FOR GWEN, WHICH TOOK GWEN OFF TO CHORLTON AT MIDNIGHT

When the Earl of Ancester came back to the Towers next day he certainly
did look a little boiled down; otherwise, cheerful and collected. "I am
quite prepared to endure another Christmas," said he resignedly to Gwen.
"But a little seclusion and meditation is good to prepare one for the
ordeal, and Bath certainly deserves the character everybody gives it,
that you never meet anybody else there. I suppose Coventry and Jericho
have something in common with Bath. I wonder if outcasts can be
identified in either. Nothing distinguishes them in Bath from the
favourites of Fortune. How are the old ladies?"

This was in the study, where the Earl and his daughter got a quiet ten
minutes to recapitulate the story of each during the other's absence. It
was late in the afternoon, two hours after his arrival from London. He
had been there a day or two to make a show of fulfilling his obligations
towards politics; had sat through a debate or two, and had taken part in
a division or two, much to the satisfaction of his conscience. "But,"
said he to Gwen, "if you ask me which I have felt most interest in, your
old ladies or the Foreign Enlistment Act, I should certainly say the old
ladies." So it was no wonder his inquiry about them came early in this
recapitulation.

Gwen found herself, to her surprise, committed to an apologetic tone
about old Mrs. Picture's health, and maintaining that she was _really_
better intrinsically, although evidently some person or persons unnamed
must have said she was worse. She started on her report with every
good-will to make it a prosperous one, and got entangled in some
trivialities that told against her purpose. Perhaps her last letter to
her father, written from Pensham on the night of her arrival there, had
given too rose-coloured an account of her visit to Chorlton, and had
caused the rather serious headshake which greeted her admission that old
Maisie was still a quasi-invalid, on her back from the merest--quite the
merest--weakness. The Earl admitted that, as a general rule, weakness
might be mere enough to be negligible; but then it should be the
weakness of young and strong people, possessed of that delightful
property "recuperative power," which does such wonders when it comes to
the scratch. Never be without it, if you can help.

The episode of the champagne was reassuring, and gave Hope a helping
hand. Moreover, Gwen had just got a