"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."