now seem to find its proper place in her mind for this
correction of its mistaken record. It could not deal with all the facts,
but held fast to the identities of her sister and child. Probably the
established memory of the false news of her brother-in-law's death
continued in possession. She only looked puzzled; then drifted on the
current of her thought. "If I had known that you were here!... Oh,
Phoebe!--such a many times my boy made me think of his sister he would
never see now.... That was before the coming of the news.... Oh yes, I
always had a thought till then the time might come before they would be
grown up, so they should be children together.... That was my elder boy
Isaac, after father--in those days little Ralph was in his cradle....
But the time never came--only the time to think it might have been....
And all those years I thought you dead, you were here!... Oh,
Phoebe--you were here!... Oh, why--why--why could I not be told that you
were here?"

"It was the Lord's will, darling. His ways are not for us to
understand." Gwen could not for the life of her help recalling some
irreverence of Adrian's about Resignation and Fatalism. But though she
almost smiled over his reprehensible impiety--"No connection with the
shop opposite"--she could and did pay a mental tribute to the Granny's
quiet earnestness. She would have done the same by "Kismet" to an old
Sheikh in the shadow of the Pyramids.

"Why--oh, why?--when my dear husband was gone could I not have found you
then, even if I had died of joy in the finding? Had I not known enough
pain? Oh, Phoebe--when I came back--when I came back ... it would have
been so much then!... I had some great new trouble after that.... Oh,
tell me--what was it?"

What could old Phoebe do but answer, seeing that she knew? "It was the
wickedness of your son, Maisie darling. We have talked of him, have we
not?" She feared to say much, as she shrank from reference to her own
knowledge of the convict. She tried to get away from him. "And it was
then you took old Martha's name, not to be known by your own, and went
to Sapps Court?" This succeeded.

"Not Sapps Court, not yet for a long time. But I did go, and I was happy
there.... I had my little Dave and Dolly, and when the window stood open
in the summer, I heard the piano outside, across the way ... and Aunt
M'riar came, and sometimes Mr. Wardle--he was so big he filled the
room.... But tell me--was it a horrible dream, or wa