-ut, if they dwoan't let un bid in a's stall. A penned un in afower a coomed away." Gwen thought to herself that life at Jones's farm must be painfully volcanic, and despatched the Bull's guardian genius on his cob with the largest sum of money in his pocket that he had ever possessed in his life, after learning his name, which was Onesimus.

When Onesimus reappeared with a second despatch on the afternoon of the next day, Wednesday, Gwen opened it with a beating heart in a hurry for its contents. She did as one does with letters containing news, reading persistently through to the end and taking no notice at all of Irene's interrogatory "Well?" which of course was uttered long before the quickest reader could master the shortest letter's contents. When the end came, she said with evident relief:—"Oh yes, that's all right! Now if we drive over to-morrow, she will probably be up."

"Is that what the letter says?" Adrian spoke, and Gwen, saying "He won't believe my report, you see! You read it!"—threw the letter over to Irene, who read it aloud to her brother, while Gwen looked at the other letter, from Widow Thrale.

What Irene read did not seem so very conclusive. Mrs. Prichard had had a better night, having slept six hours without a break. But the great weakness continued. If she could take a very little stimulant it would be an assistance, as it might enable her to eat more. But she had an unconquerable aversion to wine and spirits in any form, and Dr. Nash was very reluctant to force her against her will.

So said Adrian:—"What she wants is real turtle soup and champagne. I know." Whereupon his father, who was behind the Times—meaning, not the Age, but the "Jupiter" of our boyhood, looked over its title, and said:—"Champagne—champagne? There's plenty in the bin—end of the cellar—Tweedie knows. You'll find my keys on the desk there"—and went back to an absorbing leader, denouncing the defective Commissariat in the Crimea. A moment later, he remembered a thing he had forgotten—his son's blindness. "Stop a minute," he said. "I have to go, myself, later, and I may as well go now." And presently was heard discussing cellar-economics, afar, with Tweedie the butler.

The lady of the house wanted the carriage and pair next day to drive over to Foxbourne in the afternoon and wait to bring her back after the meeting. The story merely gives the bold wording used to notify the fact: it does not know what Foxbourne was, nor why there was a meeting. Its only reason for referring to them is that the party for Chorlton had to change its plans and go by the up-train from St. Everall's to Grantley Thorpe, and make it stop there specially. St. Everall's, you may remember, is the horrible new place about two miles from Pensham. The carriage could take them there and be back in plenty of time, and there was always a groggy old concern to be had at the Crown at Grantley that would run them over to Strides Cottage in half an hour. If it had been favourable weather, no doubt the long drive would have been much pleasanter; but with the chance of a heavy downfall of snow making the roads difficult, the short drives and short railway journey had advantages.

Therefore when the groggy old concern, which had seen better days—early Georgian days, probably—pulled up at Strides Cottage in the afternoon, with a black pall of cloud, whose white heralds were already coming thick and fast ahead of it, hanging over Chorlton Down, two at least of the travellers who alighted from it had misgivings that if their visit was a prolonged one, its grogginess and antiquity might stand in its way on a thick-snowed track in the dark, and might end in their being late for the down-train at six. The third of their number saw nothing, and only said:—"Hullo—snowing!" when on getting free of the concern one of the heralds aforesaid perished to convince him of its veracity; gave up the ghost between his shirt-collar and his epidermis. "Yes," he continued, addressing the first inhabitant of the cottage who greeted him. "You are quite right. I am the owner of a dog, and you do perfectly right to inquire about him. His nose is singularly unlike yours. He will detect your flavour when I return, and I shall have to allay his jealousy. It is his fault. We are none of us perfect." The dog gave a short bark which might have meant that Adrian had better hold his tongue, as anything he said might be used against him.

"Now you are in the kitchen and sitting-room I've told you of, because it's both," said Gwen. "And here is Granny Marrable herself."

"Give me hold of your hand, Granny. Because I can't see you, more's the pity! I shall hope to see you some day—like people when they want you not to call. At present my looks don't flatter me. People think I'm humbugging when I say I can't see them. I can't!"

"'Tis a small wonder, sir," said Granny Marrable, "people should be hard of belief. I would not have thought you could not, myself. But being your eyes are spared, by God's mercy, they be ready for the sight to return, when His will is."

"That's all, Granny. It's only the sight that's wanting. The eyes are as good as any in the kingdom, in themselves." This made Gwen feel dreadfully afraid Granny Marrable would think the gentleman was laughing at her. But Adrian had taken a better measure of the Granny's childlike simplicity and directness than hers. He ran on, as though it was all quite right. "Anyhow, don't run away from us to Kingdom Come just yet a while, Granny, and see if I don't come to see you and your sister—real eyesight, you know; not this make-believe! I hope she's picking up."

"She's better—because Dr. Nash says she's better. Only I wish it would come out so we might see it. But it may be I'm a bit impatient. 'Tis the time of life does it, no doubt."

Ruth Thrale returned from the inner room. "She would like her ladyship to go to her," said she. Gwen could not help noticing that somehow—Heaven knows how, but quite perceptibly—the next room seemed to claim for itself the status of an invalid chamber. She accompanied Widow Thrale, who closed the room-door behind her, apparently to secure unheard speech in the passage. "She isn't any worse, you know," said Ruth, in a reassuring manner, which made her hearer look scared, and start. "Only when she gets away to thinking of beyond the seas—that place where she was—that is bad for her, say how we may! Not that she minds talking of my father, nor my brother that died, nor any tale of the land and the people; but 'tis the coming back to make it all fit."

Gwen quite understood this, and re-worded it, for elucidation. "Of course everything clashes, and the poor old dear can't make head or tail of it! Has there been any particular thing, lately?" The reply was:—"Yes—early this morning. She woke up talking about Mrs. Skillick, the name sounded like, and how kind she was to bring her the fresh lettuces. And then she found me by her and knew I was Ruth, but was all in a maze why! Then it all seemed to come on her again, and she was in a bad upset for a while. But I did not tell mother of that. I am glad you have come, my lady. It will make her better."

"Skillick wasn't Australia," said Gwen. "It was some person she lived with here in England—not so long ago. Somewhere near London. What did you do to quiet her?"

"I talked to her about Dave and Dolly. That is always good for her—it seems to steady her. Shall we go in, my lady? I think she heard you." Again Gwen had an impression that concession had been made to the inexorable, and that whereas four days ago it was taken for granted that old Mrs. Picture's collapse was only to be temporary, a permanency of invalidism was now accepted as a working hypothesis. Only a temporary permanency, of course, to last till further notice!

---

CHAPTER XXIV

HOW GWEN INTRODUCED MR. TORRENS, AND MRS. PICTURE TOOK HOLD OF HIS HAND. OF MR. TORREN'S FIRM FAITH IN DEVILS, AND OLD MAISIE'S HAPPINESS THEREAT. THE DOCTOR'S MEMORY OF ADRIAN'S FIRST APPEARANCE AS A CORPSE. THE LAXITY OF GENERAL PRACTIOTIONERS. HIS WISH TO INTOXICATE MRS. PRICHARD. HOW GWEN SANG GLUCK TO ADRIAN, AND ONESIMUS BROUGHT HER A LETTER. QUITE A GOOD REPORT. HOW GWEN WASN'T ANXIOUS. OF ADRIAN'S INVISIBLE MOTHER. HER SELECTNESS, AND HIGH BREEDING. ADRIAN'S VIEWS ABOUT SUICIDES. SURVIVORS' SELFISHNESS TOWARDS THEM, HOW HE TALKED ABOUT THAT DEVIL, AND LET OUT THAT THE OLD LADY HAD FLASHED ACROSS HIS RETINA. HOW HE HAD CLOTHED EACH TWIN'S HEAD WITH THE OTHER'S HAIR

Has it not been the experience of all of us, many a time, that a few days' clear absence from an invalid has been needed, to distinguish a slow change, invisible to the watchers by the bedside? And all the while, have not the daily bulletins made out a case for indefinable slight improvements, negligible gains scarcely worth naming, whose total some mysterious flaw of calculation persistently calls loss?

There may have been very little actual change; there was room for so little. But Gwen had been building up hopes of an improvement. And now she had to see her house of cards tremble and portend collapse. She saved the structure—as one has done in real card-life—by gingerly removing a top storey, in terror of a cataclysm. She would not hope so much—indeed, indeed!—if Fate would only leave some of her structure standing. But she was at fault for a greeting, all but a disjointed word or two, when Ruth, falling back, left her to enter the bedroom alone.

It was a consolation to hear the old lady's voice. "My dear—my dear—I knew you would come. I woke in the night, and thought to myself—she will come, my lady. Then I rang, and my Ruth came. She comes so quick."

"And then that was just as good as me," said Gwen. "Wasn't it?"

"She is my child—my Ruth. And Phoebe is my Phoebe—years ago! But I have to think so much, to make it all fit. You are not like that.'

"What am I like?"

"You are the same all through. You came upstairs to me in my room—did you not?—where my little Dave and Dolly were...."

"Yes—I fetched Dolly."

"And then you put Dolly down? And I said for shame!—what a big girl to be carried!"

"Yes—and Dolly was carrying little dolly, with her eyes wide open. And when I put her down on the floor, she repeated what you said all over again, to little dolly:—'For same, what a bid dirl to be tallied!'"

A gleam came on old Maisie's face as she lay there letting the idea of Dolly soak into her heart. Presently she said, without opening her eyes:—"I wonder, if Dolly lives to be eighty, will she remember old Mrs. Picture. I should like her to. Only she is small."

"Dear Mrs. Picture, you are talking as if you were not to have Dolly again. Don't you remember what I told you on Sunday? I'm going to get both the children down here, and Aunt M'riar. Unless, when you are better, you like to go back to Sapps Court. You shall, you know!"

Another memory attacked old Maisie. "Oh dear," said she, "I thought our Court was all tumbled down. Was it not?"

"Yes—the day I came. And then I carried you off to Cavendish Square. Don't you remember?—where Miss Grahame was—Sister Nora." She went on to tell of the promptitude and efficiency with which the repairs had been carried out. For, strange to say, the power Mr. Bartlett possessed of impressing Europe with his integrity and professional ability had extended itself to Gwen, a perfect stranger, during that short visit to the Court, and she was mysteriously ready to vouch for his sobriety and good faith. Presently old Maisie grew curious about the voices in the next room.

"Is that a gentleman's voice, through the door, talking? It isn't Dr. Nash. Dr. Nash doesn't laugh like that."

"No—that is my blind man I have brought to see you. I told you about him, you know. But he must not tire you too much."

"But can he see me?"

"I didn't mean see, that way. I meant see to talk to. Some day he will really see you—with his eyes. We are sure of it, now. He shall come and sit by you, and talk."

"Yes—and I may hold his hand. And may I speak to him about ... about....

"About his blindness and the accident? Oh dear yes! You won't see that he's blind, you know."

"His eyes look like eyes?"

"Like beautiful eyes. I shall go and fetch him." She knew she was straining facts in her prediction of their recovery of sight, but she liked the sound of her own voice as she said it, though she knew she would not have gone so far except to give her hearer pleasure.

---

Said old Maisie to Adrian, whom Gwen brought back to sit by her, giving him the chair she had occupied beside the bed:—"You, sir, are very happy! But oh, how I grieve for your eyes!"

"Is Lady Gwendolen here in the room still?" said Adrian.

"She has just gone away, to the other room," said old Maisie. For Gwen had withdrawn. One at a time was the rule.

"Very well, dear Mrs. Picture. Then I'll tell you. There never was a better bargain driven than mine. I would not have my eyesight back, to lose what I have got. No—not for fifty pairs of eyes." And he evidently meant it.

"May I hold your hand?"

"Do. Here it is. I am sure you are a dear old lady, and can see what she is. When I had eyes, I never saw anything worth looking at, till I saw Gwen."

"But is it a rule?"

Adrian was perplexed for a moment. "Oh, I see what you mean," said he. "No—of course not! I may have my eyesight back." Then he seemed to speak more to himself than to her. "Men have been as fortunate, even as that, before now."

"But tell me—is that what the doctor says? Or only guessing?"

"It's what the doctor says, and guessing too. Doctors only guess. He's guessing."

"But don't they guess right, oftener than people?"

"A little oftener. If they didn't, what use would they be?"

"But you have seen her?"

"Yes—once! Only once. And now I know she is there, as I saw her.... But I want to know about you, Mrs. Picture dear. Because I'm so sorry for you."

"There is no need for sorrow for me, I am so happy to know my sister was not drowned. And my little girl I left behind when I went away over the great sea, and the wind blew, and I saw the stars change each night, till they were all new. And then I found my dear husband, and lived with him many, many happy years. God has been good to me, for I have had much happiness." There was nothing but contentment and rest in her voice; but then some of the tranquillity may have been due to exhaustion.

Adrian made the mistake of saying:—"And all the while you thought your sister dead."

He felt a thrill in her hand as it tightened on his, and heard it in her voice. "Oh, could it have been?" she said. "But I was told so—in a letter."

It was useless for Adrian to affect ignorance of the story; and, indeed, that would have made matters worse, for it would have put it on her to attempt the retelling of it.

Perhaps he did his best to say:—"Lady Gwendolen has told me the whole story. So I know. Don't think about it!... Well—that's nonsense! One can't help thinking. I mean—think as little as possible!" It did not mend matters much.

Her mind had got back to the letter, and could not leave it. "I have to think of it," she said, "because it was my husband that wrote that letter. I know why he wrote it. It was not himself. It was a devil. It came out of Roomoro the black witch-doctor and got a place inside my husband. He did not write that letter to Phoebe. It wrote it. For see how it had learned all the story when Roomoro sucked the little scorpion's poison out of Mary Ann Stennis's arm!"

To Adrian all this was half-feverish wandering; the limited delirium of extreme weakness. No doubt these were real persons—Roomoro and Mary Ann Stennis. It was their drama that was fictitious. He saw one thing plainly. It was to be humoured, not reasoned with. So whatever was the cause of a slight start and disconcertment of his manner when she stopped to ask suddenly:—"But you do not believe in devils, perhaps?"—it was not the one she had ascribed it to. In fact he was quite ready with a semi-conscientious affirmative. "Indeed I do. Tell me exactly how you suppose it happened, again. Roomoro was a native conjurer or medicine-man, I suppose?"

Then old Maisie recapitulated the tale her imagination had constructed to whitewash the husband who had ruined her whole life, adding some details, not without an interest for students of folklore, about the devil that had come from Roomoro. She connected it with the fact that Roomoro had eaten the flesh of the little black Dasyurus, christened the "Native Devil" by the first Tasmanian colonists, from the excessive shortness of its temper. The soul of this devil had been driven from the witch-doctor by the poison of the scorpion, and had made for the nearest human organisation. Adrian listened with as courteous a gravity as either of us would show to a Reincarnationist's extremest doctrines.

It was an immense consolation to old Maisie, evidently, to be taken in such good faith. Having made up his mind that his conscience should not stand between him and any fiction that would benefit this dear old lady, Adrian was not going to do the thing by halves. He launched out into reminiscences of his own experiences on the Essequibo and elsewhere, and was able without straining points to dwell on the remarkable similarities of the Magians of all primitive races. As he afterwards told Gwen, he was surprised at the way in which the actual facts smoothed the way for misrepresentation. He stuck at nothing in professions of belief in unseen agencies, good and bad; apologizing afterwards to Gwen for doing so by representing the ease of believing in them just for a short time, to square matters. Optional belief was no invention of his own, he said, but an ancient and honourable resource of priesthoods all the world over.

It was the only little contribution he was able to make towards the peace of mind without which it seemed almost impossible so old a constitution could rally against such a shock. And it was of real value, for old Maisie sorely needed help against her most awful discovery of all, the hideous guilt of the man whom she had loved ungrudgingly throughout. Nor was it only this. It palliated her son's crimes. But then there was a difference between the son and the father. The latter had apparently done nothing to arouse his wife's detestation. Forgery is a delinquency—not a diabolism!

They talked more—talked a good deal in fact—but only of what we know. Then Gwen came back, bringing Irene to make acquaintance. This young lady behaved very nicely, but admitted afterwards that she had once or twice been a little at a loss what to say.

As when for instance the old lady, with her tender, sad, grey eyes fixed on Miss Torrens, said:—"Come near, my dear, that I may see you close." And drew her old hand, tremulously, over the mass of rich black hair which the almost nominal bonnet of that day left uncovered, with the reticular arrangement that confined it, and went on speaking, dreamily:—"It is very beautiful, but my lady's hair is golden, and shines like the sun." Thereon Gwen to lubricate matters:—"Yes—look here! But I know which I like best." She managed to collate a handful of her own glory of gold and her friend's rich black, in one hand. "I know which I like best," said Irene. And Gwen laughed her musical laugh that filled the place. "No head of hair is a prophet in its own country," said she.

Old Maisie was trying to speak, but her voice had gone low with fatigue. "Phoebe and I," she was saying, "long ago, when we were girls.... It was a trick, you know, a game ... we would mix our hair like that, and make little Jacky Wetherall guess whose hair he had hold of. When he guessed right he had sugar. He was three. His mother used to lend him to us when she went out to scrub, and he never cried...." She went on like this, dwelling on scraps of her girlhood, for some time; then her voice went very faint to say:—"Phoebe was there then. Phoebe is back now—somehow—how is it?" Gwen saw she had talked enough, and took Irene away; and then Ruth Thrale went to sit with her mother.

---

Dr. Nash, who arrived during their absence, had been greeted by Adrian after his "first appearance as a corpse," last summer. He would have known the doctor's voice anywhere. "You never were a corpse," said that gentleman. To which Mr. Torrens replied:—"You thought I was a corpse, doctor, you know you did!"

Dr. Nash, being unable to deny it, shifted the responsibility. "Well," said he, "Sir Coupland thought so too. The fact is, we had quite given you up. When he came out and said to me:—'Come back. I want you to see something,' I said to him:—'Is that why the dog barked?' Because your dog had given a sudden queer sort of a bark. And he said to me:—'It isn't only the dog. It's Lady Gwen Rivers.'"

"What did he mean by that?" said Gwen.

"He meant that your ladyship's strong impression that the body.... Excuse my referring to you, Mr. Torrens, as...."

"As 'the body'? Not at all! I mean, don't apologize."

"The—a—subject, say, still retained vitality. No doubt we might have found out—probably should...."

"Stuff and nonsense!" said Gwen remorselessly. "You would have buried him alive if it hadn't been for me. You doctors are the most careless, casual creatures. It was me and the dog—so now Mr. Torrens knows what he has to be thankful for!"

"Well—as a matter of fact, it was the strong impression of your ladyship that did the job. We doctors are, as your ladyship says, an incautious, irresponsible lot. I hope you found Mrs. Prichard going on well."

Gwen hesitated. "I wish she looked a little—thicker," said she.

Dr. Nash looked serious. "We mustn't be in too great a hurry. Remember her age, and the fact that she is eating almost nothing. She won't take regular meals again—or what she calls regular meals—till the tension of this excitement subsides...."

Said Adrian:—"It's perfectly extraordinary to me, not seeing her, to hear her talk as she does. Because it doesn't give the impression of such weakness as that. Her hands feel very thin, of course."

Said the doctor:—"I wish I could get her to take some stimulant; then she would begin eating again. If she could only be slightly intoxicated! But she's very obdurate on that point—I told you?—and refuses even Sir Cropton Fuller's old tawny port. I talked about her to him, and he sent me half a dozen the same evening. A good-natured old chap!—wants to make everyone else as dyspeptic as himself...."

"That reminds me!" said Gwen. "We forgot the champagne."

"No, we didn't," said Irene. "It was put in the carriage, I know. In a basket. Two bottles lying down. And it was taken out, because I saw it."

"But was it put in the railway carriage?"

"I meant the railway carriage."

"I believe it's in the old Noah's Ark we came here in, all the while."

Granny Marrable said:—"I am sure there has nothing been brought into the Cottage. Because we should have seen. There is only the door through, to go in and out."

"You see, Dr. Nash," said Gwen, "when you said that in your letter, about her wanting stimulant, champagne immediately occurred to Sir Hamilton. So we brought a couple of bottles of the King of Prussia's favourite Clicquot, and a little screwy thing to milk the bottles with, like a cow, a glass at a time. Miss Torrens and I are quite agreed that very often one can get quite pleasantly and healthily drunk on champagne when other intoxicants only give one a headache and make one ill. Isn't it so, 'Re?" Miss Torrens and her brother both testified that this was their experience, and Dr. Nash assented, saying that there would at least be no harm in trying the experiment.

As for dear old Granny Marrable, her opinion was simply that whatever her ladyship from the Towers, and the young lady from Pensham and her brother, were agreed upon, was beyond question right; and even if medical sanction had not been forthcoming she would have supported them. "I am sure," said she, "my dear sister will drink some when she knows your ladyship brought it for her."

The reappearance of the Noah's Ark, when due, confirmed Gwen's view as to the whereabouts of the basket, and was followed by a hasty departure of the gentlefolks to catch the downtrain from London. As Granny Marrable watched it lurching away into the fast-increasing snow, it looked, she thought, as if it could not catch anything. But if old Pirbright, who had been on the road since last century, did not know, nobody did.

---

The day after this visit, when Gwen was singing to Adrian airs from Gluck's "Alceste," Irene and her father being both absent on Christmas business, social or charitable, the butler brought in a letter from Ruth Thrale in the very middle of a sostenuto note,—for when did any servant, however intelligent, allow music to stop before proceeding to extremities?—and said, respectfully but firmly, that it was the same boy, and he would wait. He seemed to imply that the boy's quality of identity was a sort of guarantee of his waiting—a good previous character for permanency. Gwen left "Alceste" in C minor, and opened her letter, thanking Mr. Tweedie cordially, but not able to say he might go, because he was another family's butler. Adrian said:—"Is that from the old lady?" And when Gwen said:—"Yes—it's Onesimus. I wonder he was able to get there, over the snow,"—he dismissed Mr. Tweedie with the instruction that he should see that Onesimus got plenty to eat. The butler ignored this instruction as superfluous, and died away.

Then Gwen spun round on the music-stool to read aloud. "'Honoured lady';—Oh dear, I wish she could say 'dear Gwen'; but I suppose it wouldn't do.—'I am thankful to be able to write a really good report of my mother'.... You'll see in a minute she'll have to speak of Granny Marrable and she'll call her 'mother' without the 'my.' See if she doesn't!... 'Dr. Nash said she might have some champagne, and we said she really must when you so kindly brought it. So she said indeed yes, and we gave it her up to the cuts.' That means," said Gwen, "the cuts of the wineglass." She glanced on in the letter, and when Adrian said:—"Well—that's not all!"—apologized with:—"I was looking on ahead, to see that she got some more later. It's all right. '... up to the cuts, and presently', as Dr. Nash said, was minded to eat something. So I got her the sweetbread she would not have for dinner, which warmed up well. Then we persuaded her to take a little more champagne, but Dr. Nash said be careful for fear of reaction. Then she was very chatty and cheerful, and would go back a great deal on old times with mother....' I told you she would," said Gwen, breaking off abruptly.

"Of course she will always go back on old times," said Adrian.

"I didn't mean that. I meant call her aunt 'mother' without the 'my.' Let me go on. Don't interrupt! '... old times with mother, and one thing in particular, their hair. Mother pleased her, because she could remember a little child Jacky they would puzzle to tell which hair was which, saying if she held them like that Jacky could tell, and have sugar. For their hair now is quite strong white and grey instead of both the same....' She was telling us about Jacky—me and Irene—yesterday, and I suppose that was what set her off.... 'She slept very sound and talked, and then slept well at night. So we are in good spirits about her, and thank God she may be better and get stronger. That is all I have to tell now and remain dutifully yours....' Isn't that delightful? Quite a good report!" Instructions followed to Onesimus not to bring any further news to Pensham, but to take his next instalment to the Towers.

These things occurred on the Friday, the day after the visit to Chorlton. Certainly that letter of Widow Thrale's justified Lady Gwendolen in feeling at ease about Mrs. Picture during the remainder of her visit to Pensham, and the blame she apportioned to herself for an imagined neglect afterwards was quite undeserved.

Adrian Torrens ought to have been in the seventh heaven during the remainder of an almost uninterrupted afternoon. Not that it was absolutely uninterrupted, because evidences of a chaperon in abeyance were not wanting. A mysterious voice, of unparalleled selectness, or bon-ton, or gentility, emanated from a neighbouring retreat with an accidentally open door, where the lady of the house was corresponding with philanthropists in spite of interruptions. It said:—"What is that? I know it so well," or, "That air is very familiar to me," or, "I cannot help thinking Catalani would have taken that slower." To all of which Gwen returned suitable replies, tending to encourage a belief in her questioner's mind that its early youth had been passed in a German principality with Kapellmeisters and Conservatoriums and a Court Opera Company. This excellent lady was in the habit of implying that she had been fostered in various anciens régimes, and that the parentage of anything so outlandish and radical as her son and daughter was quite out of her line, and a freak of Fate at the suggestion of her husband.

Intermittent emanations from Superiority-in-the-Bush were small drawbacks to what might perhaps prove the last unalloyed interview of these two lovers before their six months' separation—that terrible Self-Denying Ordinance—to which they had assented with a true prevision of how very unwelcome it would be when the time came. It was impossible to go back on their consent now. Gwen might have hoisted a standard of revolt against her mother. But she could not look her father in the face and cry off from the fulfilment of a condition-precedent of his consent to the perfect freedom of association of which she and Adrian had availed themselves to the uttermost, always under the plea that the terms of the contract were going to be honourably observed. As for Adrian, he was even more strongly bound. That appeal from the Countess that his father had repeated and confirmed was made direct to his honour; and while he could say unanswerably:—"What would you have me do?" nothing in the world could justify his rebelling against so reasonable a condition as that their sentiments should continue reciprocal after six months of separation.

His own mind was made up. For his views about suicide, however much he spoke of them with levity, were perfectly serious. If he lost Gwen, he would be virtually non-existent already. The end would have come, and the thing left to put an end to would no longer be a Life. It would only be a sensibility to pain, with an ample supply of it. A bare bodkin would do the business, but did not recommend itself. The right proportion of Prussic Acid had much to say on its own behalf. It was cheap, clean, certain, and the taste of ratafia was far from unpleasant. But he had a lingering favourable impression of the Warroo medicine-man, whose faith in the efficacy and painlessness of his nostrum was evident, however much was uncertain in his version of its provenance.

As to any misgivings about awakening in another world, if any occurred to Adrian he had but one answer—he had been dead, and had found death unattended with any sort of inconvenience. Resuscitation had certainly been painful, but he did not propose to leave any possibility of it, this time. His death, that time, had been a sudden shock, followed instantly by the voice of Gwen herself, which he had recognised as the last his ears had heard. If Death could be so easily negotiated, why fuss? The only serious objection to suicide was its unpopularity with survivors. But were they not sometimes a little selfish? Was this selfishness not shown to demonstration by the gratitude—felt, beyond a doubt—to the suicide who weights his pockets when he jumps into mid-ocean, contrasted with the dissatisfaction, to say the least of it, which the proprietor of a respectable first-class hotel feels when a visitor poisons himself with the door locked, and engages the attention of the Coroner. There was Irene certainly—and others—but after all it would be a great gain to them, when the first grief was over, to have got rid of a terrible encumbrance.

Therefore Adrian was quite at his ease about the Self-Denying Ordinance; at least, if a clear resolve and a mind made up can give ease. He said not a word of his views and intentions beyond what the story has already recorded. What right had he to say anything to Gwen that would put pressure on her inclinations? Had he not really said too much already? At any rate, no more!

Nevertheless, the foregoing made up the background of his reflections as he listened to more "Alceste," resumed after a short note had been written for Onesimus to carry back over the frost-bound roads to Chorlton. And he was able to trace the revival in his mind of suicide by poison to Mrs. Picture's narration of the Dasyurus and the witch-doctor who had cooked and eaten its body. This fiction of her fever-ridden thoughts had set him a-thinking again of the Warroo conjurer. He had not repeated any of it to Gwen, lest she should be alarmed on old Maisie's behalf. For it had a very insane sound.

But after such a prosperous report of her condition, above all, of the magical effect of that champagne, it seemed overnice to be making a to-do about what was probably a mere effect of overheated fancy, such as the circumstances might have produced in many a younger and stronger person. So when Alceste had provided her last soprano song, and the singer was looking for "Ifigenia in Aulide," Adrian felt at liberty to say that old Mrs. Picture's ideas about possession were very funny and interesting.

"Isn't it curious?" said Gwen. "She really believes it all, you know, like Gospel. All that about the devil that had possession of her husband! And how when he died, he passed his devil on to his son, who was worse than himself."

"That's good, though," said Adrian. "Only she never told me about the son. I had it all about the witch-doctor whose devil came out because he couldn't fancy the little scorpion's flavour. And all about the original devil—a sort of opossum they call a devil...."

"She didn't tell me about him."

"They've got one at the Zoological Gardens. He's an ugly customer. The keeper said he was a limb, if ever there was one. The old lady evidently thought her idea that the doctor's devil was this little beggar's soul, eaten up with his flesh, was indisputable. I told her I thought it had every intrinsic possibility, and I'm sure she was pleased. But the horror of her face when she spoke of him was really...."

"Adrian!"

"What, dearest? Anything the matter?"

"Only the way you put it. It was so odd. 'The horror of her face'! Just as if you had seen it!" Indeed, Gwen was looking quite disconcerted and taken aback.

"There now!" said Adrian. "See what a fool I am! I never meant to tell of that. Because I thought it threw a doubt on Scatcherd. I've been wanting to make the most of Scatcherd. I never thought much of Septimius Severus. Anyone might have said in my hearing that the bust was moved, and it was just as I was waking. But I'll swear no one said anything about Scatcherd. Why—there was only Irene!"

