e it show what a
real capacity it had as fuel, if only justice was done to its
combustibility.

This chance passage of conversation between old Maisie and the
housekeeper ran near to sounding the one note needed to force the truth
of an incredible tale on the blank unsuspicion of its actors. A many
other little things may have gone as near. If so, none left any one of
its audience, or witnesses, more absolutely in the dark about it than
the solitary old woman who that evening watched that log, stimulated by
the scrapwood during her very perfunctory supper; first till it became a
roaring flame that laughed at those two candles, then till the flame
died down and left it all aglow; then till the fire reached its heart
and broke it, and it fell, and flickered up again and died, and slowly
resolved itself into a hillock of red ember and creeping incandescence,
a treasury still of memories of the woodlands and the coming of the
spring, and the growth of the leaves that perished.

At about nine o'clock, Lupin, acting officially, came to offer her
services to see the old lady to bed. No!--if she might do so she would
rather sit up till her ladyship came in. She could shift for herself; in
fact, like most old people who have never been waited on, she greatly
preferred it. Only, of course, she did not say so. But Lupin _was_
sitting up for her ladyship, with Miss Lutwyche, and would purvey hot
water then, in place of this, which would be cold. She brought a couple
of young loglets to keep a little life in the fire, and went away to
contribute to an everlasting wrangle in the servants' hall.

The wind roared in the chimney and made old Maisie's thoughts go back to
the awful sea. Think of the wrecks this wind would cause! Of course she
was all wrong; one always is, indoors, with a huge chimney which is a
treasure-house of sound. Gwen was just saying at that moment, to Adrian
and his sister, what a delicious night it was to be out of doors! And
the grey mare, in a hurry to go, was undertaking through an interpreter
to be back in an hour and three-quarters easy. And then they were off,
Gwen laughing to scorn Irene's reproaches to her for not staying the
night. All that was part of Gwen's minimisation of her guilt in this
postponement of the separation test. The stars seemed to flash the
clearer in the heavens for such laughter as hers, in such a voice. But
all the while old Maisie was haunted with images of a chaise blown into
dit