losely at the mill-model as one bound to show interest,
said:--"And this is where you used to slide on the ice with her, on the
mill-dam, all that time ago. Just fancy!" The reference to Maisie was
the merest chat by the way; and the conversation, at this mention of the
ice, harked back to Sapps Court.

"Of course you made slides, Granny Marrable," said Sister Nora; "and
very likely somebody else tumbled down on the slides. But you have never
been hanged, and Michael won't be hanged. It was only Uncle Moses's fun.
And as for old Mrs. Picture, I daresay if the truth were known, Mrs.
Picture's a very nice old lady? I like her for taking such pains with
Dave's letter-writing. But we'll see Mrs. Picture, and find out all
about it. Won't we, Gwen?" Gwen assented _con amore_, to reassure the
Granny, who, however, was evidently only silenced, not convinced, about
this elderly person in London, that sink of iniquities.

Gwen resumed her seat and took another cup of tea, really to please her
hosts, as the tea was too strong for anything. Then Feudalism asserted
itself as it so often does when County magnates foregather with village
minimates--is that the right word? Landmarks, too, indisputable to need
recognition were ignored altogether, and all the hearsays of the
countryside were reviewed. The grim severance between class and class
that up-to-date legislation makes every day more and more well-defined
and bitter had no existence in fifty-four at Chorlton-under-Bradbury.
Granny Marrable and the ogress, for instance, could and did seek to know
how the gentleman was that met with the accident in July. Of course,
_they_ knew the story of the gentleman's relation with "Gwen o' the
Towers," and both visitors knew they knew it; but that naturally did not
come into court. It underlay the pleasure with which they heard that Mr.
Adrian Torrens was all but well again, and that the doctors said his
eyesight would not be permanently affected. Gwen herself volunteered
this lie, with Sir Coupland's assurance in her mind that, if Adrian's
sight returned, it would probably do so outright, as a salve to her
conscience.

"There now!" said Widow Thrale. "There will be good hearing for Keziah
when she comes nigh by us next, maybe this very day. For old Stephen
he's just gone near to breaking his heart over it, taking all the fault
to himself." Keziah was Keziah Solmes, Stephen Solmes's old wife, whose
sentimentalism would have saved Adrian Torr