Gwen went and sat by him on the sofa. "Listen, darling!" said she. "I want to know what you are talking about. What was it happened, and why did it throw a doubt on Miss Scatcherd?"

"It wasn't anything, either way, you know."

"I know. But what was it, that wasn't anything, either way?"

"It was only an impression. You mustn't attach any weight to it."

"Are you going to tell what it was, or not?"

"Going to. Plenty of time! It was when the old lady began telling me about the devil. Her tone of conviction gave me a strong impression what she was looking like, and made an image of her flash across my retina. By which I mean, flash across the hole I used to see through when I had a retina. It was almost as strong and life-like as real seeing. But I knew it wasn't."

"But how—how—how?" cried Gwen, excited. "How did you know that it wasn't?"

"Because of the very white hair. It was snow-white—the image's. I suppose I had forgotten which was which, of the two old ladies—had put the saddle on the wrong horse."

Gwen looked for a moment completely bewildered. "What on, earth, can, he, mean?" said she, addressing Space very slowly. Then, speaking as one who has to show patience with a stiff problem:—"Dearest man—dearest incoherency!—do try and explain. Which of the old ladies do you suppose has white hair, and which grey?"

"Old Granny Marrable, I thought."

"Yes—but which hair? Which? Which? Which?"

"White, I thought, not grey." Whereupon Gwen, seeing how much hung upon the impression her lover had been under hitherto about these two tints of hair, kept down a growing excitement to ask him quietly for an exact, undisjointed statement, and got this for answer:—"I have always thought of Granny Marrable's as snow-white, and the old Australian's as grey. Was that wrong?"

"Quite wrong! It's the other way round. The Granny's is grey and old Mrs. Picture's is silvery white."

Adrian gave a long whistle, for astonishment, and was silent. So was Gwen. For this was the third incident of the sort, and what might not happen? Presently he broke the silence, to say:—"At any rate, that leaves Scatcherd a chance. I thought if this was a make-up of my own, it smashed her."

"Foolish man! There is more in it than that. You saw old Mrs. Picture. It was no make-up.... Well?" She paused for his reply.

It came after a studied silence, a dumbness of set purpose. "Oh why—why—is it always Mrs. Picture, or Scatcherd, or Septimius Severus? Why can it never be Gwen—Gwen—Gwen?"

The attenuated chaperonage of the lady of the house may have been moved by a certain demonstrativeness of her son's at this point, to say from afar:—"I hope we are going to have some 'Ifigenia in Aulide.' Because I should have enjoyed that." Which carried an implication that the musical world had been palming off an inferior article on a public deeply impressible by the higher aspects of Opera.

---

CHAPTER XXV

HOW THE EARL ASKED AFTER THE OLD TWINS. MERENESS. RECUPERATIVE POWER. HOW THE HOUSEHOLD HAD ITS ANNUAL DANCE. HOW THE COUNTESS HAD A CRACKED LIP. HOW WAS DR. TUXFORD SOMERS? SIR SPENCER DERRICK. GENERAL RAWNSLEY. HE AND GWEN'S INTENDED GREAT GRANDMOTHER-IN-LAW. GWEN HAD NEVER HAD TWINS BEFORE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. THE GENERAL'S BROTHER PHILIP. SUPERANNUATED COCKS AND HENS. HOW GWEN HAD DREAMED SHE WAS TO MARRY A KETTLE-HOLDER. HOW MRS. LAMPREY HAD A LETTER FOR GWEN, WHICH TOOK GWEN OFF TO CHORLTON AT MIDNIGHT

When the Earl of Ancester came back to the Towers next day he certainly did look a little boiled down; otherwise, cheerful and collected. "I am quite prepared to endure another Christmas," said he resignedly to Gwen. "But a little seclusion and meditation is good to prepare one for the ordeal, and Bath certainly deserves the character everybody gives it, that you never meet anybody else there. I suppose Coventry and Jericho have something in common with Bath. I wonder if outcasts can be identified in either. Nothing distinguishes them in Bath from the favourites of Fortune. How are the old ladies?"

This was in the study, where the Earl and his daughter got a quiet ten minutes to recapitulate the story of each during the other's absence. It was late in the afternoon, two hours after his arrival from London. He had been there a day or two to make a show of fulfilling his obligations towards politics; had sat through a debate or two, and had taken part in a division or two, much to the satisfaction of his conscience. "But," said he to Gwen, "if you ask me which I have felt most interest in, your old ladies or the Foreign Enlistment Act, I should certainly say the old ladies." So it was no wonder his inquiry about them came early in this recapitulation.

Gwen found herself, to her surprise, committed to an apologetic tone about old Mrs. Picture's health, and maintaining that she was really better intrinsically, although evidently some person or persons unnamed must have said she was worse. She started on her report with every good-will to make it a prosperous one, and got entangled in some trivialities that told against her purpose. Perhaps her last letter to her father, written from Pensham on the night of her arrival there, had given too rose-coloured an account of her visit to Chorlton, and had caused the rather serious headshake which greeted her admission that old Maisie was still a quasi-invalid, on her back from the merest—quite the merest—weakness. The Earl admitted that, as a general rule, weakness might be mere enough to be negligible; but then it should be the weakness of young and strong people, possessed of that delightful property "recuperative power," which does such wonders when it comes to the scratch. Never be without it, if you can help.

The episode of the champagne was reassuring, and gave Hope a helping hand. Moreover, Gwen had just got another letter from Ruth Thrale, brought by Onesimus the bull-cajoler, which gave a very good account on the whole, though one phrase had a damping effect. We were not "to rely on the champagne," as it was "not nourishment, but stimulus." She must be got to take food regularly, said Dr. Nash, however small the quantity. This seemed to suggest that she had fallen back on that vicious practice of starvation. But "my mother" was constantly talking with "mother" about old times, and it was giving "mother" pleasure.

"I wish," said Gwen, as her father went back to "Honoured Lady" for second reading, and possibly second impressions, "I wish that Dr. Nash had written separately. I want to know what he thinks, and I want to know what Ruth thinks. I can mix them up for myself."

The Earl read to the end, and suspended judgment, visibly. "Eighty-one!" said he. "And how did Granny Marrable take it? You never said in your letters."

"Because I did not see her. Dr. Nash told—at least, he tried to. But I told you about the little boy's letter. She knew it from that."

"I remember.... Well!—we must hope." And then they spoke of matters nearer home; the impending journey to Vienna; a perplexity created by a promise rashly given to Aunt Constance that she should be married from the Ancester town-residence—two things which clashed, for how could this wedding wait till the Countess's return?—and ultimately of Gwen's own prospects. Then she told her father the incident of Adrian's apparent vision of old Mrs. Picture, and both pretended that it was too slight to build upon; but both used it for a superstructure of private imaginings. Neither encouraged the other.

Adrian and his sister were to have returned with Gwen to the Towers to stay till Monday, which was Christmas Day, when their own plum-pudding and mistletoe would claim them at Pensham. This arrangement was not carried out, possibly in deference to the Countess, who was anxious to reduce to a minimum everything that tended to focus the public gaze on the lovers. Gwen was under a social obligation, inherited perhaps from Feudalism, to be present at the Servants' Ball, which would have been on Christmas Eve had that day not fallen on a Sunday. Hence the necessity for her return on the Saturday, and the interview with her father just recorded. The quiet ten minutes filled the half-hour between tea and dressing for a dinner which might prove a scratch meal in itself, but was distinguished by its sequel. A general adjournment was to follow to the great ball-room, which was given over without reserve on this occasion to the revellers and their friends from the environs; for at the Towers nothing was done by halves in those days. There the august heads of the household were expected to walk solemnly through a quadrille with the housekeeper and head butler. Mrs. Masham's and Mr. Norbury's sense of responsibility on these occasions can neither be imagined nor described. This great event made conscientious dressing for dinner more than usually necessary, however defective the excitement of the household might make the preparation and service thereof.

These exigencies were what limited Gwen's quiet ten minutes with her father within the narrow bounds of half an hour, leaving no margin at all for more than three words with her mother on her way to her own interview with Miss Lutwyche. She exceeded her estimate almost before her ladyship's dressing-room door had swung to behind her.

"Well, mamma dear, I hope you're satisfied."

"I am, my dear. At least, I am not dissatisfied.... Don't kiss me in front, please, because I have a little crack on the corner of my lip." The Countess accepted her daughter's accolade on an unsympathetic cheek-bone. "What are you referring to?"

"Why—Adrian not coming till to-morrow, of course. What did you suppose I meant?"

"I did not suppose. Some day you will live to acknowledge—I am convinced of it—that what your father and I thought best was dictated by simple common sense and prudence. I am sure Sir Hamilton will not misinterpret our motives. Nor Lady Torrens."

"He's a nice old Bart, the Bart. We are great friends. He likes it. He gets all the kissing for nothing.... What?"

The Countess may have contemplated some protest against the pronounced ratification implied of fatherdom-in-law. She gave it up, and said:—"I was not going to say anything. Go on!"

The way in which these two guessed each other's thoughts was phenomenal. Gwen knew all about it. "Come, mamma!" said she. "You know the Bart would not have liked it half so much if I had been a dowdy."

"I cannot pretend to have thought upon the subject." If her ladyship threw a greater severity into her manner than the occasion seemed to call for, it was not merely because she disapproved of her beautiful daughter's want of retenue, or questionable style, or doubtful taste, or defective breeding. You must bear all the circumstances in mind as they presented themselves to her. Conceive what the "nice old Bart" had been to her over five-and-twenty years ago, when she herself was a dazzling young beauty of another generation! Think how strange it must have been, to hear the audacities of this new creature, undreamed of then, spoken so placidly through an amused smile, as she watched the firelight serenely from the arm-chair she had subsided on—an anchorage "three words" would never have warranted, even the most unbridled polysyllables. "Do you not think"—her dignified mamma continued—"you had better be getting ready for dinner? You are always longer than me."

"I'm going directly. Lutwyche is never ready. I suppose I ought to go, though.... You are not asking after my old lady, and I think you might."

"Oh yes," said her ladyship negligently. "I haven't seen you since you didn't go to church with me. How is your old lady?"

"You don't care, so it doesn't matter. How was Dr. Tuxford Somers?"

"My dear—don't be nonsensical! How can you expect me to gush over about an old person I have not so much as seen?" She added as an afterthought:—"However worthy she may be!"

"You could have seen her quite well, when she was here. Papa did. Besides, one can show a human interest, without gushing over."

"My dear, I hope I am never wanting in human interest. How is Mrs.... Mrs....?"

"Mrs. Prichard?"

"Yes—how is she? Is she coming back here?"

"Is it likely? Besides, she can't be moved."

"Oh—it's as bad as that!"

"My dear mamma, haven't I told you fifty times?" This was not exactly the case; but it passed, in conversation. "The darling old thing was all but killed by being told...."

"By being told?... Oh yes, I remember! They were sisters, in Van Diemen's Land.... But she's better again now?"

"Yes—better. Oh, here's Starfield, and there's papa in his room. I can hear him. I must go."

At dinner that evening nobody was in any way new or remarkable, unless indeed Sir Spencer and Lady Derrick, who had been in Canada, counted. There was one guest, not new, but of interest to Gwen. Do you happen to remember General Rawnsley, who was at the Towers in July, when Adrian had his gunshot accident? It was he who was nearly killed by a Mahratta, at Assaye, when he was a young lieutenant. Gwen had issued orders that he should take her in to dinner, when she heard on her arrival that he had accepted her mother's invitation for Christmas.

Consider dinner despatched—the word is suitable, for an approach to haste was countenanced or tolerated, in consideration of the household's festivity elsewhere—and so much talking going on that the old General could say to Gwen without fear of being overheard:—"Now tell me some more about your fellow.... Adrian, isn't he?... He is your fellow, isn't he?—no compliments necessary?"

"He's my fellow, General, to you and all my dear friends. You saw him in July, I think?"

"Just saw him—just saw him! Hardly spoke to him—only a word or two. Your father took me in to see him, because I was in love with his great-grandmother, once upon a time."

"His great-grandmother, General? You must mean his grandmother."

"Not a bit of it, my dear! It's all quite right. I was a boy of eighteen. I'm eighty-four. Sixty-six years ago. If Mary Tracy was alive now, she'd make up to eighty-six. Nothing out of the way in that. She was a girl of twenty then."

"Was it serious, General?"

"God bless me, my dear, serious? I should rather think it was! Why—we ran away together, and went capering over the country looking for a parson to marry us! Serious? Rather! At least, it might have been."

"Oh, General, do tell me what came of it. Did you find the parson?"

"That was just it. We found the Rector of Threckingham—it was in Lincolnshire—and he promised to marry us in a week if he could find someone to give the bride away. He took possession of the young lady. Then a day or two after down comes Sir Marmaduke and Lady Tracy, black in the face with rage, and we were torn asunder, threatening suicide as soon as there was a chance. I was such a jolly innocent boy that I never suspected the Rector of treachery. Never guessed it at all! He told me thirty years after—a little more. Saw him when the Allied Sovereigns were in London—before Waterloo."

"And that young thing was Adrian's great-grandmother!" said Gwen. Then she felt bound in honour to add:—"She was old enough to know better."

"She didn't," said the General. "What's so mighty funny to me now is to think that all that happened about the time of the Revolution in Paris. Rather before."

Gwen's imagination felt the vertigo of such a rough grapple with the Past. These things make brains reel. "When my old twins were two little girls in lilac frocks," said she.

"Your what?" Perhaps it was no wonder—so Gwen said afterwards—that the General was a little taken aback. She would have been so very old to have had twins before the French Revolution. She was able to assign a reasonable meaning to her words, and the old boy became deeply interested in the story of the sisters. So much so that when the ladies rose to go, she said calmly to her mother:—"I'm not coming this time. You can all go, and I'll come when we have to start the dancing. I want to talk to General Rawnsley." And the Countess had to surrender, with an implication that it was the only course open in dealing with a lunatic. She could, however, palliate the position by a reference to the abnormal circumstances. "We are quite in a state of chaos to-day," said she to her chief lady-guest. And then to the Earl:—"Don't be more than five minutes.... Well!—no longer than you can help."

The moment the last lady had been carefully shut out by the young gentleman nearest the door, Gwen drove a nail in up to the head, more suo. Suppose General Rawnsley had lost a twin brother fifty years ago, and she, Gwen, had come to him and told him it had all been a mistake, and the brother was still living! What would that feel like? What would he have done?

"Asked for it all over again," said the General, after consideration. "Should have liked being told, you see! Shouldn't have cared so very much about the brother."

"No—do be serious! Try to think what it would have felt like. To oblige me!"

The General tried. But without much success. For he only shook his head over an undisclosed result. He could, however, be serious. "I suppose," said he, "the twinnery—twinship—whatever you call it...."

"Isn't de rigueur?" Gwen struck in. "Of course it isn't! Any real fraternity would do as well. Now try!"

"That makes a difference. But I'm still in a fix. Your old ladies were grown up when one went off—and then she wrote letters?..."

"Can't you manage a grown-up brother?"

"Nothing over fourteen. Poor Phil was fourteen when he was drowned. Under the ice on the Serpentine. He had just been licking me for boning a strap of his skate. I was doing the best way I could without it ... to get mine on, you see ... when I heard a stop in the grinding noise—what goes on all day, you know—and a sort of clicky slooshing, and I looked up, and there were a hundred people under the ice, all at once. There was a f'ler who couldn't stop or turn, and I saw him follow the rest of 'em under. Bad sort of job altogether!" The General seemed to be enjoying his port, all the same.

Said Gwen:—"But he used to lick you, so you couldn't love him."

"Couldn't I? I was awfully fond of Phil. So was he of me. I expect Cain was very fond of Abel. They loved each other like brothers. Not like other people!"

"But Phil isn't a fair instance. Can't you do any better than Phil? Never mind Cain and Abel."

"H'm—no, I can't! Phil's not a bad instance. It's longer ago—but the same thing in principle. If I were to hear that Phil was really resuscitated, and some other boy was buried by mistake for him, I should ... I should...." The General hung fire.

"What should you do? That's what I want to know.... Come now, confess—it's not so easy to say, after all!"

"No—it's not easy. But it would depend on the way how. If it was like the Day of Judgement, and he rose from the grave, as we are taught in the Bible, just the same as he was buried.... Well—you know—it wouldn't be fair play! I should know him, though I expect I should think him jolly small."

"But he wouldn't know you?"

"No. He would be saying to himself, who the dooce is this superannuated old cock? And it would be no use my saying I was his little brother, or he was my big one."

"But suppose it wasn't like the Day of Judgement at all, but real, like my old ladies. Suppose he was another superannuated old cock! My old ladies are superannuated old hens, I suppose."

"I suppose so. But I understand from what you tell me that they have come to know one another again. They talk together and recall old times? Isn't that so?"

"Oh dear yes, and each knows the other quite well by now. Only I believe they are still quite bewildered about what has happened."

"Then I suppose it would be the same with me and my redivivus brother—on the superannuated-old-cock theory, not the Day of Judgement one."

"Yes—but I want you not to draw inferences from them, but to say what you would feel ... of yourself ... out of your own head."

The General wanted time to think. The question required thought, and he was taking it seriously. The Earl, seeing him thinking, and Gwen waiting for the outcome, came round from his end of the table, and took the seat the Countess had vacated. He ought to have been there before, but it seemed as though Gwen's escapade had thrown all formalities out of gear. He was just in time for the General's conclusion:—"Give it up! Heaven only knows what I should do! Or anyone else!"

Gwen restated the problem, for her father's benefit. "I am with you, General," said he. "I cannot speculate on what I should do. I am inclined to think that the twinship has had something to do with the comparative rapidity of the ... recohesion...."

"Very good word, papa! Quite suits the case."

"... recohesion of these two old ladies. When we consider how very early in life they took their meals together...." The General murmured sotto voce:—"Before they were born." "... we must admit that their case is absolutely exceptional—absolutely!"

"You mean," said Gwen, "that if they had not been twins they would not have swallowed each other down, as they have done."

"Exactly," said the Earl.

"And yet," Gwen continued, "they never remember things as they happened. In fact, they are still in a sort of fog about what has happened. But they are quite sure they are Maisie and Phoebe. I do think, though, there is only one thing about Maisie's Australian life that Granny Marrable believes, and that is the devil that got possession of the convict husband.... Why does she? Because devils are in the Bible, of course." Here the devil story was retold for the benefit of the General, who did not know it.

The Earl did, so he did not listen. He employed himself thinking over practicable answers to the question before the house, and was just in time to avert a polemic about the authenticity of the Bible, a subject on which the General held strong views. "What helps me to an idea of a possible attitude of mind before a resurrection of this sort," he said, "is what sometimes happens when you wake up from a dream years long, a dream as long as a lifetime. Just the first moment of all, you can hardly believe yourself free of the horrid entanglement you had got involved in...."

"I know," said Gwen. "The other night I dreamed I was going to be married to a young gentleman I had known from childhood. Only he was a kettle-holder with a parrot on it."

"Didn't I object?" said the Earl.

"You were upstairs. Don't ask explanations. That was all there was in the dream. You were upstairs. And the dream had been all my life. Don't fidget about particulars."

"I won't. That's the sort of dream I mean. It seems all perfectly right and sound until your waking life comes back, and then vanishes. You only regret your friends in the dream for a few seconds, and then—they are nobody!"

"Don't quite see the parallel, yet. These old ladies haven't waked from a dream, that I see." Thus the General, and Gwen told him he was a military martinet, and lacking in insight.

Her father continued:—"Each of them has dreamed the other was dead, for half a century. Now they are awake. But I suspect, from what Gwen says, that the discovery of the dream has thrown a doubt on all the rest of the fifty years."

"That's it," said Gwen. "If the whole story of the two deaths is false, why should Van Diemen's Land be true? Why should the convict and the forgery be true?"

"Husbands and families are hard nuts to crack," said the General. "Can't be forgotten or disbelieved in, try 'em any side up!"

At this point a remonstrance from the drawing-room at the delay of the appearance of the males caused a stampede and ended the discussion. Gwen rejoined her own sex unabashed, and the company adjourned to the scene of the household festivity. It is not certain that the presence of his lordship and his Countess, and the remainder of the party in esse at the Towers really added to the hilarity of the occasion. But it was an ancient usage, and the sky might have fallen if it had been rashly discontinued. The compromise in use at this date under which the magnates, after walking through a quadrille, melted away imperceptibly to their normal quarters, was no doubt the result of a belief on their part that the household would begin to enjoy itself as soon as formalities had been complied with, and it was left to do so at its own free-will and pleasure. Nevertheless, a hint at abolition would have been blasphemy, and however eager the rank and file of the establishment may have been for the disappearance of the bigwigs, not one of them—and still more not one of their many invited neighbours—ever breathed a hint of it to another.

Shortly after ten Gwen and some of the younger members of the party wound up a fairly successful attempt to make the materials at their disposal dance the Lancers, and got away without advertising their departure. It was a great satisfaction to overhear the outbreak of unchecked roystering that followed. Said Gwen to Miss Dickenson and Mr. Pellew, who had entered into the spirit of the thing and co-operated with her efforts to the last:—"They will be at bear-garden point in half an hour. Poor respectable Masham!" To which Aunt Constance replied:—"I suppose they won't go on into Sunday?" The answer was:—"Oh no—not till Sunday! But Sunday is a day, after all, not a night." Mr. Pellew said:—"Sunrise at eight," and Gwen said:—"I think Masham will make it Sunday about two o'clock. We shan't have breakfast till eleven. You'll see!"

They were in the great gallery with the Van Dycks when Gwen stopped, as one stops who thinks suddenly of an omission, and said, as to herself, more than to her hearers:—"I wonder whether she meant me."

"Whether who meant you?" said both, sharing the question.

"Nothing.... Very likely I was mistaken.... No—it was this. You saw that rather piquante, dry young woman? You know which I mean?"

"Danced with that good-looking young groom?..."

"Yes—my Tom—Tom Kettering. It was what I heard her say to Lutwyche ... some time ago.... 'Remember she's not to have it till to-morrow morning.' It just crossed my mind, did she mean me? I dare say it was nothing."

"I heard that. It was a letter." Mr. Pellew said this.

"Had you any impression about it?"

"I thought it was some joke among the servants."

Gwen was disquieted, evidently. "I wish I hadn't heard it," said she, "if it isn't to be delivered till to-morrow. That young woman is Dr. Nash's housekeeper—Dr. Nash at Chorlton." She was speaking to ears that had heard all about the twin sisters. She interrupted any answer that meant to follow "Oh!" and "H'm!" by saying abruptly:—"I must see Lutwyche and find out."

They turned with her, and retraced their steps, remarking that no doubt it was nothing, but these things made one uncomfortable. Much better to find out, and know!

A casual just entering to rejoin the revels stood aside to allow them to pass, but was captured and utilised. "Go in and tell Miss Lutwyche I want to speak to her out here." Gwen knew all about local class distinctions, and was aware her maid would not be "Lutwyche" to a village baker's daughter. The girl, awed into some qualification of mere assent, which might have been presumptuous, said:—"Yes, my lady, if you please."

Lutwyche was captured and came out. "What was it I was not to have till to-morrow morning, Lutwyche? You know quite well what I mean. What was the letter?"

The waiting-woman had a blank stare in preparation, to prevaricate with, but had to give up using it. "Oh yes—there was a note," she said. "It was only a note. Mrs. Lamprey brought it from Dr. Nash. He wished your ladyship to have it to-morrow."

"I will have it at once, thank you! Have you got it there? Just get it, and bring it to me at once."

"I hope your ladyship does not blame me. I was only obeying orders."

"Get it, please, and don't talk." Her ladyship was rather incensed with the young woman, but not for obeying orders. It was because of the attempt to minimise the letter. It was just like Lutwyche. Nothing would make that woman really truthful!

Lutwyche caught up the party, which had not stopped for the finding of the letter, at the drawing-room door. Gwen opened it as she entered the room, saying, to anyone within hearing:—"Excuse my reading this." She dropped on a sofa at hand, close to a chandelier rich with wax lights in the lampless drawing-room. Percy Pellew and his fiancée stood waiting to share the letter's contents, if permitted.

The world, engaged with its own affairs, took no notice. The Earl and the General were listening to tales of Canada from Sir Spencer Derrick. The Countess was pretending to listen to other versions of the same tales from that gentleman's wife. The others were talking about the war, or Louis Napoleon, or Florence Nightingale, or hoping the frost would continue, because nothing was more odious than a thaw in the country. One guest became very unpopular by maintaining that a thaw had already set in, alleging infallible instincts needing no confirmation from thermometers.

The Countess had said, speaking at her daughter across the room:—"I hope we are going to have some music;" and the Colonel had said:—"Ah, give us a song, Gwen;" without eliciting any notice from their beautiful hearer, before anyone but Miss Dickenson and Mr. Pellew noticed the effect this letter was producing. Then the Earl, glancing at the reader's face, saw, even from where he sat, how white it had become, and how tense was its expression. He caught Mr. Pellew's attention. "Do you know what it is, Percy?" said he. Mr. Pellew crossed the room quickly, to reply under his breath:—"I am afraid it is some bad news of her old lady at Chorlton.... Oh no—not that"—for the Earl had made the syllable dead with his lips, inaudibly—"but an alarm of some sort. The doctor's housekeeper there brought the letter."

The Earl left Mr. Pellew, reiterating what he had said to the General, and went over to his daughter. "Let me have it to see," said he, and took the letter from her. He read little scraps, half-aloud, "'Was much better all yesterday, but improvement has not continued.' ... 'Am taking advantage of my housekeeper's visit to the Towers to send this.' ... 'Not to have it till to-morrow.' ... How was that?" Gwen explained briefly, and he said:—"Looks as if the doctor took it for granted you would come at once."

"Yes," said Gwen, "on receipt of the letter."

The Countess said, as one whose patience is sorely and undeservedly tried:—"What is it all about? I suppose we are to know." The war and Louis Napoleon and Florence Nightingale lulled, and each asked his neighbour what it was, and was answered:—"Don't know." The Colonel, a man of the fewest possible words, said to the General:—"Rum! Not young Torrens, I suppose?" And the General replied:—"No, no! Old lady of eighty." Which the Colonel seemed to think was all right, and didn't matter.

"I think, if I were you, I should see the woman who brought it," said the Earl, after reading the letter twice; once quickly and once slowly. Gwen answered:—"Yes, I think so,"—and left the room abruptly. Her father took the letter, which he had retained, to show to her mother, who read it once and handed it back to him. "I cannot advise," said she, speaking a little from Olympus. She came down the mountain, however, to say:—"See that she doesn't do anything mad. You have some influence with her," and left the case—one of dementia—to her husband.

"I think," said he, "if you will excuse me, my dear, I will speak to this woman myself."

Her ladyship demurred. "Isn't it almost making the matter of too much importance?" said she, looking at her finger-diamonds as though to protest against any idea that she was giving her mind to the case of dementia.

"I think not, my dear," said the Earl, meekly but firmly, and followed his daughter out of the room.

---

Very late that night, or rather very early next day, in the smoking-room to which such males as it pleased to do so retired for a last cigar, sundry of the younger members of the vanishing shooting-party, and one or two unexplained nondescripts, came to the knowledge of a fact that made one of them say—"Hookey!"; another—"Crikey!"; and a third and fourth that they were blowed. All considered, more or less, that Mr. Norbury, their informant, who had come to see the lights out, didn't mean to say what he had said. He, however, adhered to his statement, which was that Lady Gwendolen had had alarming news about an old lady whom she was much interested in, and had been driven away in the closed brougham by Tom Kettering to Chorlton, more than two hours ago. "I thought it looked queer, when she didn't come back," said one of the gentlemen who was blowed.

---

CHAPTER XXVI

HOW GWEN AND MRS. LAMPREY RODE TO STRIDES COTTAGE, AND FOUND DR. NASH THERE. OF A LETTER FROM MAISIE'S SON, AND HOW IT HAD THROWN HER BACK. AN ANXIOUS NIGHT WATCH. IMAGINATIONS OF SAPPS COURT. PETER JACKSON'S NAMESAKE. HOW GWEN DREAMED OF DOLLY ON GENERAL RAWNSLEY'S KNEE, AND WAS WAKED BY A SCREAM. READ ME ALOUD WHAT MY SON SAYS! WHAT IS CALLED SNEERING. A MAG. A FLIMSY. HOW GWEN WAS GOT TO BED, HALF ASLEEP. OLD MAISIE'S WILL. NOT UPSTAIRS OUT OF A CARRIAGE, DOWNSTAIRS INTO A CARRIAGE. TWO STEPS BACK AND ONE FORWARD. BEFORE THAT CLOCK STRIKES. THEIR DAUGHTER

Whoever detected a thaw outside the house, by instinct at work within, was an accurate weather-gauge. A wet, despairing moon was watching a soaking world from a misty heaven; and chilly avalanches of undisguised slush, that had been snow when the sun went down, were slipping on acclivities and roofs, and clinging in vain to overhanging boughs, to vanish utterly in pools and gutters and increasing rivulets. The carriage-lamps of Gwen's conveyance, a closed brougham her father had made a sine qua non of her departure, shone on a highway that had seen little traffic since the thaw set in, and that still had on it a memory of fallen snow, and on either side of it the yielding shroud that had made the land so white and would soon leave it so black. Never mind!—the road was a better road, for all that it was heavier. No risk now of a stumble on the ice, with the contingencies of a broken knee for the horse, and an hour's tramp for its quorum!

The yew-tree in the little churchyard at Chorlton had still some coagulum of thaw-frost on it when the brougham plashed past the closed lichgate, and left its ingrained melancholy to make the most of its loneliness. Strides Cottage was just on ahead—five minutes at the most, even on such a road. "They will be sure to be up, I suppose—one of them at least," said Gwen to the woman in the carriage with her. It was Mrs. Lamprey, whom Tom Kettering was to have driven back in any case, but not in the brougham. Gwen had overruled her attempt to ride on the box, and was sorry when she had done so. For she could not say afterwards:—"I'm sure you would rather be up there, with Tom."

