spicion might be true--for who can gauge his own sanity?
Imagine Granny Marrable, kept away at Denby by her daughter, that her
old age should not be afflicted by a lunatic. Imagine the longing of
Sapps Court to have Mrs. Picture back, and the chair with cushions, in
the top garret, that yawned for her. Imagine these, and remember that
probably old Maisie, to seem sane at any cost, would have gone on
indefinitely keeping silence about her own past life, whatever
temptation she may have been under to speak again of the mill-model,
invisible in its carpet-roll above the fireplace. Remember that what Dr.
Nash elicited from her, as an interesting case of _dementia_, was not
necessarily repeated to Mrs. Thrale, and would have been a dead letter
in the columns of the _Lancet_ later on. Certainly the chances of an
_eclaircissement_ were at a minimum when Gwen returned from London, her
own newly acquired knowledge of its materials apart. But then, how about
the poor crazy old soul's daughter's new-born love for her unrecognised
mother, and her mysteriously heart-whole return for it?

That _might_ have brought the end about. But to Gwen it seemed
speculative and uncertain, and to point to no more than a possible
return to London of the mother, accompanied by her unknown and unknowing
daughter. A curious vision flashed across her mind of Ruth Thrale,
entertained at Sapps by old Mrs. Picture; and there, by the window, the
table with the new leg; and, in the drawer of it ... what? A letter
written five-and-forty years ago, that had changed the lives of both!
Gwen's imagination restored the unread letter to its place, with rigid
honesty. But--how strange!

Then her imagination came downstairs, and glanced in on the way at the
room where the mysterious fireman, who came from the sky, had deposited
the half-insensible old lady, after the cataclysm. It was Uncle Mo's
room, on the safe side of the house; and the walls were enriched with
prints of heroes of the Ring in old time; Figg and Broughton, Belcher
and Bendigo, sparring for ever in close-fitting pants by themselves on a
very fine day. She recalled how the unmoved fireman, departing, had
shown a human interest in one of these, remarking that it was a namesake
of his. Suppose that fireman had not been at hand, how would old Maisie
have been got downstairs? Suppose that she herself had been flattened
under the ruins, would all things now have been quite otherwise? See how
much had t