don't think I quite understand, Granny," said Gwen gently. Which was
meant, that this made it easier to bear, or harder?

"I am slow to speak what I think, my lady. I would like to find words to
say it.... I lost Maisie forty-five--yes!--forty-six years ago, and the
grief of her loss is with me still. Had she died here, near at hand, so
I might have known where they laid her, I would have kept fresh flowers
on her grave till now. But she was dead, far away across the sea. I am
too old now for what has come of it. But I can see what-like it all is.
Maisie is with me again, from the tomb--for a little while, and then to
go. She will go first, and I shall soon follow; it cannot be long.
No--it cannot be long! The light will come. And God be praised for His
goodness! We shall lie in one grave, Maisie and I. We shall not be
parted in Death." These last words Gwen accepted as conventional. She
listened, somewhat as in a dream, to Granny Marrable's voice, going
quietly on, with no very audible undertone of pain in it:--"It is not of
myself I am thinking, but my child. She has found her mother, and loved
her, before she knew it was herself, risen from the grave.... Oh
no--no--no, my lady, I know it all well. My head is right. Maisie has
been at hand these long years past, all unknown to me--oh, how cruelly
unknown!" Here her words broke a little, with audible pain. "Her coming
to us has been a resurrection from the tomb. It is little to me now, I
am so near the end. But my heart goes out to my child, who will lose
her mother.... Hush, she is coming back!"

The thought in Gwen's heart was:--"Pity me too, Granny, for I too--I,
with all the wealth of the world at my feet!--shall feel a heartstring
snap when this frail old waif and stray, so strangely found by me in a
London slum, so strangely brought back by me into your life again, has
passed away into the unknown." For she had scarcely been alive till now
to the whole of her mysterious affection for dear old Mrs. Picture.

Ruth Thrale came back, and the day went on. Old Maisie remained asleep,
sleeping as the effigy sleeps upon a tomb, but always with regular
breath, barely sensible, and the same slow pulse. Now and again it might
have seemed that breath had ceased. But it was not so. If the powers of
life were on the wane, it was very slowly.

* * * * *

Tom Kettering returned at the appointed time, to a minute, and took no
notice of his own