"I doubt they'll have gone to bed, my lady, either of them. Nor yet I won't be quite sure we shan't find the doctor there." Thus Mrs. Lamprey, making Gwen's heart sink. For what but very critical circumstances could have kept Dr. Nash at the Cottage till past one in the morning? But then, these circumstances must be recent. Else he could never have wished the letter kept back till to-morrow. She said something to this effect to her companion, who replied:—"No doubt your ladyship knows!"

There was a light in the front-room, and someone was moving about. The arrival of the carriage caused the dog to bark, once but not more, as though for recognition or warning; not as a dog who resented it—merely as a janitor, officially. The doorbell, in response to a temperate pull, grated on the silence of the night, overdoing its duty and suggesting that the puller's want of restraint was to blame. Then came a footstep, but no noise of bolt or bar withdrawn. Then Ruth Thrale's voice, wondering who this could be. And then her surprise when she saw her visitor, whose words to her were:—"I thought it best to come at once!"

"Oh, but she is better! Indeed we think she is better. Dr. Nash was to write and tell you, so you should know—not to hurry to come too soon." Thus Ruth, much distressed at this result of the doctor's despatch.

"Never mind me! You are sure she is better? Is that Dr. Nash's voice?" Yes—it was. He had been there since eleven, and was just going.

Ruth went in to tell Granny Marrable it was her ladyship, as Dr. Nash came out. "I'm to blame, Lady Gwendolen," said he. "I'm to blame for being in too great a hurry. It was a blunder. But I can't pretend to be sorry I made it—that's the truth!"

"You mean that she isn't out of the wood?"

"That kind of thing. She isn't."

"Oh dear!" Gwen sank into a chair, looking white. Hope had flared up, to be damped down. How often the stokers—nurses or doctors—have to pile wet ashes on a too eager blaze! How seldom they dare to add fresh fuel!

"I will tell you," said the doctor. "She was very much better all Friday, taking some nourishment. And there is no doubt the champagne did her good—just a spoonful at a time, you know, not more. She isn't halfway through the bottle yet. I thought she was on her way to pull through, triumphantly. Then something upset her."

"Well, but—what?" For the doctor had paused at some obstacle, unexplained.

"That I can't tell you. You must ask Granny Marrable about that. Not her daughter—niece—whatever she is. Don't say anything to her. She is not to know."

Granny Marrable was audible in the passage without. "Can't you tell me what sort of thing?" said Gwen, under her voice.

"It was in a letter that came to her from Snaps—Sapps Court. The Granny wouldn't tell me what was in it, and begged I would say nothing of it to Widow Thrale. But the old soul was badly upset by it, shaking all over and asking for you...."

"Was she asking for me? Then I'm so glad you sent for me. I would not have been away on any account."

"It had nothing to do with my writing. I should have written for you to come to-morrow anyhow.... Here comes Granny Marrable." They had been talking alone, as Mrs. Lamprey had gone outside to speak to Tom.

"Still asleep, Granny?" said the doctor. Yes—she was, said the old lady; nicely asleep. "Then I'll be off, as it's late." Gwen suggested that Tom might drive him home, with Mrs. Lamprey, and call back for instructions.

Said Granny Marrable then, not as one under any new stress:—"My lady, God bless you for coming, though I would have been glad it had been daylight. To think of your ladyship out in the cold and damp, for our sakes!"

"Never mind me, Granny! I'll go to bed to-morrow night. Now tell me about this letter.... Is Ruth safe in there?" Yes, she was; and would stay there by her dear mother. Gwen continued: —"Dr. Nash has just told me there was some letter. But he did not know what was in it."

"He was not to know. But you were, my lady. This is it. Can you see with the candle?"

Gwen took the letter, and turned to the signature before reading it. It was from "Ralph Thornton Daverill, alias Rix," which she read quite easily, for the handwriting was educated enough, and clear. "I see no date," said she. "Why did Dr. Nash say it had come from Sapps Court?"

"Because, my lady, he saw the envelope. Perhaps your ladyship knows of 'Aunt Maria.' She is little Dave's aunt, in London."

"Oh yes—I know 'Aunt M'riar.' I know her, herself. Why does she write her name on a letter from this man?"

"I do not know. There is all we know, in the letter, as you have it."

"Whom do you suppose Ralph Thornton Daverill to be, Granny?"

"I know, unhappily. He is her son."

"The son.... Oh yes—I knew of him. She has told me of him. Besides, I knew her name was Daverill, from the letters." Granny Marrable was going on to say something, but Gwen stopped her, saying:—"First let me read this." Then the Granny was silent, while the young lady read, half aloud and half to herself, this following letter:—

"Mother—You will be surprised to get this letter from me. Are you sorry I am not dead? Can't say I'm glad. I have been His Majesty's guest for one long spell, and Her Majesty's for another, since you saw the last of me. I'm none so sure I wasn't better off then, but I couldn't trust H.M.'s hospitality again. It might run to a rope's end. Dodging blood-hounds is my lay now, and I lead the life of a cat in hell. But I'm proud—proud I am. You read the newspaper scrap I send along with this, and you'll be proud of your son. I'm a chip of the old block, and when my Newgate-frisk comes, I'll die game. Do you long to see your loving son? If you don't, send him a quid or two—or put it at a fiver. Just for to enable him to lead an honest life, which is my ambition. You can come to a fiver. Or would you rather have your loving son come and ask for it? How would you like it, if you were an honest man without a mag in his pocket, and screwpulls of conscience? You send on a flimsy to M'riar. She'll see I get it. I'll come for more when I want it—you be easy. So no more at present from your dutiful son:—

Ralph Thornton Daverill, alias Rix."
"P.S.—You can do it—or ask a kind friend to help."

"What a perfectly intolerable letter!" said Gwen. "What does he mean by a newspaper scrap?... Oh, is that it?" She took from the old lady a printed cutting, and read it aloud. "Fancy his being that man," said she. "It made quite a talk last winter—was in all the papers." It was the paragraph Uncle Mo had come upon in the Star.

"I have seen that man," said Granny Marrable. And so sharp was Gwen in linking up clues, that she exclaimed at once:—"What—the madman? Dr. Nash told me of him. Didn't he come to hunt her up?"

"That was it, my lady. And he was all but caught. But I have never spoken of my meeting him, and she has barely spoken of him, till this letter came yesterday. And then we could speak of him together. But not Ruth. She was to know nothing. She was not here, by good luck, just the moment that it came."

"And my dear old Mrs. Picture? Oh, Granny—what a letter for her to get!"

"Indeed, my lady, she was very badly shaken by it. I would have been glad if I might have read it myself first, to tell her of it gently." Granny Marrable was entirely mistaken. "Break it gently," sounds so well! What is it worth in practice?

"Could she understand the letter. I couldn't, at first."

"She understood it better than I did. But it set her in a trembling, and then she got lost-like, and we thought it best to go for Dr. Nash.... No—Ruth never knew anything of the letter, not a word. And her mother said never a word to her. For he was her brother."

"I cannot understand some things in the letter now, but I see he is thoroughly vile. One thing is good, though! What he wants is money."

"Will that...?"

"Keep him quiet and out of the way? Yes—of course it will. Let me take the letter to show to my father. He will know what to do." She knew that her father's first thought might be to use the clue to catch the man, but she also knew he would not act upon it if his doing so was likely to shorten the span of life still left to old Maisie. "What was he like?" said she to Granny Marrable.

"Some might call him good-looking," was the cautious answer.

"You think I shouldn't, evidently?" Evidently.

"It is not the face itself. It is in the shape of it. A twist. I took him for mad, but he is not."

"How came you to know him for your sister's son?"

"Ah, my lady, how could I? For Maisie was still dead then, for me. I could know he was Mrs. Prichard's son, for he said so."

"I see. It was before. But you talk about him to her now?"

"She cannot talk of much else, when Ruth is away. She will talk of him to you, when she wakes.... Hush—I think Ruth is coming!" Gwen slipped the letter in her pocket, to be out of the way.

No change in her mother—that was Ruth's report. She had not stirred in her sleep. You could hardly hear her breathe. This was to show that you could hear her breathe, by listening. It covered any possible alarm about the nature of so moveless a sleep, without granting discussion of the point.

Gwen had told Tom Kettering to return shortly, but only for orders. Her own mind was quite made up—not to leave the old lady until alarms had died down. If the clouds cleared, she would think about it. Tom must drive back at once to the Towers; and if anyone was still out of bed whose concern it was to know, he might explain that she was not coming back at present. Or stop a minute!—she would write a short line to her father. Ruth and Granny Marrable lodged a formal protest. But how glad they were to have her there, on any terms!

She had really come prepared to stay the night; but until she could hear how the land lay had not disclosed her valise. Tom, returning for orders, deposited it in the front-room, and departed, leaving it to be carefully examined by the dog, who could not disguise his interest in leather.

The only obstacle to an arrangement for one of the three to be always close at hand when the sleeper waked was the usual one. In such cases everyone wants to be the sentinel on the first watch, and not on any account to sleep. A dictator is needed, and Gwen assumed the office. Her will was not to be disputed. She told Granny Marrable and Ruth to go to bed or at least to go and lie down, and she would call one of them if it was necessary. They looked at each other and obeyed. She herself could lie down and sleep, if she chose, on the big bed beside the old lady, and she might choose. The end would be gained. There would then be no fear of old Maisie awakening alone in the dark, a prey to horrible memories and apprehensions, this last one worst of all—this nightmare son with his hideous gaol-bird past and his veiled threats for the future. That was more important than the meat-jelly, beef-tea, stimulants, what not? They would probably be refused. Still they were to be reckoned with, and Ruth was within call to supply them.

In the darkness and the silence of the night, a solitary, discouraged candle in a shade protesting feebly against the one, and every chance sound that day would have ignored emphasizing the other, the stillness of the figure on the bed became a mystery and an oppression. How Gwen would have welcomed a recurrence of the faintest breath, to keep alive her confidence that this was only sleep—sleep to be welcomed as the surest herald of life and strength! How she longed to touch the blue-veined wrist upon the coverlid, but once, just for a certainty of a beating pulse, however faint! She dared not, even when a heavy avalanche of melted snow from the eaves without, that made her start, left the sleeper undisturbed; even when a sudden faggot in the fireplace, responsive to the snowfall, broke and fell into the smouldering red below, and crackled into flame without awakening her. For Gwen knew the shrewd powers of a finger-touch to rouse the deepest sleeper. But she was grateful for that illumination, for it showed her a silver thread of hair near enough to the nostril to be stirred to and fro by the breath that went and came. And by its light the delicate transparency of the wrist showed the regular pulsation of the heart. All was well.

She had plenty to occupy her thoughts. She could sit and think of the strangeness of her own life, and its extraordinary inequalities. What could clash more discordantly than this moment and a memory of a month ago that rushed into her mind for no apparent reason but to make a parade of its own incongruity. Do you remember that brilliant dress of Madame Pontet that she tried on at Park Lane, with "the usual tight armhole"? That dress had figured as a notable achievement of the modiste's art, worthy of its wearer's surpassing beauty, in a dazzling crowd of Stars and Garters and flashing diamonds, and loveliness that was old enough for Society, and valour that was too old for the field of battle; and much of the wit of the time and a little of the learning, trappings of well-mounted dramatis personæ on the World's stage. That dress and its contents had made many a woman jealous, and been tenacious of many a man's memory, young and old, for weeks after. Here was the wearer, watching in the night beside a convict's relict, a worse convict's mother, a waif and stray picked up in a London Court off Tottenham Court Road! And the heart of the watcher was praying for only one little act of grace in Destiny, to grant a short span yet of life, were it no more than a year, to this frail survivor of a long and cruel separation from one whose youth had been another self to her own.

And as for that other affair, what did she really recollect of it? Well—she could remember that tight armhole, certainly, and was far from sure she should ever forget it.

The chance that had brought the sisters back to each other was so strange that the story of their deception and the loss of every clue to its remedy seemed credible by comparison—a negligible improbability. Would they necessarily have recognised one another at all if that letter had not come into the hands of her father? She herself would never have dared to open it; or, if she had, would she have understood its contents? Without that letter, what would the course of events have been? Go back and think of it! Imagine old Mrs. Picture in charge of Widow Thrale, groundedly suspected of lunacy, miserable under the fear that the suspicion might be true—for who can gauge his own sanity? Imagine Granny Marrable, kept away at Denby by her daughter, that her old age should not be afflicted by a lunatic. Imagine the longing of Sapps Court to have Mrs. Picture back, and the chair with cushions, in the top garret, that yawned for her. Imagine these, and remember that probably old Maisie, to seem sane at any cost, would have gone on indefinitely keeping silence about her own past life, whatever temptation she may have been under to speak again of the mill-model, invisible in its carpet-roll above the fireplace. Remember that what Dr. Nash elicited from her, as an interesting case of dementia, was not necessarily repeated to Mrs. Thrale, and would have been a dead letter in the columns of the Lancet later on. Certainly the chances of an éclaircissement were at a minimum when Gwen returned from London, her own newly acquired knowledge of its materials apart. But then, how about the poor crazy old soul's daughter's new-born love for her unrecognised mother, and her mysteriously heart-whole return for it?

That might have brought the end about. But to Gwen it seemed speculative and uncertain, and to point to no more than a possible return to London of the mother, accompanied by her unknown and unknowing daughter. A curious vision flashed across her mind of Ruth Thrale, entertained at Sapps by old Mrs. Picture; and there, by the window, the table with the new leg; and, in the drawer of it ... what? A letter written five-and-forty years ago, that had changed the lives of both! Gwen's imagination restored the unread letter to its place, with rigid honesty. But—how strange!

Then her imagination came downstairs, and glanced in on the way at the room where the mysterious fireman, who came from the sky, had deposited the half-insensible old lady, after the cataclysm. It was Uncle Mo's room, on the safe side of the house; and the walls were enriched with prints of heroes of the Ring in old time; Figg and Broughton, Belcher and Bendigo, sparring for ever in close-fitting pants by themselves on a very fine day. She recalled how the unmoved fireman, departing, had shown a human interest in one of these, remarking that it was a namesake of his. Suppose that fireman had not been at hand, how would old Maisie have been got downstairs? Suppose that she herself had been flattened under the ruins, would all things now have been quite otherwise? See how much had turned on that visit to Cavendish Square! No—a hundred things had happened, the absence of any one of which might have changed the current of events, and left old Maisie to end her days undeceived; and perhaps the whole tale of her lonely life and poverty to come to light afterwards, and cast a gloom without a chance of solace over the last hours of her surviving twin....

Was that the movement of a long-drawn breath, the precursor of an unspoken farewell to the land of dreams? Scarcely! Nothing but a fancy, this time, bred of watching too closely in the silence! Wait for the clear signs of awakening, sure to come, in time!

It was so still, Gwen could hear the swift tick-tick-tick in the watch-pocket at the bed's head; and, when she listened to it, her consciousness that the big clock in the kitchen was at odds with the hearth-cricket, rebuking his speed solemnly, grew less and less. For the sound we look to hear comes out of the silence, when no other sound has in it the force to speak on its own behalf. Two closed doors made the kitchen-chorus dim. The new faggot had said its say, and given in to mere red heat, with a stray flicker at the end. Drip and trickle were without, and now and then a plash that said:—"Keep in doors, because of me!" Gwen closed her eyes, as, since she was so wakeful, she could do so with perfect safety; and listened to that industrious little watch.

It had become Dolly reciting the days of the week, before she knew her vigilance was in danger. Gwen was certainly not asleep long, because Dolly had only got to the second Tundy, when a scream awoke her, close at hand to where Dolly was seated on General Rawnsley's knee. But it was quick work, to think out where she was, and to throw her arms round the frail, trembling form that was starting up from some terror of dreamland unexplained, on the bed beside her.

"What is it, dear, what is it? Don't be frightened. See, I'm Gwen! I brought you here, you know. There—there! Now it's all right." She spoke as one speaks to a frightened child.

Old Maisie was trembling all over, and did not know where she was, at first. "Don't let him come—don't let him come!" was what she kept saying, over and over again. This passed off, and she knew Gwen, but was far from clear about time and place. Questioned as to who it was that was not to come, she had forgotten, but was aware she had been asleep and dreaming. "Did I make a great noise and shout out?" said she.

Ruth Thrale appeared, waked by the cry. It had not added to her uneasiness. "She was like this, all yesterday," said she. "All on the jar. Dr. Nash hopes it will pass off." Ruth, of course, knew nothing of the coming of the son's letter, and regarded her mother's state as only a fluctuation. She had a quiet self-command that refused to be panic-struck. In fact, she had held back from coming, long enough to make sure that Granny Marrable had slept through the scream. That was all right. Gwen urged her to go back to bed, and prevailed over her by adopting a positive tone. She agreed to go when she had made "her mother" swallow something to sustain life. Gwen asked if the champagne had continued in favour. "She doesn't fancy it alone," said Ruth. "But I put it in milk, and she takes it down without knowing it." Probably nurses are the most fraudulent people in the world.

Old Maisie kept silence resolutely about the letter until Ruth had gone back; which she only did unwillingly, as concession to a force majeure. Then the old lady said:—"Is she gone? I would not have her see her brother's letter. But I would be glad you should see it, my dear." She was exploring feebly under her pillow and bolster, to find it. Gwen understood. "It's not there," said she. "I have it here. Granny Marrable got at it to show to me." She hoped the old lady was not going to insist on having that letter re-read. It made the foulness of the criminal world, unknown to her except as material for the legitimate drama, a horrible reality, and bred misgivings that the things in the newspapers were really true.

Old Maisie disappointed her. "Read me aloud what my son says," said she. Then Gwen understood what Granny Marrable had meant when she said that, of the two, her sister had understood it the better. For as she uttered the letter's repulsive expressions, reluctantly enough, a side-glance showed her old Maisie's listening face and closed eyes, nowise disturbed at her son's rather telling description of his hunted life. At the reference to the "newspaper scrap" she said:—"Yes, Phoebe read me that with her glasses. He got away." Gwen felt that that strange past life, in a land where almost every settler had the prison taint on him, had left old Maisie abler to endure the flavour of the gaol-bird's speech about himself. It was as though an Angel who had been in Hell might know all its ways, and yet remain unsullied by the knowledge.

But at the words:—"Do you long to see your loving son?" she moved and spoke uneasily. "What does he mean? Oh, what does he mean? Was it all his devil?" She seemed ill able to find words for her meaning, but Gwen took it that she was trying to express some hint of a better self in this son, perhaps latent behind the evil spirit that possessed him.

Her comment was:—"Oh dear no! What he means is that he will come and frighten you to death if you don't send him money. It is only a threat to get money. Dear Mrs. Picture, don't you fret about him. Leave him to me and my father.... What does he mean by a quid? A hundred pounds, I suppose? And a fiver, five hundred?... is that it?"

"Oh no—he would never ask me for all that money! A quid is a guinea—only there are no guineas now. He means a five-pound-note by a fiver." Her voice died from weakness. The "Please go on!" that followed, was barely audible.

Gwen read on:—"'Just for to enable him to lead an honest life.' Dear Mrs. Picture, I must tell you I think this is what is called sneering. You know what that means? He is not in earnest."

"Oh yes—I know. I am afraid you are right. But is it himself?" That idea of the devil again!

Gwen evaded the devil. "We must hope not," said she. She went on, learning by the way what a "mag" was, and a "flimsy." She paused on Aunt M'riar. Why was "M'riar" to act as this man's agent? She wished Thothmes was there, with his legal acumen. But old Maisie might be able to tell something. She questioned her gently. How did she suppose Aunt Maria came to know anything of her son? She had to wait for the answer.

It came in time. "Not Aunt M'riar. Someone else."

"No—Aunt Maria. She wrote her name on the envelope; to show where it came from, I suppose." The perplexity suggested silenced old Maisie. Gwen compared the handwritings of the letter and direction. They were the same—a man's hand, clearly. "From Aunt Maria" was in a woman's hand. Gwen did not attempt to clear up the mystery. She was too anxious about the old lady, and, indeed, was feeling the strain of this irregular night. For, strong as she was, she was human.

Her anxiety kept the irresistible powers of Sleep at bay for a while; and then, when it was clear that old Maisie was slumbering again, with evil dreams in abeyance, she surrendered at discretion. All the world became dim, and when the clock struck four, ten seconds later, she did not hear the last stroke.

---

When Gwen awoke six hours after, she had the haziest recollections of the night. How it had come about that she found herself in another room, warmly covered up, and pillowed on luxury itself, with a smell of lavender in it that alone was bliss, she could infer from Ruth Thrale's report. This went to show that when Ruth and Granny Marrable came into the room at about six, they found her ladyship undisguisedly asleep beside old Maisie; and when she half woke, persuaded her away to more comfortable quarters. She had no distinct memory of details, but found them easy of belief, told by eyewitnesses.

How was the dear old soul herself? Had she slept sound, or been roused again by nightmares? Well—she had certainly done better than on the previous afternoon and evening, after the receipt of that letter. Thus Granny Marrable, in conference with her ladyship at the isolated breakfast of the latter. Ruth, to whom the contents of the letter were still unknown, was keeping guard by her mother.

"We put it all down to your ladyship," said the Granny, with grave truthfulness—not a trace of flattery. "She can never tire of telling the good it does her to see you." This was the nearest she could go, without personality, to a hint at the effect the sheer beauty of her hearer had on the common object of their anxiety.

Gwen knew perfectly well what she meant. She was used to this sort of thing. "She likes my hair," said she, to lubricate the talk; and gave the mass of unparalleled gold an illustrative shake. Then, to steer the ship into less perilous, more impersonal waters:—"I must have another of those delightful little hot rolls, if I die for it. Mr. Torrens's mother—him I brought here, you know; he's got a mother—says new bread at breakfast is sudden death. I don't care!"

The Granny was fain to soften any implied doubt of a County Magnate's infallibility, even when uttered by one still greater. "A many," said she, "do not find them unwholesome." This left the question pleasantly open. But she was at a loss to express something she wanted to say. It is difficult to tell your guest, however surpassingly beautiful, that she has been mistaken for an Angel, even when the mistake has been made by failing powers or delirium, or both together. Yet that was what Granny Marrable's perfect truthfulness and literal thought were hanging fire over. Old Maisie had said to her, in speech as passionate as her weakness allowed:—"Phoebe, dearest Phoebe, my lady is God's Angel, come from Heaven to drive the fiend out of the heart of my poor son." And Phoebe, to whom everything like concealment was hateful, wanted sorely to repeat to her ladyship the conversation which ended in this climax. Otherwise, how could the young lady come to know what was passing in Maisie's mind?

She approached the subject with caution. "My dear sister's mind," said she, "has been greatly tried. So we must think the less of exciting fancies. But I would not say her nay in anything she would have me think."

Gwen's attention was caught. "What sort of things?" said she. "Yes—some more coffee, please, and a great deal of sugar!"

"Strange, odd things. Stories, about Van Diemen's Land."

Gwen had a clue, from her tone. "Has she been telling you about the witch-doctor, and the devil, and the scorpion, and the little beast?"

"They were in her story. It made my flesh creep to hear so outlandish a tale. And she told your ladyship?"

"Oh dear yes! She has told me all about it! And not only me, but Mr. Torrens. The old darling! Did she tell you of the little polecat beast the doctor ate, who was called a devil, and how he possessed the doctor—no getting rid of him?"

"She told me something like that."

"And what did you say to her?"

"I said that Our Lord cast out devils that possessed the swine, and had He cast them again out of the swine, they might have possessed Christians. For I thought, to please Maisie, I might be forgiven such speech."

"Why not? That was all right." Gwen could not understand why Scripture should be inadmissible, or prohibited.

Granny Marrable seemed to think it might be the latter. "I would not be thought," she said, "to compare what we are taught in the Bible with ... with things. Our Lord was in Galilee, and we are taught what came to pass. This was in The Colonies, where any one of us might be, to-day or to-morrow."

Gwen appreciated the distinction. It would clearly be irreverent to mention a nowadays-devil, close at hand, in the same breath as the remoter Gadarenes. She said nothing about Galilee being there still, with perhaps the identical breed of swine, and even madmen. The Granny's inner vision of Scripture history was unsullied by realisms—a true history, of course, but clear of vulgar actualities. Still, something was on her mind that she was bound to speak about to her ladyship, and she was forced to use the Gospel account of an incident "we were taught" to believe no longer possible, as a means of communicating to Gwen what she herself held to be no more than a feverish dream of her sister's weakness. Gwen detected in her tone its protest against the confusion of vulgar occurrences, in all their coarse authenticity, with the events of Holy Writ, and forthwith launched out in an attempt to find the underlying cause of it. "Did the old darling," said she, "tell you how Rookaroo, or whatever his name was, passed his devil on to her husband and son?"

"I think, my lady, she has that idea."

"It seems to me a very reasonable idea," said Gwen. "Once you have a devil at all, why not? And it was to be like the madman in the tombs in the land of the Gadarenes! Poor old darling Mrs. Picture!"

Old Phoebe felt very uncomfortable, for Gwen was not taking the devil seriously. Although scarcely prepared to have Scripture used to substantiate a vulgar Colonial sample, the old lady was even less ready to have such a one doubted, if the doubt was to recoil on his prototype. "Maisie is of the mind to fancy this evil spirit might even now be driven from her son's heart, and bring him to repentance. But I told her a many things might be, in the days of our blessed Lord, in the Holy Land, that were forbidden now. It was just his own wickedness, I told her, and no devil to be cast out. But she was so bent on the idea, that I could not find it in me to say this man might not repent and turn to Godliness yet, by your ladyship's influence, or Parson Dunage's." This introduction of the incumbent of Chorlton was an afterthought. The fact is, Granny Marrable was endeavouring to suggest a rationalistic interpretation of her sister's undisguised mysticism; fever-bred, no doubt, but scarcely to be condemned as delusion outright without impugning devils, who are standard institutions. Good influences, brought to bear on perverted human hearts, are quite correct and modern.

Granny Marrable's words left Gwen unsuspicious that powers of exorcism had been imputed to her. The ascription of them might be—certainly was—nothing but an outcome of the overstrain and tension of the last few days, but the repetition of it in cold blood to its subject might have been taken to mean that it was a symptom of insanity. Gwen did not press her to tell more, as Dr. Nash made his appearance. The frequency of his visits was a source of uneasiness to her. She would have liked to hear him say there was now no need for him to come again till he was sent for.

"Any fresh developments?" said he, as Granny Marrable left the room to herald his arrival. He heard Gwen's account of her own experience in the night, and seemed disquieted. "I wish," said he abruptly, "that people would keep their letters to themselves. I am not to be told what was in the letter, I understand?" For Gwen had skipped the contents of it, merely saying that Mrs. Picture had asked to hear her letter read through again.

Then Widow Thrale came in, saying her mother was ready to see the doctor. Mother was with her mother, she said. The doctor departed into the bedroom.

"How long has your mother been awake?" asked Gwen under no drawback about the designation.

"Quite half an hour. I told her your ladyship was having a little breakfast. She always asks for you."

"I heard that she was talking, through the door. What has she been talking about?"

Ruth's memory went back conscientiously, for a starting-point. "About her annuity," she said, "first. Then about the young children—little Dave and Dolly. That's mother's little Dave, only it's all so strange to think of. And then she talked about the accident."

"What about her annuity? I'm curious about that. I wonder who sends it to her?"

"She says it comes from the Office, because they know her address. She says Susan Burr took them the new address, when they left Skillick's. She says she writes her name on the back...."

"It's a cheque, I suppose?"

"Your ladyship would know. Susan Burr takes it to the Bank and brings back the money." Ruth hesitated over saying:—"I would be happier my mother should not fret so about herself ... she was for making her will, and I told her there would be time for that."

"Oh yes—plenty!" Gwen thought to herself that old Mrs. Picture's testamentary arrangements were of less importance than tranquillity, as matters stood at present. "What did she say of Dave and Dolly?"

"She was put about to think how they would be told, if she died."

"How would they be told?... I can't think." Gwen asked herself the question, and parried it.

Ruth Thrale escaped in a commonplace. The dear children would have to be told, but they would not grieve for long. Children didn't.

Gwen hoped she was right—always a good thing to do. But what had her mother said about the accident? Oh—the accident! Well—she remembered very little of it. She did not know why she should have become half unconscious. The last thing she could be clear about was that Dave was shouting for joy, and Dolly frightened and crying. Then a gentleman carried her upstairs out of a carriage.

"No!" said Gwen. "Carried her downstairs into a carriage.... Oh no!—I know what she meant. It was my cousin Percy, not the fireman."

At this point Dr. Nash returned from the bedroom. Gwen began hoping that he had found his patient really better, but something stopped her speech, and she said:—"Oh!" Ruth Thrale was outside the room by then, far enough to miss the disappointment in her voice.

Dr. Nash glanced round to make sure she was out of hearing, and closed the door. "I don't like to say much, either way," said he.

Gwen turned pale. "You need not be afraid to tell me," she said.

"I see you know what I mean," said he, reading into her thoughts. "Miracle apart, one knows what to expect. I don't believe in any miracle, though certainly she has everything in her favour for it, in one sense."

"Meaning?" said Gwen interrogatively.

"Meaning that she has absolutely nothing the matter with her. If she has any active disorder, all I can say is it has baffled me to find it out."

"But, then, why?..."

"Why be frightened? Listen, and I'll tell you.... We gain nothing, you know, by not looking the facts in the face."

"I know. Go on." Gwen sat down, and waited. Some faces lose under stress of emotion. It was a peculiarity of this young lady's that every fresh tension added to the surpassing beauty of hers.

"I want you," said the doctor, speaking in a dry, businesslike way—"I want you to go back to when you brought her down here from London. Think of her then."

