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 fiancee 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 ... tete-a-tete." 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?"