t the other had
risen from the grave? It is none the less strange that two souls,
nourished unborn by the same mother, should have all but touched, and
that neither should have guessed the presence of the other, through the
outer shell it dwelt in.

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

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

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

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