"I am thinking of her. I can remember her then, perfectly." And Gwen, thinking of that journey, saw her old companion plainly enough. A very old delicate woman, in need of consideration and care. No bedridden invalid! "When did the change show itself?" The doctor took the image in her mind for granted, successfully.

Then Gwen cast about to find an answer. "I think it must have been.... said she, and stopped.

"When did you see it?"

"When I came back, first. After I told her, still more."

"After that?"

"I thought she was improving, every day."

"I thought you thought so."

"And you mean that it was a mistake. Oh dear!"

The doctor shook his head, slowly and sadly. "Yesterday, at this time," said he, "she could sit up in bed. With an exertion, you know! To-day she can't do it at all." Both remained silent, and seemed to accept a conclusion that did not need words. Then the doctor resumed, speaking very quietly:—"It is always like this. Two steps back and one forward—two steps back and one forward. We see the one step on because we want to. We don't want to see what's unwelcome. So we don't discount the losses."

Then Gwen, with that quiet resolution which he had known to be part of her character, or he would scarcely have been so explicit, said:—"What will she die of?"

"Old age, accelerated by mental perturbation."

"Can you at all guess when?"

"If she had any definite malady, I could guess better. She may linger on for weeks. It won't go to months, in any case. Or she may pop off before that clock strikes."

"Shall we tell them?"

"I say no. No. They will probably have her the longer for not knowing. And, mind you, she is keeping her faculties. She's wonderfully bright, and is suffering absolutely nothing."

"You are sure of that?"

"Absolutely sure. Go in and talk to her now. You'll find her quite herself, but for a little fancifulness at times. It really is no more than that.... By-the-by!..."

"What?"

"Do you know what was in the letter that upset her so? The old Granny did not say what was in it, and charged me to say nothing to her daughter." The doctor had all but said:—"To their daughter!"

"I know what was in the letter." Gwen paused a moment to consider how much she should tell, and then took the doctor into her confidence; not exhaustively, but sufficiently. "You are supposed to know nothing about it," said she. "But I don't think it much matters, so long as Ruth—Widow Thrale—does not know. That is her mother's wish. I don't suppose she really minds, about you."

"All I can say is, I wish to God this infernal scoundrel's devil would fly away with him. Good-morning. I shall be round again about six o'clock."

---

CHAPTER XXVII

HOW SPARROWS GORMANDISE. DAVE'S CISTERN. DOLLY AND JONES'S BULL. THE LETTER HAD DONE IT. HOW TOM KETTERING DROVE WIDOW THRALE TO DENBY'S FARM, AND MAISIE WOKE UP. HOW DAVE ATE TOO MANY MULBERRIES. OLD JASPER. OLD GOSSET AND CULLODEN. HIS TOES. HOW MAISIE ASKED TO SEE THE OLD MODEL AGAIN, AND HAD IT OUT BESIDE THE BED. DID IT GO ROUND, OR WAS DAVE MISTAKEN? THE GLASS WATER, AND HOW MAISIE HAD BROKEN A PIECE OFF, SEVENTY YEARS AGO. HOW A RATCHET-SPRING STRUCK WORK. WAS IT TOBY OR TOFT? BARNABY. BRAINTREE. ST. PAUL'S. BARNABY'S CO-RESPONDENCE. OLD CHIPSTONE. HOW PHOEBE NEARLY LOST HER EYE. OLD MARTHA PRICHARD. A REVERIE OF GWEN'S, ENDING IN LAZARUS. MAISIE'S PURSE

Has it ever been your lot—you who read this—to be told that Life is ebbing, slowly, slowly, every clock-tick telling on the hours that are left before the end—the end of all that has made your fellow in the flesh more than an image and a name? In so many hours, so many minutes, that image as it was will be vanishing, that name will be a memory. All that made either of them ours to love or hate, to be thought of as friend or foe, will have ceased for all time—for all the time we anticipate; more, or less as may be, than Oblivion's period, named in her pact with Destiny. In so many hours, so many minutes, that unseen mystery, the thing we call our friend's, our foe's, own self will make no sign to show that this is he. And we shall determine that he is no more, or agree that he has departed, much as we have been taught to think, but little as we have learned to know.

If you yourself have outlived other lives, and yet borne the foreknowledge of Death unmoved, you will not understand why Gwen's heart within her, when she heard Dr. Nash's words and took their meaning, should be likened to a great stifled sob, nor why she had to summon all her powers afield to bear arms against her tears. They came at her call, and fought so well that the enemy had fled before she had to show dry eyes, and speak with normal voice, to Ruth Thrale, who came in to say that her mother was asking for her ladyship. Come what might, she must keep her gloomy knowledge from Ruth.

"What a fuss about old me!" says the voice from the pillow, speaking low, but with happy contentment. "Would not anyone think I was dying?"

Now, if only Dr. Nash would have kept those prophecies to himself, Gwen would have thought her better. She could have discounted the weakness, or laid it down to imperfect nourishment. She could not trust herself to much speech, saying only:—"We shall have you walking about soon, and what will the doctor say then?"

She looked across at the old sister, grave and silent, whom she had supposed unoppressed, so far, by medical verdicts. But the invitation of a smile she achieved, mechanically, to help towards incredulity of Death, only met a half-response. "Indeed, my lady," said Granny Marrable, "we shall have some time to wait for that, if she will still eat nothing. A sparrow could not live upon the little food she takes."

What was old Maisie saying? She could live on less than a sparrow's food—that was the upshot. The sparrow was a greedy little bird, and she had seen him gormandise in Sapps Court. "My darling Dave and Dolly," she said, "would feed them, on the leads at the back, out of my bedroom window, where the cistern is." Gwen perceived the source of a misapprehension of Dave's.

"He's to come here," said she. "Him and Dolly. And then they can feed the cocks and hens."

"When I'm up," said old Maisie. She had no misgivings.

"When you're up."

"And Dave may go and see Farmer Jones's Bull?"

"And Dave may go and see Farmer Jones's Bull."

"But not Dolly, because she would be frightened."

"Not Dolly, then. Dolly is small, to see Bulls." Old Maisie closed her eyes upon this, and enjoyed the thought of Dave's rapture at that appalling Bull.

Granny Marrable indicated by two glances, one at Gwen, the other at the white face on the pillow, that her sister might sleep, given silence. Gwen watched for the slackening of the hand that held hers, to get gently free. Old Phoebe did the same, and drew the bed-curtain noiselessly, to hide the window-light. Both stole away, leaving what might have been an alabaster image, scarcely breathing, on the bed.

"It is the letter that has done it. Oh, how unfortunate!" So Gwen spoke, to the Granny, in the kitchen: for Ruth, though attending to the Sunday dinner, was for the moment absent. So the letter could be referred to.

"I fear what your ladyship says is true."

"But at least we know what it is that has done it. That is something." Granny Marrable seemed slow to understand. "I mean, if it had not been for the letter, she certainly need not have been any worse than she was last Sunday. She was getting on so well, Ruth said, on Friday, after the champagne. Oh dear!"

"It will be as God wills, my lady. If my dear sister is again to be taken from me...."

"Oh, Granny, do not let us talk like that!" But Gwen could put little heart into her protest. The doctor had taken all the wind out of her sails.

Old Phoebe let the interruption pass. "If Maisie dies.... said she, and stopped.

"If Maisie dies...?" said Gwen, and waited.

The answer came, but not at once. "It is the second time."

"I don't think I quite understand, Granny," said Gwen gently. Which was meant, that this made it easier to bear, or harder?

"I am slow to speak what I think, my lady. I would like to find words to say it.... I lost Maisie forty-five—yes!—forty-six years ago, and the grief of her loss is with me still. Had she died here, near at hand, so I might have known where they laid her, I would have kept fresh flowers on her grave till now. But she was dead, far away across the sea. I am too old now for what has come of it. But I can see what-like it all is. Maisie is with me again, from the tomb—for a little while, and then to go. She will go first, and I shall soon follow; it cannot be long. No—it cannot be long! The light will come. And God be praised for His goodness! We shall lie in one grave, Maisie and I. We shall not be parted in Death." These last words Gwen accepted as conventional. She listened, somewhat as in a dream, to Granny Marrable's voice, going quietly on, with no very audible undertone of pain in it:—"It is not of myself I am thinking, but my child. She has found her mother, and loved her, before she knew it was herself, risen from the grave.... Oh no—no—no, my lady, I know it all well. My head is right. Maisie has been at hand these long years past, all unknown to me—oh, how cruelly unknown!" Here her words broke a little, with audible pain. "Her coming to us has been a resurrection from the tomb. It is little to me now, I am so near the end. But my heart goes out to my child, who will lose her mother.... Hush, she is coming back!"

The thought in Gwen's heart was:—"Pity me too, Granny, for I too—I, with all the wealth of the world at my feet!—shall feel a heartstring snap when this frail old waif and stray, so strangely found by me in a London slum, so strangely brought back by me into your life again, has passed away into the unknown." For she had scarcely been alive till now to the whole of her mysterious affection for dear old Mrs. Picture.

Ruth Thrale came back, and the day went on. Old Maisie remained asleep, sleeping as the effigy sleeps upon a tomb, but always with regular breath, barely sensible, and the same slow pulse. Now and again it might have seemed that breath had ceased. But it was not so. If the powers of life were on the wane, it was very slowly.

---

Tom Kettering returned at the appointed time, to a minute, and took no notice of his own arrival beyond socketing his whip in its stall, in token of its abdication. He had been told to come and wait, and he proceeded to wait, sine die. Gwen interrupted him in this employment, by coming out to tell him that she was stopping on, and that he was to go back to the Towers and say so. He looked so depressed at this that she bethought her of a compensation. She knew that Ruth Thrale had cause for anxiety about her own daughter; and, so far as could be seen, her immediate presence was not necessary, for no change appeared imminent. So she persuaded, or half-commanded, Ruth to be driven over to Denby's Farm by Tom Kettering, to remain there two or three hours, and be brought back by him or otherwise, as might be convenient. Her son-in-law might drive her back, and Tom might return to the Towers. It would make her mind easier to see Maisie junior, and get a forecast of probabilities at the farm. Ruth was not hard to prevail upon to do this, and was driven away by Tom over slushy roads, through the irresolute Winter's unseasonable Christmas Eve, after delegating some of her functions to Elizabeth-next-door.

Old Maisie still remained asleep, and almost motionless. With some help from Elizabeth-next-door the perfunctory midday meal had been served, very little more than looked at, and cleared away; then the motionless figure on the bed stirred visibly, breathed almost audibly. At this time of the day vitality is at its best, with most of us. Gwen, standing by the bedside, saw the lips move, and, bending forward, heard speech.

When she said, a moment after:—"I think I must have been asleep. I'm awake now,"—she uttered the words much as Gwen had always heard her speak. Yet another moment, and she said:—"I was dreaming, Phoebe dear, dreaming of our mill. And I was asking for you in my dream. Because Dave was up in our mulberry-tree, and wouldn't come down." She showed how perfectly clear her head was, by saying to Gwen:—"My dear, if I could have kept asleep, I would have seen Phoebe young again. You would never think how young she was then."

Gwen felt that she was nowise bound to dwell on the futility of dreams, and said, as she caressed the old hand's weak hold on her own:—"Was Dave eating too many mulberries in that tree?"

Old Maisie smiled happily at the thought of Dave. "His hands were quite purple with the juice," she said. "But he wouldn't come down, and went on eating the mulberries. It was the tree by itself behind the house, near the big hole where the sunflowers grew."

Granny Marrable's memory spanned the chasm—seventy years or so! "The biggest mulberry," she said, "was Old Jasper, in the front garden, near the wall.... It was always called Old Jasper." This replied to a look of Gwen's. Why should a mulberry-tree be called Old Jasper? Well—why should anything be called anything?

"I can smell the honeysuckle," said old Mrs. Picture. And her face looked quite serene and happy. "But the pigeons used to get all the mulberries on that tree, because they were close by."

"It stood by itself," said Granny Marrable. "And all the fruit-trees were in the orchard. So old Gosset with the wooden leg was always on that side with his clapper, never out in front."

"Old Gosset—who lost his leg at the battle of Culloden! I remember him so well. He said he could feel his toes all the same as if they was ten. He said it broke his heart to see the many cherries the birds got, for all the noise he made. He said they got bold, when they found he had a wooden leg...." She paused, hesitating, and then asked for Ruth.

Gwen told her how Ruth had gone to her own daughter, who was married, and how a second grandchild was overdue. In telling this, she feared she might not be understood. So she was pleased to hear old Mrs. Picture say quite clearly:—"Oh, but I know. A long while ago—my child—my Ruth—when she was Widow Thrale ... told me all that...."

"Yes, yes!" Gwen struck in. "I know. When you were here at the cottage, before.... she hesitated.

"Yes, before," said old Mrs. Picture. "When she showed me our old model, and did not know. That was the time she thought me mad. Phoebe—I want you ... I want you...." Her voice was getting weaker; as it would do, after much talking.

"What?—I wonder!" said Granny Marrable, and waited.

Gwen guessed. "You want to see the old model again? Is that it?" Yes, she did. That was a good guess.

"Maisie dearest, I will fetch you the model to the bedside, and light candles, so you shall see it. Only you will eat something first—to please me—to please my lady—will you not? Then you may be able to sit up, you know, and look at it." Granny Marrable jumped at the opportunity to get some food—ever so little—down her sister's throat. She had not given up hope of her reviving, if only for a while. Bear in mind that she was still in the dark about the doctor's real opinion.

The attempt at refection had a poor show of success, its only triumph worth mentioning being the exhibition of a driblet of champagne in milk. Almost before the patient had swallowed it, she had fallen back on her pillow in a drowsy half-sleep, with what seemed an increased colour, to eyes that were on the watch for it. She remained so until after the doctor's visit at six o'clock.

The doctor admitted that she had picked up a very little, and when she awoke would probably have another spell of brightness. But.... Speaking with Gwen alone on his way out, he ended on this monosyllable.

"What does that 'but' mean, doctor?"

"Means that you mustn't expect too much. I suppose you know that the mildest stimulant means reaction."

"I don't know that I ever thought about it, but I'll take your word for it."

"Well—you may. And you may take my word for this. When the vital powers are near their end—without disease, you know, without disease...."

"I know. She has nothing the matter with her."

"You can intensify vitality for a moment. But the reaction will come, and must hasten the end. You might halve the outstanding time of Life by doubling the vitality. If you employ any artificial stimulant, you only use up the heart-beats that are left. The upshot of it is—don't go beyond a tablespoonful twice a day with that liquor."

"I don't suppose she has had so much."

"Well—don't go beyond it. There is always the possibility—the bare possibility, even at eighty—of a definite revival. But...."

"But, again, doctor!"

"But again! Let it stop at that. I shall do no better by saying more. If I foresaw ... anything—within the next twelve hours, I would stay on to see your ladyship through. But there is nothing to go by. Quite impossible to predict!"

"Why do you say 'to see me through'? Why not her sister and daughter?"

"Because they are her sister and daughter. It's all in their day's work. Good-night, Lady Gwendolen." Gwen watched the doctor's gig down the road into the darkness, and saw that a man riding stopped him, as though to give a message. After which she thought he whipped up his pony, which also felt the influence of the rider's cob alongside, and threw off its usual apathy.

---

Old Maisie must have waked up just as the doctor departed, for there were voices in the bedroom, and Granny Marrable was coming out. The old lady had an end in view. She was bent on getting down the mill-model from over the fireplace. "My dear sister has a great fancy to see it once more," she said. "And I would be loth to say nay to her." Gwen said:—"Anything to keep her mind off that brute of a son!" And then between them they got the model down, and unwrapped the cloth from it. Elizabeth-next-door, coming in at this moment, left Gwen free to go back to old Maisie in the bedroom, who seemed roused to expectation. The doctor was clearly wrong, and all was going to be well. Mrs. Picture was not quite herself again, perhaps; but was mending.

"My dear, I am giving a world of trouble," she said. "But Phoebe is so kind, to take every little word I say."

"She likes doing it, Mrs. Picture dear. We've got down the mill to show you, and she will get it in here by the bed, so that you shall see without getting up. Elizabeth from next door is there to help her." So the mill-model, that had so much to answer for, was got out from behind its glass, and placed on the little table beside the bed.

Old Maisie's voice had rallied so much that surely her power of movement should have done so too. But no!—she could not raise herself in bed. It was an easy task to place her to the best advantage, but the sense of her helplessness was painful to Gwen, who raised her like a child with scarcely an effort, while Granny Marrable multiplied pillows to support her. The slightest attempt on her part towards movement would have been reassuring, but none came.

"I wonder now," she said vaguely. "Was it only Dave?"

"What about Dave, dear? What did Dave say?"

"Was it Dave who said it went round? I had the thought it went round. Which was it?"

"I showed it to Dave," said Granny Marrable, "and then it went, the same as new. I could try it again, only then I must take out the glass water, and put in real. And wind it up."

Old Mrs. Picture almost laughed, and the pleasure in her voice was good to hear. "Why, now I have it all back!" she said. "And there is father! Oh, Phoebe, do you remember how angry father was with me for breaking a piece off the glass water?"

Granny Marrable was looking for something, in the penetralia of the model. "Oh, I know," said she. "It's in behind the glass water.... I was looking for the piece.... I'll take the glass water out." She did so, and its missing fraction was found, stowed away behind the main cataract, a portion of which appeared to have stopped dead in mid-air.

"Oh, Phoebe darling," said old Maisie, "we can have it mended."

"Of course we can," said Gwen. "Do let us make it go round. I want to make it go round, too." Her heart was rejoicing at what seemed so like revival.

Granny Marrable poured water into what stood for "the sleepy pool above the dam," and found the key to wind up the clockwork. "I remember," said old Maisie, "the water first, and then the key!" Her face was as happy as Dave's had been, watching it.

But alas for the uncertainty of all things human!—machinery particularly. The key ran back as fast as it was wound up, and the water slept on above the dam. What a disappointment! "Oh dear," said Gwen, "it's gone wrong. Couldn't we find a man in the village who could set it right, though it is Sunday?" No—certainly not at eight o'clock in the evening.

"I fear, my lady," said Granny Marrable, "that it was injured when the little boy Toby aimed a chestnut at it. And had I known of the damage done, I should have allowed him no sugar in his tea. But it may have been Toft, when he repaired the glass, for indeed he is little better than a heathen." She examined it and tried the key again. It was hopeless.

"Never mind, Phoebe dearest! I would have loved to see the millwheel turn again, as it did in the old days. Now we must wait for it to be put to rights. I shall see it one day." If she felt that she was sinking, she did not show it. She went on speaking at intervals. "Let me lie here and look at it.... Yes, put the candle near.... That was the deep hole, below the wheel, where the fish leapt.... Father would not allow us near it, for the danger.... There were steps up, and so many nettles.... Then above we got to the big pool where the alders were ... where the herons came...." A pause; then:—"Phoebe dearest!..."

"What, darling?"

"I was not mad.... You were not here, or you would have known me.... Would you not?"

"I would have known you, Maisie dearest—I would have known you, in time. Not at the first. But when I came to think of it, would I have dared to say the word?"

Gwen remembered this answer of old Phoebe's later, and saw its reasonableness. She only saw the practical side at the moment. "Why, Granny," she said—"if it hadn't been the mill, it would have been something else."

"But I was not mad," Maisie continued. "Only I must have frightened my Ruth.... I went up there once, Phoebe. Barnaby took me up one day...."

"Up where, Mrs. Picture dear?" Gwen left the old right hand free to show her meaning, but it fell back after a languid effort. The strength was near zero, though no one would have guessed it from the voice.

"Up there—in the roof—where the trap comes out.... Phoebe would not come, because of the dust.... It was so hot too.... Barnaby pulled up a flour-sack, to show me, and would have let me out on the trap, only I was frightened, it was so high! I could see all the way over to Braintree.... And Barnaby said on a clear day you could see St. Paul's.... I liked Barnaby—I disliked old Muggeridge.... Do you know, Phoebe dear, I used to think Barnaby's wife was old Muggeridge's sister, because her name had been Muggeridge?"

Old Phoebe threw light on the affair. Barnaby's wife was young Mrs. Muggeridge, who had exchanged into another regiment—was not really Barnaby's wife! that is to say, not his legal wife.

"But there now!" said old Phoebe, when she had ended this, "if that was not the very first of it all with me, when Dr. Nash he set me a-thinking, by telling of Muggeridge! For how would I ever have said a word of that old sinner to our little Dave?"

Old Maisie's attention was still on the mill-model. "You would not come up into the corn-loft, Phoebe," said she, "because of all the white dust. It was on everything, up there. When I went up with Barnaby the mill was not going, because the stones were out for old Chipstone to dress their faces. His real name was not Chipstone, but Chepstow. He could do two stones in one day, he worked so quick. So both were got out when he came, and the mill was stopped. Oh, Phoebe, do you remember when a chip flew in your eye, you were so bad?"

"Now, to think of that!" said Granny Marrable. "And me clean forgot it all these years! Old Chipstone, with glasses to shelter his eyesight; like blinkers on a horse. 'Tis all come back to me now, like last week. And I might have been a one-eyed girl all my days, the doctor said, only the chip just came a little out of true. To think that all these years I have forgotten it, and never thanked God once!"

"'Tis the sight of the mill brings it all back," said old Maisie. "I mind it so well, and the guy you looked, dear Phoebe, with a bandage to keep out the light. It was wolfsbane did it good, beat up in water quite fine."

"Be sure. Only 'twas none of Dr. Adlam's remedies, I lay.... Wasn't it Martha's—our old Martha?... There, now!—I've let go her name.... 'Twas on the tip of my tongue to say it...."

Old Maisie's voice was getting faint as she said:—"Old Martha Prichard ... the name I go by now, Phoebe darling.... I took it to ... to keep a memory...."

She was speaking in such a dying voice that Gwen struck in to put an end to her exerting it. "I see what you mean," she said. "You mean you took the name to bring back old times. Now be quiet and rest, dear! You are talking more than is good for you. Indeed you are!"

Thereon Granny Marrable, though she had never felt clear about the reason of this change of name, and now thought she saw enlightenment ahead, followed in compliance with what she conceived to be Lady Gwendolen's wishes. "Now you rest quiet, Maisie dearest, as her ladyship says. What would Dr. Nash think of such a talking?"

Ruth might not be back till very late, and as she had not reappeared it might be taken for granted she had stayed to sup with her daughter. Gwen suggested rather timidly—for it was going outside her beat—that the grandchild might have chosen its birthday. The Granny said, with a curious certainty, that there was no likelihood of that for a day or two yet, and went to summon Elizabeth from next door, to help with their own supper. She herself was rather old and slow, she said, in matters of house-service.

---

Gwen was not sorry to be left for a while to her own reflections before the smouldering red log on the kitchen fire.

The great bulldog from the lobby without, as though his courtesy could not tolerate such a distinguished guest being left alone, paid her a visit in her hostess's absence. He showed his consciousness of her identity by licking her hand at once. He would have smelt a stranger carefully all round before bestowing such an honour. Gwen addressed a few words to him of appreciation, and expressed her confidence in his integrity. He seemed pleased, and discovered a suitable attitude at her feet, after consideration of several. He looked up from his forepaws, on which his chin rested, with an expression that might have meant anything respectful, from civility to adoration. The cat, with her usual hypocrisy, came outside her fender to profess that she had been on Gwen's side all along, whatever the issue. Her method of explaining this was the sort that trips you up—that curls round your ankles and purrs. The cricket was too preoccupied to enter into the affairs of fussy, uncontinuous mortals, and the kettle was cool and detached, but ready to act when called on. The steady purpose of the clock, from which nothing but its own key could turn it, was to strike nine next, and the cloth was laid for supper. Supper was ready for incarnation, somewhere, and smelt of something that would have appealed to Dave, but had no charm for Gwen.

For she was sick at heart, and the moment that a pause left her free to admit it, heavy-eyed from an outcrop of head-oppression on the lids. It might have come away in tears, but her tissues grudged an outlet. She saw no balm in Gilead, but she could sit on a little in the silence, for rest. She could hear the voices of the two old sisters through the doors, and knew that Mrs. Picture was again awake, and talking. That was well!—leave them to each other, for all the time that might still be theirs, this side the grave.

What a whirl of strange unprecedented excitements had been hers since ... since when? Thought stopped to ask the question. Could she name the beginning of it all? Yes, plainly enough. It all began, for her, at the end of that long rainy day in July, when the sunset flamed upon the Towers, and she saw a trespasser in the Park, with a dog. She could feel again the unscrupulous paws of Achilles on her bosom, could hear his master's indignant voice calling him off, and then could see those beautiful dark eyes fixed on what their owner could not dream was his for ever, but which those eyes might never see again. She could watch the retiring figure, striding away through the bracken, and wonder that she should have stood there without a thought of the future. Why could she not have seized him and held him in her arms, and baffled all the cruelty of Fate? For was he not, even then, hers—hers—hers beyond a doubt? Could she not see now that her heart had said "I love you" even as he looked up from that peccant dog-collar, the source of all the mischief?

That was what began it. It was that which led her to stay with her cousin in Cavendish Square, and to a certain impatience with conventional "social duties," making her welcome as a change in excitements an excursion or two into unexplored regions, of which Sapps Court was to be the introductory sample. It was that which had brought into her life this sweet old woman with the glorious hair. No wonder she loved her! She never thought of her engrossing affection as strange or to be wondered at. That it should have been bestowed on the twin sister of an old villager in her father's little kingdom in Rocestershire was where the miracle came in.

And such a strange story as the one she had disinterred and brought to a climax! And then, when all might have gone so well—when a very few years of peace might have done so much to heal the lifelong wounds of the two souls so cruelly wrenched apart half a century ago, that the frail earthly tenement of the one should be too dilapidated to give its tenant shelter! So small an extension of the lease of life would have made such a difference.

But if it was hard for her to bear, what would it be to the survivor, the old sister who had borne so bravely and well what seemed to Gwen almost harder to endure than a loss; a resurrection from the tomb, or its equivalent? She had often shuddered to think what the family of Lazarus must have felt; and found no ease from the reflection that they were in the Bible and it was quite a different thing. They did not know they were in the Bible.

She helped the parallel a little farther, while the cricket chirped unmoved. Suppose that Lazarus had died again in earnest from the shock—and suppose, too, please, that he was deeply beloved, which may not have been the case! How would the wife, mother, sisters, who had said one farewell to him, have borne to see him die a second time? Of course, Gwen was alive to the fact that it would be bad religious form to suggest that this contingency was not covered by some special arrangement. But put it as an hypothesis, like the lady she had ascribed Adrian's ring to!

She could hear Granny Marrable's voice and Elizabeth's afar, in conference. That was satisfactory. It made her certain that the slightest sound from old Maisie, so much nearer, would reach her. Her door stood wide, and the other door was just ajar.

But she did not hear the slightest sound. The dog did, for he flashed into sudden vitality and attention, and was out of the room in an instant. He was unable to say to Granny Marrable:—"I heard your invalid move in the bedroom, and I think you had better go and see if she wants you," but he must have gone very near it. For Gwen heard the old lady's step come quicker than her wont along the passage, and she reached the kitchen-door just in time to see her pass into the room opposite. "Is she all right?" she said.

"I hope she is still asleep, my lady," said old Phoebe.

But she was not asleep, and said so. Her voice was clear, and the hand Gwen took—so she thought—closed on hers with a greater strength than before. If only she had stirred in bed, it would have seemed a return of living power. But this slight vitality in the hands alone seemed to count for so little. She wanted something, evidently, and both her nurses tried to get a clue to it. It was not food; though, to please them, she promised to take some. Gwen's thought that possibly she had something for her ear alone—which she had hesitated to communicate to old Phoebe—was confirmed when the latter left the room to get the beef-tea, and so forth, which was always within reach if needed. For old Maisie said plainly:—"Now I can tell you—my dear!"

"What about, dear Mrs. Picture?" said Gwen, caressing the hand she held, and smoothing back the silver locks from the grave grey eyes so earnestly fixed on hers. "Tell me what."

"My son," said old Maisie. "I have a son, have I not?"—this in a frightened way, as though again in doubt of her own sanity—"and he is bad, is he not, and has written me a letter?"

"That's all right. I've got the letter, to show to my father."

"Oh yes—do show it—to the old gentleman I saw. He is your father...."

"You would like to say something about your son, dear Mrs. Picture—something we can do for you. Now try and tell me just what you would like."

"I want you, my dear, to find me my purse out of the other watch-pocket. I asked my Ruth to put it there.... She is Widow Thrale ... is she not?" Every effort at thought of her surroundings was a strain to her mind, plainly enough.

"There it is!" said Gwen. "Soon found!... Now, am I to see how much money you've got in it?"

"Yes, please!" It was an old knitted silk purse with a slip-ring. In the early fifties the leather purses with snaps, that leak at the seam and let half-sovereigns through before you find it out, were rare in the pockets of old people.

"Six new pounds, and one, two, three, four shillings in silver, and two sixpences, and one fourpence, and a halfpenny! Shall I keep it for you, to be safe?"

"No, dear! I want—I want....

"I hope," thought Gwen to herself, "she's not going to have it sent to her execrable son. Yes, dear, what is it you want done with it?"

"I want three of the pounds to go to Susan Burr, for her to pay eight weeks of the rent. It's seven-and-sixpence a week."

"And the rest—shall I keep it?"

"Tell me—my son Ralph's letter ... Did it not say that he wanted money?"

"Yes, it did. But I'm going to see about that—I and my father."

Old Maisie's voice became beseeching, gaining strength from earnestness. "Oh my dear—do let me! And, after all, is it not his money? For I had nothing of my own when I came back. I might have gone to the workhouse, but for him." What followed, disjointedly, was an attempt to tell the portion of her story that related to the miscarriage of her husband's will.

