"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."