said Irene. "I'm sure Gwen's description sounds exactly
like this old lady becoming a ... There!--I've forgotten the word!
Something between a centipede and a Unitarian...."

"Centenarian?"

"Exactly. See what a good thing it is to have a brother that knows
things. A person a hundred years old. I tell you, Gwen dear, my own
belief is these two old ladies mean to be centenarians, and if we live
long enough we shall read about them in the newspapers. And they will
have a letter from Royalty!"

In the evening Gwen got Adrian, whose sanguine expressions were not
serious, on a more sane and responsible line of thought. His
lady-mother, with whom this story is destined never to become
acquainted, retired early, after shedding a lurid radiance of symptoms
on the family circle; and it, as a dutiful circle, had given her its
blessing and dropped a tear by implication over her early departure from
it. Sir Hamilton had involved his daughter in a vortex of backgammon, a
game draught-players detest, and _vice versa_, because the two games are
even as Box and Cox, in homes possessing only one board. So Gwen and
Adrian had themselves to themselves, and wanted nothing more. Her eyes
rested now and then with a new curiosity on the Baronet, deep in his
game at the far end of the room. She was looking at him by the light of
his handsome daughter's saucy speculation about that romantic passage in
the lives of himself and her mamma. Suppose--she was saying to herself,
with monstrous logic--he had been _my_ papa, and _I_ had had to play
backgammon with him!

She was recalled from one such excursion of fancy by Adrian
saying:--"Are you sure it would not have been better for the old
twins--or one of them--to die and the other never be any the wiser?"

Said Gwen:--"I am not sure. How can I be? But it was absolutely
impossible to leave them there, knowing it, unconscious of each other's
existence."

Adrian replied:--"It _was_ impossible. I see that. But suppose they
_had_ remained in ignorance--in the natural order of events I mean--and
the London one had died unknown to her sister, would it not have been
better than this reunion, with all its tempest of pain and raking up of
old memories, and quite possibly an early separation by death?"

"I think not, on the whole. Because, suppose one had died, and the other
had come to know of her death afterwards!"

"I am supposing the contrary. Suppose both had continued in ignorance!
How then?"