"Very well, dear! It shall all be done as you wish it. I'll see to that. The money shall be sent to Aunt M'riar, at Sapps Court, to give to him."

"Why is it Aunt M'riar, at Sapps Court? I know Aunt M'riar." Do what she would, she could not grapple with these relativities. And, indeed, this one was a mystery she could not have solved in any case.

---

CHAPTER XXVIII

HOW A BOOMER GOT AWAY. GRANNY MARRABLE'S THEISM. COLD FEET. HOW GRANNY MARRABLE LOST HER HEAD. ADRIAN ON RESIGNATION. THE SHOP OPPOSITE. HOW MAISIE HEARD HER SON'S LETTER, AND WISHED HIM TO KNOW HE WAS POSSESSED. LADY ANCESTER'S REMONSTRANCE. HOW EMILY AND FANNY WOULDED THAT THEIR LOVE. HOW MAISIE WANTED PETER, AND DOLLY MIGHT NOT BE FRIGHTENED OF LAMBS. HOW SUSAN BURR WAS TO HAVE THE FURNITURE. LAST MESSAGE TO DAVE AND DOLLY. MAISIE'S DEATH. HOW GRANNY MARRABLE WENT AWAY TO SEE TO A NEWCOMER. HOW GWEN SLEPT, AND WAKED, AND HOW THERE WAS SOMETHING IN THE EMPTY ROOM WHERE MRS. PICTURE HAD BEEN, ON THE BED. HOW THE CONVICT CALLED TO INTRODUCE HIMSELF. A DOG WHO HAD KILLED A MAN, WORTH FORTY POUNDS. HOW THE CONVICT SAW WHAT WAS ON THE BED. THE CUT FINGER. INSPECTOR THOMPSON. HOW RUTH HAD PASSED A TRAMP, ON THE ROAD

"Has she not talked at all about Australia, Granny?... No, thanks! I'm sure it's a beautiful ham—but I shall do very nicely with this. One very big lump of sugar, please, and plenty of milk, or I shall lie awake." Thus Gwen, and the influence of Strides Cottage is visible in her speech.

Old Maisie was again asleep, and they had left her and gone into the front-room; as much to speak together without disturbing her as to get their own suppers. They were doing this last, however, in a grudging sort of fashion; for the pleasures of the table are no match for a heartache. Gwen found it a solace to make her own toast with a long toasting-fork, an experience which her career as an Earl's daughter had denied to her.

"Maisie has talked many times of Australia, my lady. She talks on, so I could not repeat much."

"You mean she jumps from one thing to another?"

"Yes, so I cannot always follow her. But she has told me a many things of her life there. How at first she would never see a soul at the farm from week's end to week's end, and her husband got to own all the land about."

"Do you think she is really alive to her husband's villainy? I sometimes think she forgets all about it."

"Please God she does so! 'Tis better for her she should. I would have felt happier if she could have known me, and Ruth, and never had the tale of his wickedness."

"But that was impossible, Granny. She must have known, in the end."

"That is so, I know, my lady. But when I hear her forget it all, it makes my heart glad. When she gets to telling of the old time, on the farm, her mind is off it, and I thank God that it should be so, for her sake! Friday last she was talking so happy, you could not have known her for the same."

"About the farm and the convicts? Do recollect some of the things she told you!"

"There was a creature they hunt with dogs, that leaps on its hind-legs to any height."

"Oh yes—the Kangaroo."

"She called it something else—something like 'Boomer.'" This did not matter. Granny Marrable went on to repeat how a "boomer," chased by the dogs, had made straight for her sister's husband, whose gun, missing fire, had killed his best dog; while the quarry, unterrified by the report, sprang at a bound over his head and got away scathless. This, and other incidents of the convict's after-life in Van Diemen's Land, told without leading to the crime of the forged letter, had shown how completely separate in Maisie's mind were the memories of her not unhappy life with her husband in the past, and that of the recent revelation of his iniquity. She somehow dissociated the two images of him, and her mind could dwell easily on his identity as it had appeared to her during her thirty years of widowhood, without losing the new-found consciousness of Phoebe's.

But Granny Marrable had taken special note of the fact that her sister never referred to the son who had come with her from Australia, and had herself been scrupulously careful not to do so. She did not really know whether Maisie was alive to the possibility of his reappearance at any moment; and, indeed, could not have said positively whether allusion had or had not been made to her own alarming experience of him. Her own shock and confusion had been too great for accurate recollection. Silence about him was to her thought the wisest course, and she had remained silent.

She seemed to Gwen a wonderful old woman, this Granny Marrable. Her untiring patience and strength, at her great age; her simple theism, constantly in evidence; her resolute calmness in facing a second time the harrowing grief of a twin sister's death—for that she saw it at hand, Gwen was convinced—were surely the material of which heroism is made, when heroism is in the making. To Gwen's thought, the miraculous news that had been broken to her so suddenly might easily have prostrated many a younger person, even without that mysterious unknown factor, the twinship, the force of which could only be estimated by the two concerned. As the old lady sat there at the supper-table, breaking her resumptions of her sister's Australian tales by gaps of listening to catch any sound from the bedroom, she seemed to Gwen a duplicate of the old Mrs. Prichard of Sapps Court, spared by time or with some reserve of constitutional energy, grey rather than white, resolute rather than resigned. The different inflexion of voice helped Gwen against that perplexing sense of her likeness to her twin, which would assert itself whenever she became silent.

It was to fend this off, in such a pause, that she said:—"You are both just eighty this year, Granny, are you not?"

"Eighty-one, my lady. When our clock strikes midnight Maisie will have been eighty-one years in the world, and myself with but a few minutes to make up the tale. My mother told me so when I was still too young to understand, but I bore her words in mind. She was dead a year when my brother dressed those little dolly figures in the mill. I mind that he put it off, so we should not be in black for our mother. He died himself, none so long after that."

The foolish lines of keeping up hope mechanically to the last did not recommend themselves to Gwen. But she could trust herself to say, seeing the strength on the old face before her:—"Oh, Granny, do not let us despair too soon!" The phrase acknowledged Death, and did not choke her like the sham.

"My lady, have you felt her feet?"

"No—are they so cold?"

Instead of replying. Granny Marrable rose and, passed into the bedroom. Gwen, whose own speech had stopped her from hearing old Maisie's half-utterance on waking, followed, and stood beside the bed. Granny Marrable said:—"She is not awake yet, but I heard her." As she said this, Gwen slipped her warm hand between the sheets, and touched the motionless extremities; cold marble now, rather than flesh. A stone bottle of hot water, just in contact with the feet, had heated a spot on each, making its cold surrounding colder to the touch, and laying stress upon its iciness. "Oh, Granny," said Gwen, trying in vain to make the living warmth of her own hand of service, "can nothing be done? Surely—her feet in hot water?"

But old Phoebe only shook her head. She knew. It would only be to no purpose! Better let her rest! Moreover, Gwen could not fail to notice that the feet remained passive to her touch, never shrinking. That is not the way of feet. Was ever foot that did not shrink from mysterious unexpected fingers, coming from the beyond in the purlieus of a private couch?

And yet old Maisie was alive there still, and her speech was clear, however low. If anything, its sound savoured of revival. But she was not clear about her whereabouts and whom she was speaking to. She seemed to think it was Susan Burr, who "would find her thimble if she looked underneath." Thus much and no more had come articulate from the land of dreams. The moment after she was quite collected. Was that Phoebe, and her Lady? This was not the conventional phrase "My lady." She was evidently in possession of a Lady she had been guided to find by some Guardian Angel, if, indeed, the Lady were not a Guardian Angel herself. She went on to ask:—Where was her Ruth? When would she come?

She was coming, Ruth was, very soon. Both vouched for it. Gwen added:—"She's gone to see her daughter, who has a little boy."

Then Granny Marrable lost her head for the first time. "She's gone to my granddaughter," said she. "And I'm looking to have another great-grandchild there soon, before a many days are over."

For a moment Gwen was afraid the confusion of Ruth's daughtership might make old Maisie's head whirl, and set her fretting. She began to explain, but explanation was not necessary. The old hand she held was withdrawn from hers, that it might make common cause with its fellow that old Phoebe already held. "My darling," said she, "did I not give her to you when I ran away to the great ship? Fifty years ago, Phoebe—fifty years ago!" There was no trace of any tear in the eye that Gwen could still see, though it looked no longer into her own. The voice was not failing, and the words still came, clear as ever. "I kissed her in her crib, and I would have kissed her yet once more, but I dared not. So I said to myself:—'She will wake and never see me! But Phoebe will be there, to kiss her when she wakes. She will kiss her for me, just on the place we used to say was good to kiss.' Tell me, Phoebe, did my child cry much?..."

Granny Marrable's words:—"I cannot—I cannot—my darling!" caught in her voice, as she bent over the face that, but for its frail attenuation, was her own face over again, touching it tenderly with her own old lips—the same, thought Gwen, that had inherited that place it was so good to kiss, on that baby face of half a century ago, now a grandmother's. She rose noiselessly from where she half sat, half leaned, beside the figure on the bed, and stole a little way apart; not so far as to be unable to hear what that musical voice kept on saying, though she could not catch the replies.

"I said to myself:—'Phoebe will be her mother when I am miles away across the sea, and she will be as good a mother as I....' Was it not best, dearest, I should go alone, rather than carry my child away and leave all the loneliness for you?... Yes—but my heart ached for my little one on the great ship.... I would watch the stars—the very stars you saw too, Phoebe—and they were like friends for many a long week, till they sank down in the sea behind us, and it was thirty years before I saw them again.... Yes—then I knew it would be England soon and I would know if Phoebe had any other grave than the cold sea.... Yes, my darling, that was my first thought—to go to the little church by Darenth Mill, and look in the south corner.... I did, and there was mother's grave, and father's name cut on the stone, but none other. So I thought:—They are all gone—all gone!... Oh, if I had known that you were here!..."

The sound of lamentation barely grew in her voice, but it was there. To turn her mind from the recollection that provoked it, Granny Marrable thought it well to say that Nicholas Cropredy, her first husband, whom the forged letter had drowned at sea, had not been buried at Darenth Mill, but at Ingatestone, with his kindred and ancestors. "Did they find his body?" said old Maisie. She knew that he was dead long years back, but had not received any new impression of the cause of his death.

She did not even now seem to find its proper place in her mind for this correction of its mistaken record. It could not deal with all the facts, but held fast to the identities of her sister and child. Probably the established memory of the false news of her brother-in-law's death continued in possession. She only looked puzzled; then drifted on the current of her thought. "If I had known that you were here!... Oh, Phoebe!—such a many times my boy made me think of his sister he would never see now.... That was before the coming of the news.... Oh yes, I always had a thought till then the time might come before they would be grown up, so they should be children together.... That was my elder boy Isaac, after father—in those days little Ralph was in his cradle.... But the time never came—only the time to think it might have been.... And all those years I thought you dead, you were here!... Oh, Phoebe—you were here!... Oh, why—why—why could I not be told that you were here?"

"It was the Lord's will, darling. His ways are not for us to understand." Gwen could not for the life of her help recalling some irreverence of Adrian's about Resignation and Fatalism. But though she almost smiled over his reprehensible impiety—"No connection with the shop opposite"—she could and did pay a mental tribute to the Granny's quiet earnestness. She would have done the same by "Kismet" to an old Sheikh in the shadow of the Pyramids.

"Why—oh, why?—when my dear husband was gone could I not have found you then, even if I had died of joy in the finding? Had I not known enough pain? Oh, Phoebe—when I came back—when I came back ... it would have been so much then!... I had some great new trouble after that.... Oh, tell me—what was it?"

What could old Phoebe do but answer, seeing that she knew? "It was the wickedness of your son, Maisie darling. We have talked of him, have we not?" She feared to say much, as she shrank from reference to her own knowledge of the convict. She tried to get away from him. "And it was then you took old Martha's name, not to be known by your own, and went to Sapps Court?" This succeeded.

"Not Sapps Court, not yet for a long time. But I did go, and I was happy there.... I had my little Dave and Dolly, and when the window stood open in the summer, I heard the piano outside, across the way ... and Aunt M'riar came, and sometimes Mr. Wardle—he was so big he filled the room.... But tell me—was it a horrible dream, or was it true, that a letter came to me?..." Her powers of speech flagged.

Gwen took upon herself to answer, to spare Granny Marrable. "Yes, Mrs. Picture dear, it came from your son, and I've got it here. You're not to fret about him. I'm to show his letter to my father, don't you know?—you've seen him—and you know what he does will be all right."

"What he does will be all right." Old Maisie repeated it mechanically, and lay quiet, holding a hand on either side, as before; then after a short time rallied, and turned to Gwen, saying—"My Lady—my dear—I want you to promise me one thing.... I want you to promise me...."

"To promise you? Is it something I can do?"

The answer came with an extraordinary clearness. "That you will not let them get him. Read his letter, that I may hear.... Yes—like that!" She fixed her eyes eagerly on it, as Gwen drew it from her pocket. Granny Marrable snuffed the candles, and moved them to give a better light.

Gwen read aloud as best she might, for the handwriting was none too visible. When she came to the writer's picturesque suggestion of his life of constant dodging and evasion of his pursuers, she softened nothing of his brutal phraseology. Maisie only said:—"That is it. That is what I want." Phoebe was restless under its utterance, and murmured some protest. That such words should pass her ladyship's lips—such lips! Gwen merely commented:—"Like a fox before the pack! That's what he means. He's got to say it somehow, you know! Yes, tell me, what is it about that?"

"I want you ... to save him from them. I want you to tell him ... to tell him...."

"Something from you?—yes!"

"To tell him his mother forgave him. For I know now—I know it, my dear—that his wicked work was none of his own doing, but the evil spirit that had possession of him. Was it not?"

Why should Gwen stand between Mrs. Picture, dying, and something that gave her happiness, just for the sake of a little pitiful veracity? She was all the readier to endorse a draft on her credulity, from the knowledge that Granny Marrable would, if applied to, be ready with a covering security. She said quietly:—"I think it very far from impossible."

"Then you will tell him for me, and save him—save him from the officers?"

It seemed a large promise to make, but would its fulfilment ever be called for? "I promise," said Gwen, "and I will tell him you forgave him, if ever I see him.... There's Ruth back—I hear her. Now, dear, you must lie quiet, and not talk any more. You know you don't want her to know anything at all about her brother." Whereon Maisie lay silent with closed eyes, her hand in Gwen's just acknowledging its chance pressures, while Granny Marrable rose and went to the door; and then Gwen heard her in an earnest undertone of conversation with Ruth, just alighted from a vehicle whose horse, considered as a sound, she would have sworn to. It was the grey mare.

Ruth's visit to her daughter was the first since the extraordinary discovery of Mrs. Prichard's identity, and she had been very anxious about her. Nevertheless, its object appeared equable, blooming, and prosperous on her arrival; very curious to hear details of her new-found grandmother, and indignant with Dr. Nash for telling her husband that he was not, on peril of becoming a widower, to allow his wife to travel over to Strides Cottage to see her. She mixed with this a sort of resentment against the defection from her post of her real grandmother—to wit, the one she had grown up under. For the young woman's wish for her presence had been one of those strong predispositions very common under her circumstances, and far less unreasonable than many such. "Granny" had been all-wise and all-powerful with her from her cradle!

But, in spite of young Maisie's confidence on the subject, her mother could not resist the misgiving that her expected grandchild was girding up its insignificant loins to make a dash for existence. Consider its feelings if it had inherited its great-grandmother's scrupulous punctuality! Widow Thrale was between two fires—duty to a mother and duty to a daughter. An instinct led her to choose the former. Her son-in-law affected to think her nervous; but, after whistling the halves of several tunes to himself, put his horse in the gig and went off to fetch the doctor. The story has seen how he caught him just coming away from Strides.

Ruth had not yet done quite all she could. She could summon someone to take her place beside her daughter in her absence. Preferably her cousin Keziah from the Towers. But she must see her and know that she was available. Tom Kettering, just departing for the Towers, was caught in time for Ruth to accompany him. On her arrival, finding that Keziah was available, she arranged to walk with her to Denby's Farm, and then on to the Cottage. Under six miles, all told!—that was nothing.

But there was no need for this. Tom Kettering, going up to the house to report her young ladyship's decision to remain on another day, was told he must wait for a letter her ladyship the Countess would write, to take to Strides Cottage, and bring back an answer. He could easily go a few inches out of his way to leave his Aunt Keziah at Denby's, and take Ruth Thrale home to Strides. But he put up the closed brougham, and harnessed the grey mare in the dogcart, as she wanted a run. He knew that Gwen meant what she said, and would not come back.

It was about nine o'clock when they reached the Cottage, and Tom waited for the answer to the Countess's letter. Ruth came in, to be told that her mother had talked too much, and must lie quiet. But she had been talking—that was something! The comment was Ruth's, and the reply to it was hopeful and consolatory. Oh yes—a great deal! And she must be better, to be able to talk so much. However, Ruth saw no change in the appearance of the still, white figure on the bed.

Gwen sat in the front-room and read her mother's remonstrance with her for absenting herself in this way and leaving her ladyship alone to contend with the arduous duty of entertaining her guests. "I think," it ran, "that you might at least remember that you are your father's daughter, even if you forget that Sir Spencer and Lady Derrick have come all the way from Nettisham in Shropshire." What followed was a good deal emphasized. "Understand, my dear, that what I say is not intended to hold good if this old lady is actually dying, but for anything short of that it does appear to me that your behaviour is at least inconsiderate. Do let me entreat you to fix a reasonable hour for your return to-morrow, if you adhere to your resolution not to come to-night. Pray tell Kettering when he is to call for you before twelve to-morrow, so that you may be in time for lunch." This last was a three-lined whip.

In order that Gwen should not suppose that there had been too flattering a hiatus owing to her absence, the letter wound up:—"We have had some very nice music. It turns out that Emily and Fanny sing 'I would that my love' quite charmingly." Gwen's remark to herself:—"Of course!" may be intelligible to old stagers who remember the fifties, and the popularity of this Mendelssohn duet at that time—notably the intrepidity of the singers over the soft word the merry breezes wafted away in sport. Emily and Fanny were two ingénues, come of a remote poor relation, who were destined never to forget the week they were spending at the Towers in Rocestershire. The letter was scribbled across to the effect that General Rawnsley had said he should ride over to Chorlton to-morrow to see if he could be of any use. "The dear old man," said Gwen to herself. "And eighty-four years old! Oh, why—why—could not my old darling Mrs. Picture live only three years more?... Only three years!"

---

Ten o'clock. The time was again at hand for those last arrangements we all know so well, when one watcher is chosen to remain by the sick man's couch, that others may sleep; each one to be roused from forgetfulness and peace to the sickening foreknowledge of the hour of release for all, when the life he has it at heart to prolong, if only for a day, shall have become a memory to perish in its turn, as one by one its survivors grow few and fewer and follow in its track.

A night comes always when Oblivion becomes a terror, and we dare not sleep, from fear of what our ears may hear on waking. It had come at Strides Cottage for Granny Marrable and Gwen, and even Ruth was conscious of a creeping dread of Death at hand, waiting on the threshold. But she imagined herself alone in her anticipations—fancied that "mother" and her ladyship were cherishing false hopes. She would not allow her own to die lest she should betray fears that might after all be just as false. Why should her mother—her new-found real mother—be sinking, because her limbs were cold, when her speech was still articulate, and her soft grey eyes so full of tenderness and light?

Gwen held a little aloof, not to take more than her fair share of what she feared was an ebbing life, although it kept so strangely its powers of communion with the world it was leaving behind. She could hear all the old voice said, as she had heard it before. What was that she was saying now?

"When the baby comes you will bring it here to show to me? I may not be up by then, to go and see it."

"The minute my daughter is strong enough to bring it, mother dear."

"She must take her time.... Is there not a little boy already?"

"Yes. He's Peter. He's a year old. He's very strong and wilful, and gets very angry when things are not given to him."

"Ruth darling—fetch him to me to-morrow. Is it far to bring him?" There was hunger for the baby in her beseeching voice. She might enjoy him a little before the end, surely! Just a brief extension of a year or so—a month or so even.

"I will bring him to-morrow, mother. He's too heavy to carry, but John will drive us."

Old Maisie seemed quite happy in this prospect of a great-grandson. "They are so nice at that age," said she. Why was the child's name Peter?—she asked, and was told that he was so called after his grandfather, Ruth's husband. "He is dead now, is he not?" was her puzzled inquiry, and Ruth replied:—"I buried his grandfather thirteen years ago." To which her mother said:—"Tell me all his name, that I may know," and was told "Peter Thrale." Whereupon she made an odd comment:—"Oh yes—I was told. But that was when Ruth was Widow Thrale."

She never came to any real clearness about the lost history of her sister and daughter. Having once grasped their identities, her mind flinched from the effort to master the forty-odd blank years of ignorance.

But out of the cloud there was to come a grandchild a year old, and in time its mother with another smaller still, newer still. To overhear this talk made Gwen discredit the doctor's unfavourable auguries. How was it possible that old Mrs. Picture should be dying, when she could look forward to a baby in the flesh with such a zest?

The prospect of this visitor had set the old mind thinking of her own babies in the days gone by, apparently. There was her eldest, dead and buried in England while Ruth was still too young to put by memories of her elder brother. Then her second, who died in his boyhood in Australia. No mother ever loses count of her children, even when her mind fails at the last: and old Maisie's memory was still green over the loss of these two. But the third—how about the one who survived his childhood? When she spoke of him, his image was that of an innocent mischievous youngster, full of mad pranks, his father's favourite, not a trace in him of the vices that had made his manhood a curse to himself and his mother. In some still feebler stage of her failing powers the happier phase of his career might have remained isolated. Now, her mind was still too active to avoid the recollection of its sequel.

"What is it, mother dearest?" So Gwen heard her daughter speaking to her, trying for a clue to the cause of some symptom of a concealed distress. Then Granny Marrable:—"Yes, Maisie darling, what is it. Tell us." Some answer came, which caused Ruth to say:—"Shall I ask her ladyship to come?"

Gwen immediately returned to the bedside. "Is she asking for me?" said she. And Granny Marrable replied:—"I think she has it on her mind to speak to you, my lady."

Not too many at once was the rule. Ruth made a pretence of something to be done in another room, but the Granny kept near at hand.

"My dear—my Lady—I am so afraid...."

"Afraid of what, Mrs. Picture dear? Don't be frightened! We are all here."

"Afraid about my son—afraid Ruth may know...."

"No one has told Ruth of him, dear. No one shall tell Ruth. I promise you."

"It is not that. It is what I may say myself." Gwen had not heard her speak so clearly for a long time. "It was on my lips to speak of him—but just now. Because—is he not the same?"

"The same as what, dear? Try and tell me!"

"The same as the son that came with me in the ship. The same as the baby I suckled the last of four, out there on the farm. It was he that I was telling of before, and I was glad to tell my child—my Ruth—of the brother she never set eyes on. And then it came upon me, the thought of what he was, and what he had come to be.... Oh, my dear—my dear!..."

Gwen could not think of any stereotyped salve for a wounded heart. She could only say:—"Don't think of it, dear. Don't think of it! Lie still and get better now, and then I will make Aunt M'riar fetch Dave and Dolly, and Dave shall see Jones's Bull, and Dolly shall see the new baby."

"Suppose, my dear, I don't get better, will Dave and Dolly come all the same; for Phoebe and my Ruth, the same as if I was here?"

It was a sore tax on the steadiness of Gwen's voice, but she managed her assent. Yes—even in the improbable event of old Maisie's non-recovery, Dave and Dolly should visit Granny Marrable. And so consolatory had the assurance proved more than once before, that she repeated her undertaking about the visit to Farmer Jones's; for Dave, not for Dolly. "But there will be plenty for Dolly to see," Gwen said. "She won't be frightened of lambs—at least, I think not. Because she has never been in the country."

"No—but she has been in the Regent's Park, and is to go to Hampstead Heath some day with Uncle Mo. She is not frightened of the sheep in the Park, only in...."

"Only in where?" said Gwen. "Where is Dolly frightened of sheep?"

"In the street, because they run on the pavement, and the dog runs over their backs.... There are very few sheep here, compared to what we had in the colony.... Our shepherds were very good men, but all had their numbers from the Governor ... they had all been convicted ... but not of doing anything wrong...."

Oh dear!—what a mistake Gwen had made about those sheep! But how could she have known? She knew so little about the colony—had even asked General Rawnsley, when they were talking of Van Diemen's Land, if he knew where "Tasmania" was! She tried to head off the pastoral convicts—the cancelled men, who had become numbers. "When Dolly comes, she will see the mill too. And it will go round and round by then." She clung in a sort of desperation to Dolly and Dave, having tested their power as talismans to drive away the black spectres that hung about.

But the mill was as Scylla to their Charybidis. "Phoebe dearest!" said old Maisie suddenly, "when did father die?"

"When did our father die?" said Granny Marrable. "Nigh upon forty-six years ago. Yes—forty-six."

"How can that be?—forty-six—forty-six!" The words were shadowily spoken, as by a speaker too weary to question them, yet dissatisfied. "How can my father have died then? That was when my sister died, and my little girl I left behind."

"Oh, how I wish she could sleep!" Gwen exclaimed under her breath. Granny Marrable said:—"She will sleep, my lady, before very long." She said it with such a quiet self-command, that Gwen accepted the obvious meaning that the sleeper would sleep again, as before. Perhaps nothing else was meant.

There had been a time, just after she first came to the strange truth of her surroundings, when she could follow and connect the sequence of events. Now the Past and the Present fell away by turns, either looming large and excluding the view of the other alternately. But, that Phoebe and Ruth were there, beside her, was the fact that kept the strongest hold of her mind.

---

Eleven o'clock. Granny Marrable had been right, and old Maisie had slept again, or seemed to sleep, after some dutiful useless attempts to head off Death by trivialities of nourishment. The clock-hand, intent upon its second, oblivious of its predecessors, incredulous of those to come, was near halfway to midnight when Ruth Thrale, rising from beside her mother, came to her fellow-watchers in the front-room and said:—"I think she moved."

Both came to the bedside. Yes—she had moved a little, and was trying to speak. Gwen, half seated, half leaning on the pillow as before, took a hand that barely closed on hers, and spoke. "What is it, Mrs. Picture dear? Say it again."

"Is it all true?"

What could Gwen have said but what she did say? "Yes, dear Mrs. Picture, quite true. It is your own sister Phoebe beside you here, and your child Ruth, grown up."

"Maisie darling, I am Phoebe—Phoebe herself." It was all Granny Marrable could find voice for, and Ruth was hard put to it to say:—"You are my mother." And as each of these women spoke she bent over the white face of the dying woman, and kissed it through the speechlessness their words had left upon their lips.

It was not quite old Mrs. Picture's last word of all. A few minutes later she seemed to make weak efforts towards speech. If Gwen, listening close, heard rightly, she was saying, or trying to say:—"You are my Lady, that came with the accident, are you not?"

"Is there anything you want me to do for you?" For Gwen thought she was trying to say more. "It is about someone. Who?"

"Susan Burr...."

"Yes—you want me to give her some message?"

"Susan ... to have my furniture ... for her own."

"Yes—I will see to that.... And—and what?"

"Kiss Dave and Dolly for me."

They watched the scarcely breathing, motionless figure on the bed for the best part of an hour, and could mark no change that told of death, nor any sign that told of life. Then Granny Marrable said:—"What was that?" And Gwen answered, as she really thought:—"It was the clock." For she took it for the warning on the stroke of midnight. But old Phoebe said, with a strangely unfaltering voice:—"No—it is the change!" and the sob that broke the silence was not hers, but Ruth's. Old Mrs. Picture had just lived to complete her eighty-first year.

---

There came a sound of wheels in the road without. Not the doctor, surely, at this time of night! No—for the wheels were not those of his gig. Ruth, going out to the front-door, was met by a broad provincial accent—her son-in-law's. Gwen heard it fall to a whisper before the news of Death; then earnest conversation in an undertone. Gwen was aware that old Phoebe rose from her knees at the bedside, and went to listen through the door. Then she heard her say with a quiet self-restraint that seemed marvellous:—"Tell him—tell John that I will come.... Come back here and speak to me." She thought she caught the words as Ruth returned:—"I must not leave her alone." And she knew they referred to herself.

Then it came home to her that possibly her own youth and her difference of antecedents might somehow encumber arrangements that she knew would have to be carried out. They would be easiest in her absence. At her own suggestion she went away to lie down in the bedroom she had occupied.

Granny Marrable followed her. She had something to say.

"Dear Lady, I have to go. God bless you for all your goodness to my darling sister and to me! You gave her back to me...." That stopped her.

"Oh, Granny, Granny, we have lost her—we have lost her!" She could feel that old Phoebe's tears were running down the hand she had taken to kiss, and she drew it away to fold the old woman fairly in her arms, and kiss the face whose likeness to old Mrs. Picture's she could almost identify by touch. "We have lost her," she repeated, "and you might have had her for so long!"

Said Granny Marrable:—"I shall follow Maisie soon, if the Lord's will is. She might have died, my lady, but for you, unknown to me in London. And who would have told me where they had laid her?"

"Where are you going?"

"I am going to my granddaughter—Ruth's daughter. It is her fancy to have me rather than another. There might be harm to her did I stop away. Why should I delay here, when all is over?"

Why indeed? Still, Gwen could not but reverence and love the old lady for her unflinching fortitude and resolute sense of duty. She saw her driven away through the cold night, and went back to her room, leaving Ruth and Elizabeth the neighbour to make an end in the chamber of Death.

---

Sleep came, and waking came too soon, in a cold, dark Christmas morning. Oppression and pain for something not known at once came first, like a black cloud; then consciousness of what was in the heart of the cloud.

