"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."