y from us. And if I had never known she died--I mean
had we never thought her dead--I would have gone on thinking the same
face. Oh, such a beautiful young face! Exactly like what mother's was
then!--the same face for her that it was when I last saw it...."

"I see. And when you look at your--your aunt's face, you naturally do
not look for what she was forty years ago."

"That is it, your ladyship. Because I have had mother to go by, all the
time. She has always been the same she was last week--last month--last
year--any time. What must it be to _her_, to see me what I am!"

"I don't believe it is harder for her to think about than it is for you.
She is feverish now, and that makes her wander. People are always worse
in the morning. Dr. Nash says so. I thought yesterday she seemed so
clear--almost understood it all." Thus Gwen, not over-sure of her facts.

"She was worse," said Ruth, thinking back into the recent events, "that
evening I showed her the mill. That was her bad time. Who knows but that
has made it easier for her now? I shouldn't wonder.... And to think that
I thought her mad, and never guessed who I was, myself, all that time."

"Was that the model?" said Gwen, thinking that anything the mind could
rest on might make the thing more real for Ruth. "Do you know I have
only half seen it? I should so like to see it again. Why have you
covered it up?" A few words explained this, and the mill was again put
on the table. If the little dolly figures had only possessed faculties,
they would have wondered why, after all these years, they were awakening
such an interest among the big movable creatures outside the glass. How
they would have wondered at Gwen's next words:--"And those two have
lived to be eighty years old and are in the next room!"

Then she was not sure she had not made matters worse. "Oh dear!" said
Widow Thrale, "it is all impossible--_impossible_! This was old when I
was a child."

Gwen was not prepared to submit to Time's tyranny. "What does it
matter?" said she intrepidly. "There is no need for _possibility_, that
I can see. She _is_ here, and the thing to think of now is--how can we
keep her? It will all seem natural in three weeks. See now, how they
know one another, and talk of old times already. She may live another
five--ten--fifteen years. Who can say?"

"She _is_ talking to mother now, I think," said Widow Thrale, listening.
For the voices of the twins came from the bedroom. "Suppose