She wrapped herself in a warm dressing-gown, and went out through the silent house. It was still early, and it might be Ruth was still sleeping. Once asleep, why not remain so, when waking could only bring cold and darkness, and the memory of yesterday? Besides, it was not unlikely Ruth had watched half through the night. Gwen opened the door of the death-chamber with noiseless caution, and felt as soon as she saw that the daylight was still excluded, that it was empty of any living occupant. Dread was in her curiosity to see the thing beneath the white sheet on the bed—but see it she must!

The great bulldog, the only creature moving, came shambling along the passage to greet her, and—so she rendered his subdued dog-sounds that came short of speech—concerned that something was amiss he was excluded from knowing. She said a word to comfort him, but kept him outside the room, to wait for her return.

What had been till so lately old Mrs. Picture, whom she had chanced upon in Sapps Court, and found so strange a truth about, lay under that face-cloth on the bed. She moved the window-curtain for a stronger light, and uncovered the marble stillness of the face. The kerchief tied beneath the chin ran counter to her preconceptions, but no doubt it was all right. Ruth would know.

She did not look long. An odd sense of something that was not sacrilege, but akin to it, associated itself with this gazing on the empty tenement. Even so one shrinks from the emptiness of what was his home once, and will never know another dweller, but be carted off to the nearest dry-rubbish shoot. She laid the sheet back in its place, and went into the front-room.

Suddenly the dog growled and barked, then went smelling along the door into the front-garden. There was someone outside. She was conscious of a man on the gravel, through the window. A stranger, or he would enter without leave, or at least find the bell to ring. She glanced at the clock. It was half-past eight already, though it had seemed so early.

How about the dog, if she opened the door? His repute was great for ferocity towards doubtful characters, but he was credited with discrimination. Was this invariable? She preferred to take down his chain from its hook by the window, and to use it to hold him by.

"What is it? Who are you?" She had opened the door without reserve, feeling sure that the dog would be excited by a gap. As it was he growled intolerantly, and had to be reproved.

"You'll excuse me—I was inquiring.... Is your dog safe? I ain't fond of dogs, and they ain't fond of me." He was a man with a side-lurch, and an ungracious manner.

"The dog is safe—unless I let him go." Gwen was not sorry to have a strong ally in a leash, at will. "You were inquiring—you said?"

"Concerning of an old lady by the name of Prichard. The address given was Strides Cottage, and I see this little domicile here goes by that name. Next we come to the old lady of the name of Prichard. Can you do her, or anything near about?"

"Yes—Mrs. Prichard is here, but you can't see her now. What do you want with Mrs. Prichard? Who are you?"

The man kept looking uneasily up and down the road. "I'm a bad hand at talking, mostly. Standing about don't suit me—not for conversation. If you was to happen to have such a thing as a chair inside, and you was to make the offer, I might see about telling you what I want of old Goody Prichard."

Gwen looked at him and recognised him. She would have done so at once had his clothes been the same as when she saw him before, in the doorway at Sapps Court. He was that man, of course! Only with this difference, that while on that occasion his get-up was nearest that of a horse-keeper, his present one was a carter's. He might have been taken for one, if you had not seen his face. Gwen said to him:—"You can pass the dog. Don't do anything to irritate him." He entered and sat down.

"Where have you got the old woman?" said he.

"First tell me what you want with her."

"To introduce myself to her. I wrote her a letter nigh a fortnight since. What did I say to her in that letter? Told her I was looking forward to re-newing her acquaintance. You tell the old lady that, from me. You might go so far as to say it's Ralph, back again." An idea seemed to intensify his gaze of admiration, or rather avidity, narrowing it to her face. "This ain't my first sight of you, allowance made for toggery."

Gwen merely lifted her eyebrows. But seeing his offensive eyes waiting, she conceded:—"Possibly not," and remained silent.

He chose to interpret this as invitation to continue, although it was barely permission. "I set eyes on you first, as I was coming out of a door. You were coming in at that door. You looked at me to recollect me, for I saw you take notice. Ah!—you've no call to blaze at me on that account. You may just as well come down off of the high ropes."

For Gwen's face had shown what she thought of him, as he sat there, half wincing before her, half defiant. She was not in the habit of concealing her thoughts. "I see you are a reptile," said she explicitly. And then, not noticing his snigger of satisfaction at having, as it were, drawn her:—"What were you doing at Mr. Wardle's?"

"Ah—what was I a-doing at Moses Wardle's? I suppose you know what he was? Or maybe you don't?"

"What was he?"

The convict's ugly grin, going to the twisted side of his face, made it monstrous. "Mayhap you don't know what they call a scrapper?" said he.

"I don't. What did he scrap?" She felt that Uncle Mo did it honourably, whatever it was.

"He was one of the crack heavyweights, in my time."

"I know what that means. I should recommend you not to show yourself at his house, unless...."

The man sniggered again. "Don't you lie awake about me," said he. "Old Mo had seen his fighting-days when I had the honour of meeting him five-and-twenty years ago at The Tun, which is out of your line, I take it. Besides, my best friend's in my pocket, ready at a pinch. Shall I show him to you?" He showed a knife with a black horn handle. "I don't open him, not to alarm a lady. So you've no call for hysterics."

"I am not afraid of you or your knife, if that is what you mean." Indeed, absolute fearlessness was one of Gwen's characteristics. "What did you go to Mr. Wardle's for?"

"On a visit to my wife."

Gwen started. "Who is your wife?" said she. Susan Burr flashed into her mind first. But then, how about "Aunt Maria" on the envelope, and her readiness to act as this man's agent?

"Polly Daverill's my wife—my lawful wife! That's more than my father could say of my mother."

"I know that you are lying, but I do not care why. Do you want to see your mother?"

"If sootable and convenient. No great hurry!"

"She is in bed. I will get her ready for you to see her. Do not go near the dog. They say he has killed a man."

"A man'll kill him if he gives occasion. Make him fast, for his own sake. There's money there—he's a tike o' some value. Maybe forty pound. You tie him up!" Gwen hooked his chain round the table-leg, starting him on a series of growls—low thunder in short lengths. He had been very quiet.

She passed into the bedroom, and opening the shutters, threw light full on the bed. Then she drew back the sheet she had replaced. Oh, the beauty of that white marble face, and the stillness!

"You can come in, quietly."

"Is she having a snooze?"

"You will not wake her."

"This is one of your games." The sort was defined by an adjective, omitted. "What's your game? What the Hell are you at?" He said this as to himself.

"Go in. You will find your mother." Gwen took back the dog's chain from the table-leg, and the low thunder died down.

She hardly analysed her own motives. One may have been to touch the heart of the brute, if he had one; another to convince him, without a long parley, of his mother's death. He might have disputed it, and in any case she could not have refused him the sight of his own mother's body.

She could not have restrained that dog had he acted on his obvious impulse to strangle, rapidly and thoroughly, this vermin intruder. But he was an orderly and law-abiding dog, who would not have strangled a rat without permission.

Gwen did not catch the convict's exclamation at sight of his mother, beyond the "What the...!" that began it. Then he was silent. She saw him go nearer without fear of ill-demeanour on his part, and touch the cold white hand, not roughly or without a sort of respect. As well, perhaps, for him; for Gwen was quite capable of loosing that dog on him, under sufficient provocation. She thought he seemed to examine the fingers of the left hand. Then he came back, and they returned to the front-room. She was the first to speak.

"Are you satisfied?"

"I couldn't have sworn to her myself, not from her face, but I made sure." Probably he had looked for the cut finger, his own handiwork of thirty-odd years ago. He said abruptly, after a moment's pause:—"I don't see nothing to gain by hanging about here."

"Nothing whatever."

He said not a word more, his only sign of emotion or excitement having been his exclamation at first sight of the corpse. He walked away towards the village, and had just reached the point where the road turns out of sight, when Gwen, watching his slow one-sided footsteps, saw him turn and come quickly back. She went back into the Cottage and closed the door, resolved not to admit him a second time.

But he passed by, going away by the road towards Denby's and the Towers, never even glancing at the Cottage. He was scarcely out of sight when a tax-cart with two men in it came quickly from the village and stopped.

"You will excuse me, madam. I am Police-Inspector Thompson, from Grantley Thorpe. A man whom I am looking for has been traced here...." The speaker had alighted.

"A man with a limp? He came here and went away. He has only just gone."

"Which way?"

"He went away in that direction...."

"What I said!" struck in the second man on the driver's seat. "He's for getting back to the Railway. He'll cut across by Moreton Spinney. Jump up, Joe!"

Gwen could easily have added that he had come back, and was going the other way. But her promise to old Mrs. Picture, lying there dead, kept her silent. If the officers chose to jump to a false conclusion, let them! She had misled them by a literal truth. She would much rather have told a lie, honourably. But she could not remedy that now, without risk.

Another trot sounded from the opposite direction. It was Farmer Costrell's cart, and Ruth was in it, driven by her son-in-law. She was bringing some evergreens to place upon the body. Too anxious to remain in ignorance about her daughter, she had walked over to Denby's while it was still almost dark, and had found a new granddaughter and its mother, both doing well.

"And ne'er a soul would I have seen either way," said she, "if it had not been for a tramp a few steps down the road, who set me thinking it was as well I was not alone, by the looks of him. Yes—thank your ladyship—I got some sleep, till after five o'clock. Then I could not be easy till I knew about my child. But all has gone well, God be thanked!"

It was the only time she ever saw that brother, and she never knew it was he.

---

CHAPTER XXIX

HOW MICKY BECAME A LINKBOY. HIS IDEAS ON INVESTMENTS. DOG FOUND. NO SAFETY LIKE A THICK FOG. OLD MR. NIXON. HIS SELF-RESTRAINT, WIX'S MESSAGE. JULIA'S DILEMMA. HER VIEWS ON MARRIAGE LINES. DAMN LAWFUL POLLY! HOW MICKY'S MOTHER HELPED HIM TO DELIVER HIS MESSAGE. OUR OLD LADY—GONE! WHO WILL TELL DAVE AND DOLLY? HOW PUSSY WAS THE OTHERS. HOW MO DID NOT STOP AT THE SUN. A VISITOR IN HIS ABSENCE. THE END

The irresolute winter only wavered some forty-eight hours, setting to work in earnest on the second day after Christmas Day, following on suggestions of seasonableness on Boxing Day. London awoke to a dense fog and a hard frost, and its spirits went up. Its citizens became possessed with an unnatural cheerfulness, as is their wont when they cannot breathe without choking, when the gas has to be lighted at what should be the hour of daybreak, when the vapour lies thick in places, and will not move from contact; though now and again the darkness, where the sky was once, seems at odds with a languid something, that may be light, beyond. Then, fires within, heaped with fresh coal, regardless of expense, to keep the fog at bay, contribute more and more through chimney-pots without to the unspeakable opacities overhead, and each seeming ultimatum of blackness is followed by another blacker still. Then, while timid persons think the last day has come, the linkboys don't care whether it has or not, and enjoy themselves intensely.

A good example of the former class was Mrs. Treadwell, Michael Ragstroar's great-aunt at Hammersmith; of the latter, Michael himself. On the afternoon of that Wednesday in Christmas week he had conducted an old bloke of enormous wealth, on foot, from the said bloke's residence in Russell Square to his son-in-law's less pretentious one at Chiswick, and had earned liberal refreshments, golden opinions, and silver coin by his intrepidity and perception of London localities in Egyptian darkness. And he had never so much as once asked the name of a blooming street! So ran his communication to his great-aunt, on whom he called afterwards; being, as he said, handy.

"Now you do like I tell you, Micky, and bank it with the Savings Bank, and you'll live to be thankful." This referred to Micky's harphacrownd, just earned. That was his exact pronunciation, delivered ore rotundissimo, to do full justice to so large an amount.

Micky's reply was:—"Ketch me at it! I don't put no faith in any of these here Banks, like you see at street corners. The Bank, where you go on the green bus, is another pair o' stockin's.... No—I ain't going to put it on a 'orse. You carn't never say they ain't doctored." He went on to express an astute mistrust of investments, owing to the bad faith of Man, and wound up:—"The money won't run away of itself, so long as you don't let it out of your porket." Into which receptacle Micky returned it, slapping the same in ratification of its security.

"Then you button it in, Micky, and see you don't talk about it to no one. Only I should have said it would be safer put by, or giv' to some responsible person to take charge of." But Michael shook his head, assuming a farsighted expression. He was immovable. Mrs. Treadwell continued:—"Bein' here, I do declare you might be a useful boy, and write Dog Found large on a sheet of paper, and ask Miss Hawkins to put it up in her window for to find the owner."

"Wot's the dog?"

"Well now, he was here a minute back! Or he run out when you come in." Fog-retarded search discovered a woebegone refugee under the stairs; who had been fetched in, said Mrs. Treadwell, by her puppy in the early morning, and whom she had not had the heart to drive away.

Michael was proud to show his skill as a penman, and with his aunt's assistance composed an intelligible announcement that the owner of a black-and-tan terrier with one eye might recover the same on production of some proof of ownership. Michael devised one, suggesting that any applicant might be told to say what name was wrote on the collar.

"But there now, Micky," said the old charwoman. "He hasn't got no collar!"

"Werry good, then," said her nephew. "When he tells you what's wrote on the collar, you'll know he's a liar, and don't you give him up the dog."

"But shan't I be a story," said Mrs. Treadwell, "for to tell him the collar's wrote upon, when it's no such a thing?"

"Not you, Arnty! Don't you say anything's wrote. Just you ask him what, and cotch him out!"

The puppy wanted to help, and nearly blotted the composition. But this was avoided, and Micky went out into the fog bearing the placard, of which he was rather proud.

A typical sot was the only occupant of the bar, who was so far from sober that he imagined he was addressing a public meeting. Micky distinguished that he was referring to his second wife, and had some fault to find with the chairman. Voices in the little parlour behind the bar caught the boy's ear, and took his attention off. He was not bound to stop his ears. If parties hollered, it was their own lookout. Parties hollered, in this case, and Micky could hear, without listening. He was not sure, though, when he heard one of the voices, that he would not have listened, if he had any call to do so. For it was the voice of his old acquaintance the convict.

"No safety like a thick fog, Juliar! I'll pay her a visit this very afternoon, so soon as ever you've given me some belly-timber. Sapps Court'll be as black as an inch-thick of ink for twelve hours yet. Don't you let that steak burn!"

Michael heard the steak rescued—the hiss of its cookery intercepted. Then he heard Miss Julia say with alarm in her voice:—"You're never going there, Wix! Not to Sapps Court?"

"And why the Hell shouldn't I go to Sapps Court? One place is as safe as another, a day like this." Insert if you will an adjective before "place," here.

Michael, sharp as he was, could not tell why the woman's answer sounded embarrassed, even through a half-closed door. The story knows. She had betrayed the knowledge she had acquired from the letter she had tampered with, that Sapps was being specially watched by the Police. How could she account for this knowledge, without full confession? And would not absolution be impossible? She could only fence with the cause of her confusion. "I got the idea on my mind, I expect," said she uneasily. "Didn't you say she had a man hanging round?"

"Old Mo, sure enough. Yes, there's old Mo. But he won't be there. He'll be swiping, round at The Sun. I can reckon him up! He don't train for fighting, like he did thirty years ago. One sight of him would easy your mind—an old dot-and-go-one image!"

"I got the idea the officers would look to catch you there. I did, Wix."

"And I got the idea no such a thing!" Omission again before this last word. "Why in thunder do you suppose?... Shut to that door!"

"There's no one there—only old Nixon."

"Who's he talking to?"

"Nobody. Empty space!"

"Tell you he is! Look and see." Thereupon Miss Julia, looking through a transparent square in a glass chessboard into the bar, saw that the typical sot was certainly under the impression that he had an audience. He was, in fact, addressing a homily to Michael on the advantages of Temperance. See, he said—substantially—the reward of self-restraint! He was no mere bigoted doctrinaire, wedded to the absurd and exaggerated theories of the Teatolers. He had not a word to say in favour of Toalabshnensh. It was against Human Naysh. But Manshknewwhairtshtop, like himself, was always on the safe side. He charged Micky to be on his guard against Temptation, who lay in wait for inexperience without his first syllable, which had been absorbed in a hiccup. Micky was not grateful to Mr. Nixon for this, as it interfered with his hearing of the conversation within.

"Who are you, in behind that handle?" asked Miss Hawkins. "Come out and show us your face.... What's this? 'Dog Found'? Yes—very happy to oblige your aunt.... Stick it up against the front-glass yourself.... 'Won't stick of itself,' won't it? Wait till I see for a wafer." She returned into the small parlour, and foraged in the drawer of her inkstand, which had probably done no service since her experiment in faussure, till it supplied Mr. Wix with a simile for the fog, ten minutes since.

"That's young Ikey," said the convict. "I can tell him by his lip. Fetch him inside. I've a message for him to carry." Miss Julia had found red wafers; and, after instructing Michael how to use them—to suck them in earnest, as they had got dry awaiting their mission in life—induced him into Mr. Wix's presence. Micky's instinctive hatred of this man was subdued by the recollection of the douceurs he had received from him. But do what he would, he was only equal to a nod, as greeting. He hardly received so much himself.

The convict eyed him sleepily from the window-seat, his usual anchorage at The Pigeons, and said nothing for some seconds. Then he roused himself to say:—"Well, young shaver, what the office for you?—that's the point! Look you now—are you going home?"

"Quite as like as not. That don't commit me to nothing, neither way. Spit it out, guv'nor!"

Mr. Wix was filling a pipe, and did it to his satisfaction before he answered:—"You've to carry a message. A message to Aunt M'riar. Got that? You know Aunt M'riar."

"Knew Aunt M'riar afore ever you did."

Mr. Wix looked through his first puff of smoke, amused. "About right you are, that time!" said he. Not that this was untrue enough to be worth telling as a falsehood. Polly the barmaid had no niece or nephew that he knew of, in the early days. "But you could carry a message to her, if you didn't. Just you tell her old Goody Prichard's gone off her hooks."

"The widder two pair up at Number Seven? What hooks?"

"She's slipped her wind, handed in her chips."

"Mean she's dead? Carn't you say so, mister?"

"Sharp boy! That's what she is. Dead."

"That won't soote Aunt M'riar." Micky had only known old Maisie by repute, but he knew the Court's love for her. A wish for some confirmation of the convict's statement arose in his mind. "How's she to know it's not a lie?" said he.

"She'll know, fast enough! Say I told you. Say who I am. She'll twig, when you tell her.... Stop a bit!" He was thinking how to authenticate the death without telling the boy overmuch about himself. "Look here—I'll tell you what you've got to say. Say her son—old mother Prichard's son—was just up from Rocestershire, and he'd seen her dead, with his own eyes. Dead as a boiled lobster. That's your message."

If Micky had known that this man was speaking of himself and his own mother! Perhaps it was some instinctive inwardness that made him glad he had got his message and could be gone. He made short work of his exit, saying:—"All right, mister, I'm your man"—and departed after a word in the bar to Miss Julia:—"Right you are, missis! Don't you let him have another half-a-quartern." For Mr. Nixon being a penny short, her anxiety that he should observe his own rules of life had been reinforced by commercialism. She drew the line of encouraging drunkenness at integers—halves not counting as fractions, by tacit consent. They are not hard enough.

Miss Hawkins had placed herself in a difficulty by that indiscreet tampering with Aunt M'riar's letter. She had done it in a fit of furious exasperation with Daverill, immediately the result of an interview with him on his reappearance at The Pigeons some weeks ago. Some whim had inclined him towards the exhibition of a better selfhood than the one in daily use; perhaps merely to assert the power he still possessed over the woman; more probably to enable him to follow it up with renewed suggestions that she should turn the freehold Pigeons into solid cash, and begin with him a new life in America. She had kept her head in spite of kisses and cajolery, which appealed with some success to her memories of twenty years ago, and had refused to entertain any scheme in which lawful marriage was postponed till after the sale of her property. The parson was to precede the auctioneer.

But an escaped convict with the police inquiring for him cannot put up the banns. Had Daverill seen his way to doing so he would have made light of bigamy. Besides, was it likely his first wife would claim him? He preferred to suppress his real reason for refusing to "make an honest woman" of Miss Julia, and to take advantage of the fact that his "real wife" Polly was still living.

Then Miss Hawkins had made a proposal which showed a curious frame of mind about marriage law. Her idea may be not unknown in the class she belonged to, still. It certainly existed in the fifties of last century. If Aunt M'riar could be deprived of her "marriage lines" her teeth would be drawn, not merely practically by making proof of a marriage difficult, but definitely by the removal of a mysterious influence—most to be likened to the key of a driving-pulley, whose absence from its slot would leave the machinery of Matrimony at a deadlock. Let Mr. Wix, by force or fraud, get possession of this charter of respectability, and he and his lawful wife would come apart, like a steamed postage-stamp and its envelope. Nothing would be lacking then but a little fresh gum, and reattachment. This expresses Miss Julia's idea, however faulty the simile may be in itself.

"She's got her lines to show"—So the lady had been saying, shortly before Michael came into the bar.—"But she won't have them long, if you put your mind on making her give 'em up. You can do it, Wix." She seemed to have a strong faith in the convict's cunning.

He appeared to ponder over it, saying finally:—"Right you are, Juliar! I see my way."

"What are you going to do?"

"That's tellings. I'll get the dockyment out of her. That's enough for you, without your coming behind to see. I'll make you a New Year's present of it, gratish. What'll you do with it?"

"Tear it up—burn it. That'll quiet her off. Lawful Polly! Damn her!" Really Miss Hawkins made a better figure in a rage, than when merely vegetating. And yet her angry flush was inartistic, through so much pearl powder. It made streaks.

It had its effect on Daverill, soothing his complaisant mood, making him even more cunning than before. "I'll get it out of her, Juliar," said he, "and you shall have it to tear up, to your heart's content. It don't make one farthing's worth of difference, that I see. But have it your own choice. A woman's a woman!" There seems no place in this for Mr. Wix's favourite adjective; but it called for omission before "farthing's worth," for all that!

"Not a penny of mine shall go your way, Wix, till I've put it on the fire, and seen it burn." Miss Hawkins dropped her voice to say:—"Only keep safe, just the little while left."

After Micky's exit one or two customers called for attention, and subsided into conversation over one or two quarts. One had a grievance that rumbled on continuously, barely pausing for intermittent sympathy from the other or others. Their quarts having been conceded and paid for, Miss Julia returned. That steak—which you may have felt anxious about—was being kept hot, and Mr. Wix was tapping the ashes out of his finished pipe. "There!" said he. "You run your eye through that, and you'll see there's no more cause to shy off Sapps than any other place." His exact words suggested recent carnage in Sapps Court, but only for rhetoric's sake.

Miss Hawkins picked up the letter he threw across the table, and recognised the one she had stealthily converted to an assurance of the disappearance of extra police from Sapps Court. She felt very uncomfortable indeed—but what could she do?

---

Ill news is said to travel fast, always. It had not done so in this case, and Sapps Court was still in ignorance of old Maisie's death when Michael passed under its archway, to experience for the first time the feelings that beset the bearer of fatal tidings to those it will wound to hear them far worse than himself. To a not inhuman creature, in such a case, a title to sorrow, that will lessen the distance between his own heart and the one he has to lacerate, is almost a relief.

He himself was not to blame for delay in delivering his message. On the contrary, his sympathetic perception of its unwelcomeness to its recipients took the strange form of a determination not to lose a second in fulfilling his instructions. So deeply bent was he on doing this that he never questioned the reasonableness of his own alacrity until he had passed the iron post Dave fell off—you remember?—and was opposite to his own family residence at the head of the Court. His intention had been to pass it, and go straight on to No. 7. Something made him change his mind; perhaps the painfulness of his task dawned on him. His mother was surprised to see him. "There now," said she. "I thought you was going to be out all day, and your father he'll want all the supper there is for hisself."

"So I was a-going to be out all day. I'm out now, in a manner o' speaking. Going out again. Nobody's going to suffer from an empty stummick along o' me." He had subsided on a rocking-chair, dropping his old cloth cap between his feet.

"Whereabouts have you been to, Micky?" said his mother conciliatorily, to soothe her son's proud independent spirit.

He recited his morning's work rapidly. "Linked an old cock down to Chiswick Mawl what was frightened to ride in a hansom, till half-past eleven, 'cos he could only go slow. Got an early dinner off of his cook by reason of roomuneration. Cold beef and pickles as much as I choose. Slice o' plum pudding hotted up a purpose, only no beer for to encourage wice in youth. Bein' clost handy, dropped round on a wisit to Arnty Lisbeth. Arnty Lisbeth she's makin' inquiry concerning a young tike's owner. Wrote Arnty Lisbeth out a notice-card. Got Miss Horkings next door to allow it up in her window on the street. That's how I came by this here intelligence I got to pass on to Wardle's. Time I was going!"

Mrs. Ragstroar stopped scraping the brown outer skin off a very large potato, and looked reproachfully at Micky. "You've never said nothing of that," said she.

"Who ever went to say I said anything of it?" was the reply. In this family all communications took the form of contradictions or indictments, more or less defiant in character. "I never said not one word. I'd no call to say anything, and I didn't."

"Then how can you ever expect anyone to know unless you say?" She went on peeling.

"Who's ever said I expected anyone to know?" But in spite of his controversial method, he did not go away to give this message; and evidently wanted a helping hand, or at least sympathy.

His mother perceived the fact, and said magnanimously:—"You might just as well up and tell, Micky." Then she nearly undid the effect of her concession by saying:—"Because you know you want to!"

What saved the situation was that Micky did want to. He blurted out the news that was oppressing him, to his own great relief. "Old Mother Prichard, Wardleses Widder upstairs, she's dead."

"Sakes alive! They was expecting her back."

"Well—she's dead, like I tell you!"

"For sure?"

"That's what her son says. If he don't know, nobody don't."

"Was it him told you? I never heard tell she had a son—not Mrs. Prichard."

Micky's family pugnacity preferred to accept this as a censure, or at least a challenge. He raised his voice, and fired off his speech in platoons, to say:—"Never see her son! Shouldn't know him if I was to see him. Wot—I'm telling—you—that's—wot—her—son said to the party what commoonicated it to me. Miss Wardle she'll reco'nise the party, by particklars giv'." This embodied the impression received from the convict's words, which had made no claim to old Maisie as his mother.

"Whatever shall you say to Mrs. Wardle?"

Micky picked up his cap from the ground, and used it as a nose-polisher—after slapping it on his knee to sterilise it, a use which seemed to act in relief of perplexity. "If I know, I'm blest," said he. "Couldn't tell you if you was to arsk me!"

It was impossible to resist the implied appeal for help. Mrs. Ragstroar put a large fresh potato on the table to enjoy its skin yet a little longer, and wiped the memory of its predecessors off on her apron. "Come along, Micky," she said. "I got to see Aunt M'riar; you come along after me. I'll just say a word aforehand." Micky welcomed this, and saying merely:—"Ah!—like a tip!" followed his mother down the Court to No. 7.

Someone, somewhere, must have known, clocks apart, that a day was drawing to a close; a short winter's day, and a dark and cold one at the best. But the someone was not in the Thames Valley, and the somewhere surely was not Sapps Court. There Day and Night alike had been robbed of their birthright by sheer Opacity, and humankind had to choose between submission to Egyptian darkness and an irksome leisure, or a crippled activity by candlelight, on the one hand, and ruin, on the other. Not that tallow candles were really much good—they got that yellow and streaky. Why—the very gaslamps out of doors you couldn't hardly see them, not unless you went quite up close! If it had not been that, as Micky followed his mother down the Court, a ladder-bearer had dawned suddenly, and died away after laying claim to lighting you up a bit down here, no one would never have so much as guessed illumination was afoot. But then the one gaslamp was on a bracket a great heicth up, on the wall at the end of Druitt's garden, so called. And Mrs. Ragstroar and her son had followed along the wood-palings in front of the houses, on the left.

Micky's flinching from his mission had grown on him so by the time they reached the end house, that he hung back and allowed his mother to enter first. He wanted the tip to exhaust the subject of Death, and to leave him only the task of authentication. He did not hear what his mother said in a quick undertone to Aunt M'riar, within, manifestly ironing. But he heard its effect on her hearer—a cry of pain, kept under, and an appeal to Uncle Mo, in some dark recess beyond. "Oh, Mo!—only hark at that! Our old lady—gone!" Then Uncle Mo, emerging probably from pitch darkness in the little parlour, and joining in the undertones on inquiry and information mixed—mixed soon enough with sobs. Then the struggle against them in Mo's own voice of would-be reassurance:—"Poor old M'riar! Don't ye take on so! We'll all die one day." Then more undertones. Then Aunt M'riar's broken voice:—"Yes—I know she was eighty"—and her complete collapse over:—"It's the children I'm thinking of! Our children, Mo, our children!"

Old Mo saw that point. You could hear it in his voice. "Ah—the children!" But he tried for a forlorn hope. Was it possibly a false report? Make sure about that, anyhow, before giving way to grief! "Was it only that young shaver of yours brought the news, Mrs. Ragstroar? Maybe he's put the saddle on the wrong horse!"

"He's handy to tell his own tale, Mr. Wardle. Here, young Micky! Come along in and speak for yourself." Whereupon the boy came in. He had been secretly hoping he might escape being called into council altogether.

"You're sure you got the right of it, Michael," said Uncle Mo. "Tell it us all over again from the beginning."

Whereupon Micky, braced by having a member of his own noble sex as catechist, but sadly handicapped by inability to employ contentious formulas, gave a detailed account of his visit to The Pigeons. He identified the convict by short lengths of speech, addressed to Mr. Wardle's ear alone, suggestive of higher understandings of the affairs of men than aunts and mothers could expect to share. "Party that's givin' trouble to the Police ... Party I mentioned seeing in Hy' Park ... Party that come down the Court inquirin' for widder lady.... came at intervals. Micky's respectful and subdued reference to Mrs. Prichard was a tribute to Death.

"And did he say her son told him, to his own hearing?... All right, M'riar, I know what I'm talking about." This was to stop Aunt M'riar's interposing with a revelation of old Maisie's relation to the party. It would have encumbered cross-examination; which, even if it served no particular end, would seem profound and weighty.

"That's how I took it from him," said Micky.

"Didn't he say who her son was?" Aunt M'riar persisted, with unflinching simplicity.

Micky, instantly illuminated, replied:—"Not he! He never so much as said he wasn't her son, hisself." This did not mean that affirmation was usually approached by denial of every possible negation. It was only the involuntary echo of a notion Aunt M'riar's manner had clothed her words with.

"That was tellings, M'riar," said Uncle Mo. "But it don't make any odds, that I can see. Look ye here, young Micky! What was it this charackter said about coming here this afternoon?"

"Werry first words I heard him say! 'No safety like a thick fog,' he says. 'And I'll pay her a visit this very arternoon,' he says. Only he won't! You may take that off me, like Gospel."

"How do you make sure of that, young master?"

"'Cos he's got nothing to come for, now I've took his message for him. If he hadn't had reliance, he'd not have arxed me to carry it. He knows me for safe, by now, Mr. Wardle."

"Don't you see, Mo," said Aunt M'riar. "He'd no call to come here, exceptin'. It was only to oblige-like, and let know. Once Micky gave his word, what call had he to come four mile through such a fog?"

"That's the whole tale, then?" said Uncle Mo, after reflection. "Onlest you can call to mind something you've forgot, Master Micky."

"Not a half a word, Mr. Moses. If there had a been, I'd have made you acquainted, and no lies. And all I said's ackerate, and to rely on." Which was perfectly true, so far as reporter's good faith went. Had Micky overheard the conversation two minutes sooner, he would have gathered that Mr. Wix had other reasons for coming to Sapps Court than to give the news of Mrs. Prichard's death. Indeed, it is not clear why, intending to go there for another purpose, Wix thought it necessary to employ Michael at all as an ambassador. But a story has to be content with facts.

Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar were alone with the shadow of their trouble, and the knowledge that the children must be told.

The boy and his mother, their painful message delivered, had vanished through the fog to their own home. The voices of Dave and Dolly came from the room above through the silence that followed. Mo and M'riar were at no loss to guess what was the burden of that earnest debate that rose and fell, and paused and was renewed, but never died outright. It was the endless arrangement and rearrangement of the preparations for the great event to come, the feast that was to welcome old Mrs. Picture back to her fireside, and its chair with cushions.

"Oh, Mo—Mo! I haven't the heart—I haven't the heart to do it."

"Poor old M'riar—poor old M'riar!" The old prizefighter's voice was tender with its sorrow for his old comrade, who shrank from the task that faced them, one or both; even sorrow—though less oppressive—for the loss of the old lady who had become the children's idol.

"No, Mo, I haven't the heart. Only this very day ... if it hadn't been for the fog ... Dave would have got the last halfpenny out of his rabbit to buy a sugar-basin on the stall in the road ... and he's saving it for a surprise for Dolly ... when the fog goes...."

"Is Susan Burr upstairs with them?"

"No—she's gone out to Yardley's for some thread. She's all right. She's walking a lot better."

They sat silent for a while, the unconscious voices overhead reaching their hearts, and rousing the question they would have been so glad to ignore. How should they bring it to the children's knowledge that the chair with cushions was waiting for its occupant in vain? Which of their unwilling hands should be the first to draw aside the veil that still sheltered those two babies' lives from the sight of the face of Death.

The man was the first to speak. "Young Mick, he saw his way pretty sharp, M'riar—about who was ... her son." His voice dropped on the reference to old Maisie herself, and he avoided her name.

"Did he understand?"

"Oh yes—he twigged, fast enough.... There's a p'int to consider, M'riar. This man's her son—but it don't follow he knows whether she's dead or living, any better than you or me. Who's to say he's not lying? Besides, we should have had a letter to tell.... Who from?... H'm—well—from.... But Mo found the completion of this sentence difficult.

No wonder! How could he reply:—"Her ladyship?" He may have been convinced that Gwen would write, but how could he say so? The sister and daughter, neither of whom were more than names to him, seemed out of the question. Sister Nora would be sure to come with the news, some time. But was she back from Scotland, where they knew she had gone to convalesce?

Aunt M'riar looked the fact in the face. "No—we shouldn't have had no letter, Mo. Not yet a while, at least. Daverill's a bad man, and lies. But not when there's no advantage in it. He'd not go about to send me word she was dead, except he knew."

"How should he know, more than we?"

"Don't you ask me about when I see him, not yet where, nor yet how, and I'll tell you, Mo." She waited, as for a safe-conduct.

"Poor old M'riar!" said Mo pitifully. "I'll not witness-box you. Catch me! No—no!—you shan't tell me nothing you don't like."

"He told me he should try to see his mother again. And I said to him if he went there he would be taken, safe and certain. And he said not he, because the Police were too sharp by half, and would take for granted he would be afraid to go anigh the place again. He said he could always see round them."

"I see what he was driving at. And you think he went."

"None so long ago, I should say. He never see her—not alive. I couldn't say why, only I feel that was the way of it."

"When did you see him last?... No—old girl! I won't do that. It's mean—after sayin' I wouldn't witness-box! Don't you tell me nothing."

"I won't grudge telling you that much, Mo. It's a tidy long time back now. I couldn't say to a day. It was afore I wrote to him to keep away from the Court for fear of the Police.... Yes—I did! Just after Mr. Rowe came round that time, asking inquiries.... I am his wife, Mo—nothing can't alter it."

"I ain't blaming you, old girl."

"Well—it was then he said he'd go to Chorlton again. And he's been."

Silence again, and the sound of the children above. Then a footstep without, recognised as Susan Burr's by its limp.

"She'll have to be told, Mo," said Aunt M'riar. "We've never had a thought for poor Susan."

A commonplace face came white as ashes from the fog without, and a suffocating voice, gasping against sobs. "Oh, M'riar!—Oh, Mr. Wardle!—Is it true she's gone?"

Aunt M'riar could not tighten her lips against their instability and speak, at the same time, so she nodded assent. Uncle Mo said, steadily enough:—"I'm afraid it's true, Mrs. Burr. We can't make it out no otherwise." Then M'riar got self-command to say:—"Yes—she's taken from us. It's the Lord's will." And then they could claim their birthright of tears, the last privilege left to hearts encompassed with the darkness of the grave.

The three were standing, some short while later, at the stairfoot, each looking at the other. Which was to go first?

Aunt M'riar made a hesitating suggestion. "Supposin' you was to step up first, and look back to say...!"

"That's one idear," said Uncle Mo. "Suppose you do!"

Susan Burr, referred to by both, accepted the commission, limping slowly up the stairs while the others waited below, listening. They heard that the door above was opened, when the children's voices came clearer, suddenly. But Susan Burr had only cautiously pushed the door ajar, making no noise, to listen herself before going in. There was a flare from a gas-birth in the fire as she got a sight of the group within, through the opening. It illuminated Dolly, Dave, and the newly christened wax doll; the Persian apparatus on the floor—a mere rehearsal, whose cake had to be pretence cake, and whose tea lacked its vegetable constituent—and the portraits of robed and sceptred Royalty on the wall. Some point in stage-management seemed to be under discussion, and to threaten a dissolution of partnership. For Dave was saying:—"Then oy shall go and play with The Boys, because the fog's a-stopping. You look out at the winder!"

Dolly met this with a firm, though gentle, prohibition. "No, you s'arn't. You is to be Gwanny Mawwowbone vis time, and set on the sofa. And me to be old Mrs. Spicture vis time, and set in the chair wiv scushions. And Pussy to be ve uvvers. And Gweng to paw out all veir teas. Only vey take veir sugar veirselves." Dolly may have had it in view to reduce Dave to impotence by assigning to him the position of a guest. His manhood revolted against a subordinate part. Superhuman tact is needed—an old story!—in the casting of the parts of any new play, and Dolly, although kissable to a degree, and with an iron will, was absolutely lacking in tact.

"Then oy shall go and play with The Boys, because the forg's a-stoarping." But this was an empty threat, as Dave knew perfectly well that Uncle Mo would not allow him to go out of doors so late, even if the fog melted, since its immediate cessation would have left London in the dark, for it was past the Official hour of sunset.

Dolly said again:—"No, you sarn't!" and went on with the arrangements. "You take tite hold of Pussy, and stop her off doin' on ve scushions. Gweng to paw out the tea, only to wait faw the hot water! Ven I shall go in the chair with scushions, and be Mrs. Spicture. And ven you to leave hold of Pussy, and be Gwanny Mawwowbone on the sofa." The supernumeraries were intransigeant and troublesome; that is to say, their representative the Cat was.

Dave, whose enjoyment of these games was beginning to be marred by his coming manhood—for see how old he was getting!—utilised magnanimity as an excuse for concession. He kept the supers in check while Dolly suggested an attitude to Gweng. Gweng had only to wait for hot water, so it was easy to find one. Dolly then scrambled into the chair with cushions, and the supernumeraries wedged themselves round her and purred, in the person of the Cat. But having made this much concession, Dave struck.

Instead of accepting his part, he went to the window. "Oy can see across the way," said he. "Oy don't call it a forg when you can see the gairslamp all the way across the Court. That hoyn't a forg! Oy say, Dolly, oy'm a-going for to see Uncle Mo round to The Sun parlour, and boy a hoypny sorcer coming back. Oy am!"

Dolly shook a mass of rough gold that cried aloud for a comb, and said with sweet gravity:—"You tarn't!"

"Why not?" Dave's indignation at this statement made him shout. "Why carn't oy, same as another boy?"

"Because you're Gwanny Mawwowbone, all ve time. You tarn't help it." Dolly's solemn nods, and a pathos that seemed to grieve over the inevitable, left Dave speechless, struggling in vain against the identity he had so rashly undertaken to assume.

Susan Burr missed a great deal of this, and marked what she heard but little. She only knew that the children were happy, and that their happiness must end. Even her own grief—for think what old Maisie's death meant to her!—was hushed at the thought of how these babies could be told, could have their first great grief burst upon them. She felt sick, and only knew that she herself could not speak the word.

Aunt M'riar stole up after her stealthily—not Uncle Mo; his weight on the old stairs would have made a noise. They stood side by side on the landing, just catching sight of the little poppet in the armchair, all unkempt gold and blue eyes, quite content with her personation of the beloved old presence it would never know again. Aunt M'riar could just follow Susan Burr's stifled whisper:—"She's being old Mrs. Picture, in her chair."

It was confirmed by Dave's speech from the window, unseen. "You ain't old Mrs. Picture. When Mrs. Picture comes, oy shall tell her you said you was her, and then you'll see what Mrs. Picture'll say!" He spoke with a deep earnestness—a champion of Truth against an insidious and ungrounded fiction, that pretence was reality.

Then Dolly's voice, immovable in conviction, sweet and clear in correction of mere error:—"I is Mrs. Spicture, and when she comes she'll say I was Mrs. Spicture. She'll set in her chair wiv scushions, and say I was Mrs. Spicture."

The two listeners without did not wait to hear Dave's indignant rejoinder. They could not bear the tranquil ignorance of the children, and their unconsciousness of the black cloud closing in on them. They turned and went noiselessly down the stairs, choking back the grief they dared not grant indulgence to, by so much as a word or sound. The chronic discussion that they had left behind went on—on—always the same controversy, as it seemed; the same placid assurance of Dolly, the same indignant protest of Dave.

At the stairfoot, Uncle Mo, silent, looking inquiry, mistrusting speech. Aunt M'riar used a touch on his arm, and a nod towards the door of the little parlour, to get safe out of the children's hearing before risking speech, with that suffocation in her throat. Then when the door was closed, it came.

"We c-c-couldn't do it, Mo, we c-couldn't do it." Her sobs became a suppressed wail of despair, which seemed to give relief. Susan Burr had no other tale to tell, and was inarticulate to the same effect. They could not break through the panoply of the children's ignorance of Death, there in the very home of the departed, in the face of every harbinger of her return.

"Poor old M'riar! You shan't have the telling of 'em." Uncle Mo's pitying tones were husky in the darkened room; not quite dark, as the fog was lifting, and the Court's one gas-lamp was perceptible again through its remains. "Poor old M'riar! You shan't tell 'em—nor yet Susan Burr. I'll tell 'em, myself." But his heart sank at the prospect of his task, and he was fain to get a little respite—of only a few hours. "Look ye here, M'riar, I don't see no harm to come of standing of 'em over till we know. Maybe, as like as not, we'll have a letter in the morning."

But Uncle Mo was not to have the telling of the children.

Once it was clearly understood that the news was to be kept back, it became easier to exist, provisionally. Grief, demanding expression, gnaws less when silence becomes a duty. It was almost a relief to Susan Burr to have to be dry-eyed, on compulsion; far, far easier than to have to explain her tears to the young people. She went upstairs to them, mustering, as she went, a demeanour that would not be hypocritical, yet would safeguard her from suspicion of a hidden secret. She had been a long way, and was feeling her foot. That covered the position. Further, the children might stop upstairs a bit longer, if good. Dave was not to go out. Uncle Mo had said so. If Uncle Mo did go round to The Sun to-day, it would be after little boys and girls were abed and asleep. Mrs. Burr made her attitude easier to herself by affecting a Draconic demeanour. It was due to her foot, Dave and Dolly decided.

The unconscious children accepted the fog as all-sufficient to account for the household's gloom, and never knew how heavily the hours went by for its older members. Bedtime came, and the fog did not go, or, at least, went no further than to leave the gaslamp as Dave had seen it, just visible across the Court, or discernible from the archway at a favourable fluctuation. Susan Burr stepped round to Mrs. Ragstroar's, alleging anxiety to hear Michael's story again, and some hopes of further particulars. She may have felt indisposed for the loneliness of her own room, with that empty chair; and yet that a company of three would bear reduction, all that called for saying having been said twice and again.

This was soon after supper; when little boys and girls are abed and asleep. The little boy in this case was half asleep. He heard his Aunt's and Uncle's voices get fainter as his own dream-voices came to take their place, and then came suddenly awake with a start to find Uncle Mo looming large beside him in the half-dark room. "Made you jump, did I, old man?" said Uncle Mo, kissing him. "Go to sleep again." Dave did so, but not before receiving a dim impression that his uncle went into the neighbouring room to Dolly, and kissed the sleeping child, too; gently, so as not to wake her. That was the impression, gleaned somehow, under which he went to sleep. Uncle Mo often looked in at Dave and Dolly, so this visit was no surprise to Dave.

Aunt M'riar awaited him at the stairfoot, on his return. "They'll be happy for a bit yet," said she. "Now, if only Jerry would come and smoke with you, Mo, I wouldn't be sorry to get to bed myself."

"May be he'll come!" said Mo. "Anyways, M'riar, don't you stop up on account of me. I'll have my pipe and a quiet think, and turn in presently.... Or look here!—tell you what! I'll just go round easy towards Jeff's, and if I meet Jerry by the way, I meet him; and if I don't, I don't. I shan't stop there above five minutes if he's not there, and I shan't stop all night if he is. Good-bye, M'riar."

"Good-night's plenty, Mo; you're coming back."

"Ay, surely! What did I say? Good-bye? Good-night, I should have made it." But he had said "Good-bye!"

Has it ever occurred to you—you who read this—to feel it cross your mind when walking that you have just passed a something of which you took no notice? If you have, you will recognise this description. Did Uncle Mo, when he wavered at the arch, fancy he had half-seen a figure in the shadow, near the dustbin, and had automatically taken no notice of it? If so, he decided that he was mistaken, for he passed on after glancing back down the Court. But very likely his pause was only due to the fact that he was pulling on his overcoat. It was one he had purchased long ago, before the filling out had set in which awaits all athletes when they relapse into a sedentary life. Mo hated the coat, and the difficulties he met with when getting it on and off.

He was as good as his word about not stopping long at The Sun. Although he found his friend awaiting him, he did not remain in his company above half an hour, including his seven-minutes' walk back to the Court, to which Jerry accompanied him, saying farewell at the archway. He didn't go on to No. 7 at once, remembering that M'riar had said she wouldn't be sorry to go to bed.

Seeing lights and hearing voices in at Ragstroar's, he turned in for a chat, more particularly for a repetition of Micky's tale of his Hammersmith visit. Finding the boy there, he accepted his mother's suggestion that he should sit down and be comfortable. He did the former, having first pulled off the obnoxious coat to favour the latter.

He may have spent twenty minutes there, chiefly cross-examining Micky on particulars, before he got up to go. He forgot the odious coat, for Susan Burr called him back, and tried to persuade him to put it on. He resisted all entreaties. Such a little distance!—was it worth the trouble? He threw it over his arm, and again departed. The two women saw him from the door, and then, as they were exchanging a final word in the passage, were startled by a loud screaming, and, running out, saw Mo fling away the coat on his arm, and make such speed as he might towards a struggling group not over visible in the shadow of the lamp immediately above their heads.

This was within an hour of Mo's good-night, or good-bye, to M'riar at his own doorway.

---

Aunt M'riar had wavered yet a little before the fire, and had then given way to the thought of Dolly asleep. Dolly would be so unconscious of all things that it would now be no pain to know that she knew nothing of Death. Dolly asleep was always a solace to Aunt M'riar, even when she kicked or made sudden incoherent dream-remarks in the dark.

So, after placing Mo's candlestick conspicuously, that Susan Burr, who was pretty sure to come first, should see that he was still out, and not put up the chain nor shoot to the bolt, M'riar made her way upstairs to bed, very quietly, so as not to wake the children.

She was less than halfway to bed when she heard, as she thought, Susan Burr's return. It could not be Mo, so soon. Besides, he would have struck a match at once. He always did.

She listened for Susan's limping footstep on the stairs. Why did it not come? Something wrong there, or at least unusual! Leaving her candle, she wrapped herself hurriedly in a flannel garment she called her dressing-gown, and went downstairs to the landing. All was dark below, and the door was shut, to the street. She called in a loud whisper:—"Is that Susan?" and no answer came:—"Who is that?" and still no answer.

She went back quickly for her candle, and descended the stairs, holding it high up to see all round. No one in the kitchen itself, certainly. The little parlour-door stood open. She thought she had shut it. Could she be sure? She looked in, and could see no one—advanced into the room, still seeing no one—and started suddenly forward as the door swung to behind her.

She turned terrified, and found herself alone with the man she most dreaded—her husband. He had waited behind the door till she entered, and had then pushed it to, and was leaning against it.

"Didn't expect to see me, Polly Daverill, did you now? It's me." He pulled a chair up, and, placing it against the door, sat back in it slouchingly, with a kind of lazy enjoyment of her terror that was worse than any form of intimidation. "What do you want to be scared for? I'm a lamb. You might stroke me! This here's a civility call. For to thank you for your letter, Polly Daverill."

She had edged away, so as to place the table between them. She could only suppose his words sardonically spoken, seeing what she had said in her letter. "I wrote it for your own sake, Daverill," said she deprecatingly, timidly. "What I said about the Police was true."

"Can't foller that. Say it again!"

"They had put on a couple of men, to keep an eye. They may be there now. But I'd made my mind up you should not be taken along of me, so I wrote the letter."

"Then what the Hell...!" His face set angrily, as he searched a pocket. The sunken line that followed that twist in his jaw grew deeper, and the scar on his knitted forehead told out smooth and white, against its reddening furrows. He found what he sought—her letter, which she recognised—and opened it before he finished his speech. "What the Hell," he repeated, "is the meaning of this?" He read it in a vicious undertone, biting off each word savagely and throwing it at her.

She had rallied a little, but again looked more frightened than ever. It cost her a gasping effort to say:—"You are reading it wrong! Do give an eye to the words, Daverill."

"Read it yourself," he retorted, and threw the letter across the table.

She read it through and remained gazing at it with a fixed stare, rigid with astonishment. "I never wrote it so," said she at last.

"Then how to God Almighty did it come as it is? Answer me to that, Polly Daverill."

Her bewilderment was absolute, and her distress proportionate. "I never wrote it like that, Daverill. I declare it true and solemn I never did. What I wrote was for you to keep away, and I made the words according. I can't say no other, if I was to die for it."

"None of your snivelling! How came it like it is?—that's the point! Nobody's touched the letter." He used his ill-chosen adjective for the letter as he pointed at it, so that one might have thought he was calling attention to a stain upon it. He dropped his finger slowly, maintaining his reproachful glare. Then suddenly:—"Did you invellop the damned thing yourself?"

She answered tremulously:—"I wrote it in this room at this table, where you sit, and put it in its invellop, and stuck it to, firm. And I put back the blotting-book where I took it from, not to tell-tale...."

He interrupted her roughly. "Got the cursed thing there? Where did you take it from?... Oh—that's your blotting-book, is it? Hand it over!" She had produced it from the table-drawer close at hand, and gave it to him without knowing why he asked for it.

There is no need to connect his promptness to catch a clue to a forgery with his parentage. The clue is too simple—the spelling-book lore of the spy's infancy. The convict pulled out the top sheet of blotting-paper, and reversed it against the light. The second line of the letter was clear, and ended "now not." The "not" might, however, have been erased independently—probably would have been. But how about the end of the fourth line, also clear, with the word "run" on an oasis of clean paper, and nothing after it. That "no" in the letter was not the work of its writer.

"I put it in its invellop, Daverill, and not a soul see inside that letter from me till you...."

"How do you know that?" He paused, reflecting. "It wasn't Juliar. She'd got no ink." This man was clever enough to outwit Scotland Yard, with an offer of fifty pounds for his capture, but fell easily to the cunning of a woman, roused by jealousy. It wasn't Julia, clearly? "Who had hold of the letter, between you and her?" said he, quite off the right scent.

"Only young Micky Ragstroar...."

"There we've got it!" The man pounced. "Only that young offender and the Police. That was good for half a sov. for him.... Don't see what I mean? I'll tell you. He delivered your letter all right, after they'd run their eyes over it. I'll remember him, one day!" A word in this is not the one Daverill used, and his adjective is twice omitted. Aunt M'riar's puzzled face produced a more temperate explanation, to the effect that Micky had carried the letter to a "tec," or detective, who had "got at him," and that the letter had been tampered with at the police-station.

"I wouldn't believe it of Micky, and I don't," said Aunt M'riar. "The boy's a good boy at heart, and no tale-bearer." She ventured, as an indirect appeal on Micky's behalf, to add:—"I'm shielding you, Daverill, and a many wouldn't."

He affected to recognise his indebtedness, but only grudgingly. "You're what they call a good wife, Polly Daverill. Partner of a cove's joys and sorrows! Got your marriage lines to show! That's your style. You stick to that!"

Something in his tone made M'riar say:—"Why do you speak like that? You know that I have." Her speech did not seem to arise from his words. She had detected a sneer in them.

"You've got 'em to show.... Ah! But I shouldn't show 'em, if I were you."

"Am I likely?"

"That's not what I was driving at."

"What do you mean?"

"Shall I tell you, Polly, my angel? Shall I tell you, respectable married woman?"

"Don't werrit me, Daverill. I don't deserve it of you!"

"Right you are, old Polly! And told you shall be!... Sure you want to know?... There, there—easy does it! I'm a-telling of you." He suddenly changed his manner, and spoke quickly, collectedly, drily. "The name on your stifficate ain't the correct name. I saw to that. Only you needn't fret your kidneys about it, that I see. You're an immoral woman, you are! Poor Polly! Feel any different?"

Anyone who knows the superstitious reverence for the "sacred" marriage tie that obtains among women of M'riar's class and type will understand her horror and indignation. And all the more if he knows the extraordinary importance they attach to a certificate which is, after all, only a guarantee that the marriage-bond is recorded elsewhere, not the attested record itself. For a moment she was unable to speak, and when words did come, they were neither protest nor contradiction, but:—"Let me out! Let me out!"

The convict shifted his chair without rising, and held the door back for her exit. "Ah," said he, "go and have a look at it!" He had taken her measure exactly. She went straight upstairs, carrying her candle to the wardrobe by Dolly's bed, where her few private possessions were hidden away. Dolly would not wake. If she did, what did it matter? Aunt M'riar heard a small melodious dream-voice in the pillow say tenderly:—"One cup wiv soody." It was the rehearsal of that banquet that the great Censorship had disallowed.

A lock in a drawer, refractory at first, brought to terms at last. A box found far back, amenable to its key at sight. A still clean document, found and read by the light of a hurriedly snuffed candle. Then an exclamation of relief from the reader:—"There now! As if I could have been mistook!" It was such a relief that she fairly gasped to feel it.

No doubt a prudent, judicious person, all self-control and guiding maxims, would have refolded and replaced that document, locked the drawer, hidden the key, and met the cunning expectancy of the evil face that awaited her with:—"You are entirely mistaken, and I was absolutely right."

But M'riar was another sort. Only one idea was present in the whirlwind of her release from that hideous anxiety—the idea of striking home her confutation of the lie that had caused it in the face of its originator. She did the very thing his subtlety had anticipated. As he heard her returning footsteps, and the rustle of the paper in her hand, he chuckled with delight at his easy triumph, and perhaps his joy added a nail in the coffin of his soul.

The snicker had gone from his face before she returned, marriage certificate in hand, and held it before his eyes. "There now!" said she. "What did I tell you?"

He looked at it apathetically, reading it, but not offering to take it from her. "'Taint reg'lar!" said he. "Name spelt wrong, for one thing. My name."

"Oh, Daverill, how can you say that? It's spelt right."

"Let's have a look!" He stretched out his hand for it in the same idle way. Aunt M'riar's nature might have been far less simple than it was, and yet she might have been deceived by his manner. That he was aiming at possession of the paper was the last thing it seemed to imply. But he knew his part well, and whom he had to deal with.

Absolutely unsuspicious, she let his fingers close upon it. Even then, so sure did he feel of landing his fish, that he played it on the very edge of the net. "Well," said he. "Just you look at it again," and relinquished it to her. Then, instead of putting his hand back in his pocket, he stretched it out again, saying:—"Stop a bit! Let's have another look at it."

She instantly restored it, saying:—"Only look with your eyes, and you'll see the name's all right." And then in a startled voice:—"But what?—but why?" provoked by the unaccountable decision with which he folded it, never looking at it.

He slipped it inside the breast-pocket of his coat, and buttoned it over. "That was my game, you see!" said he, equably enjoying the dumb panic of his victim.

As for her, she was literally speechless, for the moment. At last she just found voice to gasp out:—"Oh, Daverill, you can't mean it! Give it me back—oh, give it me back! Will you give it me back for money?... Oh, how can you have the heart?..."

"Let's see the money. How much have you got? Put it down on this here table." He seemed to imply that he was open to negotiation.

With a trembling hand M'riar got at her purse, and emptied it on the table. "That is every penny," she said—"every penny I have in the house. Now give it me!"

"Half a bean, six bob, and a mag." He picked up and pocketed the sixteen shillings and a halfpenny, so described.

"Now you will give it back to me?" cried poor Aunt M'riar, with a wail in her voice that must have reached Dolly, for a pathetic cry answered her from the room above.

"Some o' these days," was all his answer, imperturbably. "There's your kid squealing. Time I was off.... What's that?"

Was it a new terror, or a thing to thank God for? Uncle Mo's big voice at the end of the court.

The convict made for the street-door—peeped out furtively. "He's turned in at young Ikey's," said he. Then to M'riar, using an epithet to her that cannot be repeated:—"Down on your knees and pray that your bully may stick there till I'm clear, or ... Ah!—smell that!" It was his knife-point, open, close to her face. In a moment he was out in the Court, now so far clear of fog that the arch was visible, beyond the light that shone out of Ragstroar's open door.

Another moment, and M'riar knew what to do. Save Mo, or die attempting it! If the chances seemed to point to the convict passing the house unobserved she would do nothing.

That was not to be the way of it. He was still some twenty paces short of Ragstroar's when old Mo was coming out at the door with the light in it.

Aunt M'riar, quick on the heels of the convict, who was rather bent on noiselessness than speed, had flung herself upon him—so little had he foreseen such an attack—before he could turn to repel it. She clung to him from behind with all her dead-weight, encumbering that hand with the knife as best she might. She screamed loud with all the voice she had:—"Mo—Mo—he has a knife—he has a knife!" Mo flung away the coat on his arm, and ran shouting. "Leave hold of him, M'riar—keep off him—leave hold!" His big voice echoed down the Court, resonant with sudden terror on her behalf.

But her ears were deaf to any voice but that of her heart, crying almost audibly:—"Save him! Never give that murderous right hand its freedom! In spite of the brutal clutch that is dragging the hair it has captured from the living scalp—in spite of the brutal foot below kicking hard to reach and break a bone—cling hard to it! And if, power failing you against its wicked strength, it should get free, be you the first to meet its weapon, even though the penalty be death." That was her thought, for what had Mo done that he should suffer by this man—this nightmare for whose obsession of her own life she had herself alone to blame?

The struggle was not a long one. Before Mo, whose weak point was his speed, had covered half the intervening distance, a kick of the convict's heavy boot-heel, steel-shod, had found its bone, and broken it, just above the ankle. The shock was irresistible, and the check on the knife-hand perforce flagged for an instant—long enough to leave it free. Another blow followed, a strange one that M'riar could not localise, and then all the Court swam about, and vanished.

What Mo saw by the light of the lamp above as he turned out of Ragstroar's front-gate was M'riar, dressing-gowned and dishevelled, clinging madly to the man he could recognise as her convict husband. He heard her cry about the knife, saw that her hold relaxed, saw the blade flash as it struck back at her. He saw her fall, and believed the blow a mortal one. He heard the voice of Dolly wailing in the house beyond, crying out for the missing bedfellow she would never dream beside again. At least, that was his thought. And there before him was her slayer, with his wife's blood fresh upon his hands.

All the anger man can feel against the crimes of man blazed in his heart, all the resolution he can summon to avenge them knit the muscles of his face and set closer the grip upon his lip. And yet, had he been asked what was his strongest feeling at this moment, he would have answered:—"Fear!"—fear, that is, that his man, more active than himself and younger, should give him the slip, to right or to left, and get away unharmed.

But that was not the convict's thought, with that knife open in his hand. Indeed, the small space at command might have thwarted him. If, for but two seconds, he could employ those powerful fists that were on the watch for him on either side of the formidable bulk whose slow movement was his only hope, then he might pass and be safe. It would have to be quick work, with young Ikey despatched by the screaming women at Ragstroar's to call in help; either his father's from the nearest pot-house, or any police-officer, whichever came first.

Quick work it was! A gasp or two, and the man's natural flinching before the great prizefighter and his terrible reputation had to yield to the counsels of despair. It had to be done, somehow. He led with his left—so an expert tells us we should phrase it—and hoped that his greater alacrity would land a face-blow, and cause an involuntary movement of the fists to lay the body open. Then his knife, and a rip, and the thing would be done.

It might have been so, easily, had it been a turn-to with the gloves, for diversion. Then, twenty years of disuse would have had their say, and the slow paralysing powers of old age asserted themselves, quenching the swift activity of hand and eye, and making their responsive energy, that had given him victory in so many a hard-fought field, a memory of the past. But it was not so now. The tremendous tension of his heartfelt anger, when he found himself face to face with its dastardly object, made him again, for one short moment, the man that he had been in the plenitude of his early glory. Or, short of that, a near approach to it.

For never was a movement swifter than old Mo's duck to the left, which allowed his opponent's "lead off" to pass harmless over his right shoulder. Never was a cross-counter more deadly, more telling, than the blow with his right, which had never moved till that moment, landing full on the convict's jaw, and stretching him, insensible or dead, upon the ground. The sound of it reached the men who came running in through the arch, and made more than one regret he had not been there a moment sooner, to see it.

Speechless and white with excitement, all crowded down to where Mo was kneeling by the woman who lay stretched upon the ground beyond. Not dead, for she was moving, and speaking. And he was answering, but not in his old voice.

"I'm all as right as a trivet, M'riar. It's you I'm a-thinkin' of.... Some of you young men run for the doctor."

One appeared, out of space. Things happen so, in events of this sort, in London. No—she is not to be lifted about, till he sees what harm's done. Keep your hands off, all!

By some unaccountable common consent, the man on the ground, motionless, may wait his turn. Two or three inspect him, and one tentatively prods at the inanimate body to make it show signs of life, but is checked by public opinion. Then comes a medical verdict, a provisional one, marred by reservations, about the work that knife has done. A nasty cut, but no danger. Probably stunned by the fall. Bring her indoors. Ragstroar's house is chosen, because of the children.

Uncle Mo never took his eyes off M'riar till after a stretcher had come suddenly from Heaven knows where, and borne his late opponent away, with a crowd following, to some appointed place. He thought he heard an inquiry answered in the words:—"Doctor says he can do nothing for him," and may have drawn his inferences. Probably it was the frightened voices and crying of the children that made him move away slowly towards his own house. For he had asked the boy Micky "Had anyone gone to see to them?" and been answered that Mrs. Burr was with them. It was then that Micky noticed that his voice had fallen to little more than a whisper, and that his face was grey. What Micky said was that his chops looked awful blue, and you couldn't ketch not a word he said.

But he was able to walk slowly into the house, very slowly up the stairs. Dave, in the room above, hearing the well-known stair-creak under his heavy tread, rushed down to find him lying on the bed in his clothes. Mo drew the child's face to his own as he lay, saying:—"Here's a kiss for you, old man, and one to take to Dolly."

"Am oy to toyk it up to her now this very minute?" said Dave.

"Now this very minute!" said Uncle Mo. And Dave rushed off to fulfil his mission.

When Susan Burr, a little later, tapped at his door, doubting if all was well with him, no answer came. Looking in and seeing him motionless, she advanced to the bed, and touched his hand. It never moved, and she listened for a breath, but in vain. Heart-failure, after intense excitement, had ended this life for Uncle Mo.

THE END

---

A BELATED PENDRIFT

"I can tell you exactly when it was, stupid!" said a middle-aged lady at the Zoological Gardens to a contented elderly husband, some eighteen years after the foregoing story ended. "It was before we were married."

"That does not convey the precise date, my dear, but no doubt it is true," said the gentleman unpoetically. At least, we may suppose so, as the lady said:—"Don't be prosy, Percy."

A little Macacao monkey in the cage they were inspecting withdrew his left hand from a search for something on his person to accept a nut sadly from the lady, but said nothing. The gentleman seemed unoffended, and carefully stripped a brand-label from a new cigar. "I presume," said he, "that 'before we were married' means 'immediately before?'"

"What would you have it mean?" said the lady.

The gentleman let the issue go, and made no reply. After he had used a penknife on the cigar-end to his satisfaction, he said:—"Exactly when was it?"

"Suppose we go outside and find my chair, if you are going to smoke," said the lady. "You mustn't smoke in here, and quite right, because these little darlings hate it, and I want to see the Hippopotamus."

"Out we go!" said the gentleman. And out they went. It was not until they had recovered the lady's wheeled chair, and were on their way towards the Hippopotamus, that she resumed the lost thread of their conversation, as though nothing had interrupted it.

"It was just about that time we came here, and Dr. Sir Thingummybob came up when we were looking at the Kinkajou—over there!... No, I don't want to go there now. Go on through the tunnel." This was to the chairman, who had shown a tendency to go off down a side-track, like one of his class at a public meeting. "I suppose you remember that?"

"Rather!" said the gentleman, enjoying his first whiff.

"Well—it was just about then. A little after the accident—don't you remember?—the house that tumbled down?"

"I remember all about it. The old lady I carried upstairs. Well—didn't you believe then it was all up with Sir Adrian's eyesight? I did."

"My dear!—how you do overstate things! Shall I ever persuade you to be accurate? We were all much alarmed about him, and with reason. But I for one always did believe, and always shall believe, that there was immense exaggeration. People do get so excited over these things, and make mountains out of molehills."

The gentleman said:—"H'm!"

"Well!" said the lady convincingly. "All I say is—see how well his eyes are now!"

The gentleman seemed only half convinced, at best. "There was something rum about it," said he. "You'll admit that?"

"It depends entirely on what you mean by 'rum.' Of course, there was something a little singular about so sudden a recovery, if that is what you mean."

"Suppose we make it 'a little singular!' I've no objection."

The interest of the main topic must have superseded the purely academical issue. For the lady appeared disposed towards a recapitulation in detail of the incidents referred to. "Gwen went away to Vienna with her mother in the middle of January," said she. "And ... No—I'm not mistaken. I'm sure I'm right! Because when we came back from Languedoc in June there was not a word of any such thing. And Lord Ancester never breathed as much as a hint. And he certainly would have, under the circumstances. Why don't you speak and agree with me, or contradict me, instead of puffing?"

"Well, my love," said the gentleman apologetically, "you see, my interpretation of your meaning has to be—as it were—constructive. However, I believe it to be accurate this time. If I understand you rightly....

"And you have no excuse for not doing so. For I am sure that what I did say was as clear as daylight."

"Exactly. It is perfectly true that, when we went to Grosvenor Square in June, Tim said nothing about recovery. In fact, as I remember it—only eighteen years is a longish time, you know, to recollect things—he was regularly down in the mouth about the whole concern. I always believed, myself, that he would sooner have had Adrian for Gwen, on any terms, by that time—sooner than she should marry the Hapsburg, certainly. Not that he believed that Gwen was going to cave out!"

"You never said he said that!"

"Because he didn't. He only cautioned me particularly against believing the rubbish that got into the newspapers. I am sure that if he had said anything then about recovery, I should remember it now."

"I suppose you would."

"And then six weeks after that Gwen came tearing home by herself from Vienna. Then the next thing we heard was that he had recovered his eyesight, and they were to be married in the autumn."

This was at the entrance to the tunnel, on the way to the Hippopotamus. One's voice echoes in this tunnel, and that may have been the reason the conversation paused. Or it may have been that resonance suggests publicity, and this was a private story. Or possibly, no more than mere cogitative silence of the parties. Anyhow, they had emerged into the upper world before either spoke again.

Then said the lady:—"It seems that it comes to the same thing, whichever way we put it. Something happened."

"My dear," replied the gentleman, "you ought to have been on the Bench. You have the summing-up faculty in the highest degree. Something happened that did not, as the phrase is, come out. But what was it?—that's the point! I believe we shall die without knowing."

"We certainly shall," said Mrs. Percival Pellew—for why should the story conceal her identity? "We certainly shall, if we go over and over and over it, and never get an inch nearer. You know, my dear, if we have talked it over once, we have talked it over five hundred times, and no one is a penny the wiser. You are so vague. What was it I began by saying?"

"That that sort of flash-in-the-pan he had ... when he saw the bust, you know....

"I know. Septimius Severus."

"... Was just about the time Sir Coupland Merridew met us at the Kinkajou, and asked for the address in Cavendish Square. That was the end of September. Gwen told you all about it that same evening, and you told me when I came next day."

"I know. The time you spilt the coffee over my poplinette."

"I don't deny it. Well—what was it you meant to say?"

"What about?... Oh, I know—the Septimius Severus business! Nothing came of it. I mean it never happened again."

"I'm—not—so—sure! I fancy Tim thought something of the sort did. But I couldn't say. It's too long ago now to remember anything fresh. That's a Koodoo. If I had horns, I should like that sort."

"Never mind the Koodoo. Go on about Gwen and the blind story. You know we both thought she was going to marry the Hapsburg, and then she turned up quite suddenly and unexpectedly in Cavendish Square, and told Clo Dalrymple she had come back to order her trousseau. Then the Earl said that to you about the six months' trial."

"Ye-es. He said she had come home in a fine state of mind, because her mother hadn't played fair. He didn't give particulars, but I could see. Of course, that story in the papers may have been her mamma's doing. Very bad policy if it was, with a daughter like that. However, he said it was very near the end of the six months, and after all the whole thing was rather a farce. Besides, Gwen had played fair. So he had let her off three weeks, and she was going down to the Towers at once—which meant, of course, Pensham Steynes."

"And nothing else?"

"Only that he thought on the whole he had better go with her. Can't recall another word, 'pon my honour!"

"I recollect. But he didn't go, because Gwen waited for her mother to come with her. Undoubtedly that was the proper course." This was spoken in a Grundy tone. "But she was very indignant with Philippa about something."

"Philippa was backing the Hapsburg. All that is intelligible. What I want to understand—only we never shall—is how Adrian's eyes came right just at that very moment. Because, when we met him with his sister in London, he was as blind as a bat. And that was at Whitsuntide. You remember?—when his sister begged we wouldn't speak to him about Gwen. We thought it was the Hapsburg."

"Yes—they were just going back to Pensham after a month in London. She just missed them by a few hours. There was not a word of his being any better then."

"Not a word. Quite the other way. And then in a fortnight, or less, he saw as well as he had ever seen in his life. I don't see any use in putting it down to previous exaggeration, because a man can't see less than nothing, and that's exactly what he did see. Nothing! He told me so himself. Said he couldn't see me, and rather hoped he never should. Because he had formed a satisfactory image of me in his mind, and didn't want it disturbed by reality."

"He had that curious paradoxical way of talking. I always ascribed the odd things he said to that, more than to any lack of good taste."

"To what?"

"My dear, my meaning is perfectly obvious, so you needn't pretend you don't understand it. I am referring to his very marked individuality, which shows itself in speech, and which no person with any discernment could for one moment suppose to imply defective taste or feeling. He did say odd things, and he does say odd things."

"I can't see anything particularly odd in what he said about me. If a fillah forms a good opinion of another fillah whom he's never seen, obviously the less he sees of him the better. Let well alone, don't you know!"

"That is because you are as paradoxical as he is. All men are. But you might be sensible for once, and talk reasonably."

"Well, then—suppose we do, my dear!" said the gentleman, conciliatorily. "Let me see—what was I going to say just now—at the Koodoo? Awfully sensible thing, only something put it out of my head."

"You must recollect it for yourself," said the lady, with some severity. "I certainly cannot help you."

The gentleman never seemed to resent what was apparently the habitual manner of his lady wife. He walked on beside her, puffing contentedly, and apparently recollecting abortively; until, to stimulate his memory, she said rather crisply:—"Well?" He then resumed:—"Not so sensible as I thought it was, but somethin' in it for all that! Don't you know, sometimes, when you don't speak on the nail, sometimes, you lose your chance, and then you can't get on the job again, sometimes? You get struck. See what I mean?"

"Perhaps I shall, if you explain it more clearly," said his wife, with civility and forbearance, both of the controversial variety.

"I mean that if I had told Adrian then and there that he was an unreasonable chap to expect anyone to believe that his eyesight came back with a jump, of itself—because that was the tale they told, you know——"

"That was the tale."

"Then very likely he would have told me the whole story. But I was rather an ass, and let the thing slip at the time—and then I couldn't pick it up again. Never got a chance!"

"Precisely. Just like a man! Men are so absurdly secretive with one another. They won't this and they won't that, until one is surprised at nothing. I quite see that you couldn't rake it up now, seventeen years afterwards."

"Seventeen years! Come—I say!"

"Cecily is sixteen in August."

"Well—yes—well!—I suppose she is. I say, Con, that's a queer thing to think of!"

"What is?"

"That we should have a girl of sixteen!"

"What can you expect?"

"Oh—it's all right, you know, as far as that goes. But she'll be a grown-up young woman before we know it."

"Well?"

"What the dooce shall we do with her, then?"

"All parents," said the lady, somewhat didactically, "are similarly situated, and have identical responsibilities."

"Yes—but it's gettin' serious. I want her to stop a little girl."

"Fathers do. But we need not begin to fuss about her yet, thank Heaven!"

"'Spose not. I say, I wonder what's become of those two young monkeys?"

"Now, you needn't begin to fidget about them. They can't fall into the canal."

"They might lose sight of each other, and go huntin' about."

"Well—suppose they do! It won't hurt you. But they won't lose sight of one another."

"How do you know that?"

"Dave is not a boy now. He is a responsible man of five-and-twenty. I told him not to let her go out of his sight."

"Oh well—I suppose it's all right. You're responsible, you know. You manage these things."

"My dear!—how can you be so ridiculous? See how young she is. Besides, he's known her from childhood."

The story does not take upon itself to interpret any portion whatever of this conversation. It merely records it.

The last speech has to continue on reminiscent lines, apparently suggested by the reference to the childhood of the speaker's daughter; one of the young monkeys, no doubt. "It does seem so strange to think that he was that little boy with the black grubby face that Clo's carriage stopped for in the street. Just eighteen years ago, dear!"

"The best years of my life, Constantia, the best years of my life! Well—they think a good deal of that boy at the Foreign Office, and it isn't only because he's a protégé of Tim's. He'll make his mark in the world. You'll see if he doesn't. Do you know?—that boy....

"Suppose you give these crumbs to the Hippopotamus! I've been saving them for him."

The gentleman looked disparagingly in the bag the lady handed to him. "Wouldn't he prefer something more tangible?" said he. "Less subdivided, I should say."

"My dear, he's grateful for absolutely anything. Look at him standing there with his mouth wide open. He's been there for hours, and I know he expects something from me, and I've got nothing else. Throw them well into his mouth, and don't waste any getting them through the railings."

"Easier said than done! However, there's nothing like trying." The gentleman contrived a favourable arrangement of sundry scoriæ of buns and biscuits in his palms, arranged cupwise, and cautiously approaching the most favourable interstice of the iron railings, took aim at the powerful yawn beyond them.

"Good shot!" said he. "Only the best bit's hit his nose and fallen in the mud!"

"There now, Percy, you've choked him, poor darling! How awkward you are!" It was, alas, true! For the indiscriminate shower of crumbs made straight, as is the instinct of crumbs, for the larynx as well as the oesophagus of the hippo, and some of them probably reached his windpipe. At any rate, he coughed violently, and when the larger mammals cough it's a serious matter. The earth shook. He turned away, hurt, and went deliberately into his puddle, reappearing a moment after as an island, but evidently disgusted with Man, and over for the day. "You may as well go on with what you were saying," said Mrs. Pellew.

"Wonder what it was! That fillah's mouth's put it all out of my head. What was I saying?"

"Something about David Wardle."

"Yes. Him and that old uncle of his—the fighting man. The boy can hardly talk about him now, and he wasn't eight when the old chap died. Touchin' story! He has told me all he recollects—more than once—but it only upsets the poor boy. I've never mentioned it, not for years now. The old chap must have been a fine old chap. But I've told you all the boy told me, at the time."

"Ye-es. I remember the particulars, generally. You said the row wasn't his fault."

"His fault?—no, indeed! The fellow drew a knife upon him. You know he was that awful miscreant, Daverill. There wasn't a crime he hadn't committed. But old Moses killed him—splendidly! By Jove, I should like to have seen that!"

"Really, Percy, if you talk in that dreadful way, I won't listen to you."

"Can't help it, my dear, can't help it! Fancy being able to kill such a damnable beast at a single blow!" The undertone in which Mr. Pellew went on speaking to his wife may have contained some particulars of Daverill's career, for she said:—"Well—I can understand your feeling. But we won't talk about it any more, please!"

Whereto the reply was:—"All right, my dear. I'll bottle up. Suppose we turn round. It's high time to be getting home." So the chairman put energies into a return towards the tunnel. But for all that, the lady went back to the subject, or its neighbourhood. "Wasn't he somehow mixed up with that old Mrs. Alibone at Chorlton—Dave's aunt she is, I believe. At least, he always calls her so."

"Aunt Maria? Of course. She is his Aunt Maria. He was—or had been—Aunt Maria's husband. But people said as little about that as they could. He had been an absentee at Norfolk Island—a convict. That old chap she married—old Alibone—- he's the great authority on horseflesh. Tim found it out when they came to Chorlton to stay at the very old lady's—what's her name?"

"Mrs. Marrable." Here Mrs. Pellew suddenly became luminous about the facts, owing to a connecting link. "Of course! Mrs. Marrable was the twin sister."

"A—oh yes!—the twin sister.... I remember ... at least, I don't. Not sure that I do, anyhow!"

"Foolish man! Can't you remember the lovely old lady at Clo Dalrymple's?..."

"She was the one I carried upstairs. I should rather think I did recollect her. She weighed nothing."

"Oh yes—you remember all about it. Mrs. Marrable's twin sister from Australia."

"Of course! Of course! Only I'd forgotten for the moment what it was I didn't remember. Cut along!"

"I was not saying anything."

"No—but you were just going to."

"Well—I was. It was her grave in Chorlton Churchyard."

"That what?"

"That Gwen and our girl went to put the flowers on, three weeks ago."

"By-the-by, when are the honeymooners coming back?"

"The Crespignys? Very soon now, I should think. They were still at Siena when Gwen heard from Dorothy last, and it was unbearably hot, even there."

"I thought Cis wrote to Dolly in Florence."

"Not the last letter. They were at the Montequattrinis' in May. That's what you're thinking of. Cis wrote to her there, then. It was another letter."

"'Spose I'm wrong! I meant the letter where she told how the very old lady walked with them to the grave."

"Old Mrs. Marrable. Yes—and old Mrs. Alibone had to go in the carriage, because of her foot, or something. She has a bad foot. That was in the middle of June. That letter was to Fiesole. You do get so mixed up."

"Expect I do. Fancy that old lady, though, at ninety-eight!"

"Yes—fancy! Gwen said she was just as strong this year as last. She'll live to be a hundred, I do believe. Why—the other old woman at Chorlton is over seventy! Her daughter—or is it niece? I never know...."

"Didn't Cis say she spoke of her as 'my mother'?"

"No—that was the twin sister that died. But she always spoke to her as 'mother.'"

"Oh ah—that was what Cis couldn't make head or tail of. Rather a puzzling turn out! But I say...."

"What?... Wait till we get out of the noise. What were you going to say?"

"Isn't her head rather ... I mean, doesn't she show signs of...."

"Senile decay? No. What makes you think that?"

"Of course, I don't know. I only go by what our girl said. Of course, Gwen Torrens is still one of the most beautiful women in London—or anywhere, for that matter! And it may have been, nothing but that."

"Oh, I know what you mean now. 'Glorious Angel.' I don't think anything of that.... Isn't that the children there—by the Pelicans?"

It was, apparently. A very handsome young man and a very pretty girl, who must have been only sixteen—as her parents could not be mistaken—but she looked more. Both were evidently enjoying both, extremely; and nothing seemed to be further from their thoughts than losing sight of one another.

Says Mrs. Pellew from her chariot:—"My dear, what an endless time you have been away! I wish you wouldn't. It makes your father so fidgety." Whereupon each of these two young people says:—"It wasn't me." And either glances furtively at the other. No doubt it was both.

"Never mind which it was now, but tell me about old Mrs. Marrable at Chorlton. I want to know what it was she called your Aunt Gwen."

"Yes—tell about Granny Marrowbone," says the young man.

The girl testifies:—"Her Glorious Angel. When we first went into the Cottage. What she said was:—'Here comes my Glorious Angel!' Well!—why shouldn't she?"

"She always calls her that," says the young man.

"You see, my dear! It has not struck anyone but yourself as anything the least out of the way." Mrs. Pellew then explains to her daughter, not without toleration for an erratic judgment—to wit, her husband's—that that gentleman has got a nonsensical idea into his head that old Mrs. Marrable is not quite.... Oh no—not that she is failing, you know—not at all!... Only, perhaps, not so clear as.... Of course, very old people sometimes do....

The girl looks at the young man for his opinion. He gives it with a cheerful laugh. "What!—Granny Marrowbone off her chump? As sound as you or I! She's called Lady Torrens her Glorious Angel ever since I can recollect. Oh no—she's all right." Whereupon Mr. Pellew says:—"I see—sort of expression. Very applicable, as things go. Oh no—no reason for alarm! Certainly not!"

"You know," says the girl, Cis—who is new, and naturally knows things, and can tell her parents,—"you know there is never the slightest reason for apprehension as long as there is no delusion. Even then we have to discriminate carefully between fixed or permanent delusions and...."

"Shut up, mouse!" says her father. "What's that striking?"

The young man looks at his watch—is afraid it must be seven. The elder supposes that some of the party don't want to be late for dinner. The young lady says:—"Well—I got it all out of a book." And her mother says:—"Now, please don't dawdle any more. Go the short way, and see for the carriage." Whereupon the young people make off at speed up the steps to the terrace, and a brown bear on the top of his pole thinks they are hurrying to give him a bun, and is disillusioned. Mr. Pellew accompanies his wife, but as they go quick they do not talk, and the story hears no further disconnected chat. Nor does it hear any more when the turnstiles are passed and the carriage is reached.

Soon out of sight—that carriage! And with it vanishes the last chance of knowing any more of Dave and Dolly and their country Granny. And when the present writer went to look for Sapps Court, he found—as he has told you—only a tea-shop, and the tea was bad.

But if ever you go to Chorlton-under-Bradbury, go to the churchyard and hunt up the graves of old Mrs. Picture and Granny Marrowbone.

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WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S NOVELS

"Why All This Popularity?" asks E. V. Lucas, writing in the Outlook of De Morgan's Novels. He answers: De Morgan is "almost the perfect example of the humorist; certainly the completest since Lamb.... Humor, however, is not all.... In the De Morgan world it is hard to find an unattractive figure.... The charm of the young women, all brave and humorous and gay, and all trailing clouds of glory from the fairyland from which they have just come."

JOSEPH VANCE

The story of a great sacrifice and a life-long love.

"The book of the last decade; the best thing in fiction since Mr. Meredith and Mr. Hardy; must take its place as the first great English novel that has appeared in the twentieth century."—Lewis Melville in New York Times Saturday Review.

ALICE-FOR-SHORT

The romance of an unsuccessful man, in which the long buried past reappears in London of to-day.

"If any writer of the present era is read a half century hence, a quarter century, or even a decade, that writer is William De Morgan."—Boston Transcript.

SOMEHOW GOOD

How two brave women won their way to happiness.

"A book as sound, as sweet, as wholesome, as wise, as any in the range of fiction."—The Nation.

IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN

A story of the great love of Blind Jim and his little daughter, and of the affairs of a successful novelist.

"De Morgan at his very best, and how much better his best is than the work of any novelist of the past thirty years."—The Independent.

AN AFFAIR OF DISHONOR

A very dramatic novel of Restoration days.

"A marvelous example of Mr. De Morgan's inexhaustible fecundity of invention.... Shines as a romance quite as much as 'Joseph Vance' does among realistic novels."—Chicago Record-Herald.

A LIKELY STORY

"Begins comfortably enough with a little domestic quarrel in a studio.... The story shifts suddenly, however, to a brilliantly told tragedy of the Italian Renaissance embodied in a girl's portrait.... The many readers who like Mr. De Morgan will enjoy this charming fancy greatly."—New York Sun.

A Likely Story, $1.35 net; the others, $1.75 each.

WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST

The most "De Morganish" of all his stories. The scene is England in the fifties. 820 pages. $1.50 net.

* * * A thirty-two page illustrated leaflet about Mr. De Morgan, with complete reviews of his first four books, sent on request.

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JEAN-CHRISTOPHE

By ROMAIN ROLLAND

Translated from the French by Gilbert Cannan. In three volumes, each $1.50 net

This great trilogy, the life story of a musician, at first the sensation of musical circles in Paris, has come to be one of the most discussed books among literary circles in France, England and America.

Each volume of the American edition has its own individual interest, can be understood without the other, and comes to a definite conclusion.

The three volumes with the titles of the French volumes included are:

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE
Dawn—Morning—Youth—Revolt
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE IN PARIS
The Market Place—Antoinette—The House
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE: JOURNEY'S END
Love and Friendship—The Burning Bush—The New
Dawn

Some Noteworthy Comments

"'Hats off, gentlemen—a genius.'. One may mention 'Jean-Christophe' in the same breath with Balzac's 'Lost Illusions'; it is as big as that. (...) It is moderate praise to call it with Edmund Gosse 'the noblest work of fiction of the twentieth century.' (...) A book as big, as elemental, as original as though the art of fiction began today. (...) We have nothing comparable in English literature. (...) "—Springfield Republican.

"If a man wishes to understand those devious currents which make up the great, changing sea of modern life, there is hardly a single book more illustrative, more informing and more inspiring."—Current Opinion.

"Must rank as one of the very few important works of fiction of the last decade. A vital compelling work. We who love it feel that it will live."—Independent.

"The most momentous novel that has come to us from France, or from any other European country, in a decade."—Boston Transcript.

A 32-page booklet about Romain Rolland and Jean-Christophe, with portraits and complete reviews, on request.

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Coningsby Dawson's

THE GARDEN WITHOUT WALLS

The triple romance of a Pagan-Puritan of to-day, with three heroines of unusual charm. $1.35 net.

Boston Transcript:—"All vivid with the color of life; a novel to compel not only absorbed attention, but long remembrance."

Cosmo Hamilton in The New York Sun:—"A new writer who is an old master.... He lets all the poet in him loose.... He has set himself in line with those great dead to whom the novel was a living, throbbing thing, vibrant with the life blood of its creator, pulsing with sensitiveness, laughter, idealism, tears, the fire of youth, the joy of living, passion, and underlying it all that sense of the goodness of God and His earth and His children without which nothing is achieved, nothing lives."

Life:—"The first treat of the new season."

Chicago Record-Herald:—"His undercurrents always are those of hope and sympathy and understanding. Moreover, the book is singularly touched to beauty, alive with descriptive gems, and gently bubbling humor and humanization of unusual order. Generous and clever and genial."

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Marjorie Patterson's

THE DUST OF THE ROAD

A vivid story of stage life by an actress. Her characters are hard-working, but humorous and clean-living. With colored frontispiece, $1.30 net.

New York Tribune:—"Her story would not be so vivid and convincing if its professional part, at least, had not been lived. The glamor of the stage is found here where it should be, in the ambition of the young girl, in the fine enthusiasm of the manager. There is humor here, and pathos, friendship, loyalty, the vanity of which we hear so much."

New York Sun:—"In a particularly illuminating way, many points are touched upon which will be read with interest in these days when the young daughters of families are bound to go forth and attack the world for themselves."

Henry L. Mencken in Baltimore Evening Sun: "Lively and interesting human beings ... dramatic situations ... a vivid background ... she knows how to write ... amazing plausibility. These stage folk are real ... depicted with humor, insight, vivacity ... abounding geniality and good humor."

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THE HOME BOOK OF VERSE

American and English (1580-1912)

Compiled by Burton E. Stevenson. Collects the best short poetry of the English language—not only the poetry everybody says is good, but also the verses that everybody reads. (3742 pages; India paper, 1 vol., 8vo, complete author, title and first line indices, $7.50 net; carriage 40 cents extra.)

The most comprehensive and representative collection of American and English poetry ever published, including 3,120 unabridged poems from some 1,100 authors.

It brings together in one volume the best short poetry of the English language from the time of Spencer, with especial attention to American verse.

The copyright deadline has been passed, and some three hundred recent authors are included, very few of whom appear in any other general anthology, such as Lionel Johnson, Noyes, Housman, Mrs. Meynell, Yeats, Dobson, Lang, Watson, Wilde, Francis Thompson, Gilder, Le Gallienne, Van Dyke, Woodberry, Riley, etc., etc.

The poems as arranged by subject, and the classification is unusually close and searching. Some of the most comprehensive sections are: Children's rhymes (300 pages); love poems (800 pages); nature poetry (400 pages); humorous verse (500 pages); patriotic and historical poems (600 pages); reflective and descriptive poetry (400 pages). No other collection contains so many popular favorites and fugitive verses.

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