ast years of the waning and somewhat peculiar
old lady.

Mrs. Maldon did not see the situation from quite the same angle. She
did not, for example, consider herself to be in the least peculiar,
but, on the contrary, a very normal woman. She had always used tapers;
she could remember the period when every one used tapers. In her
view tapers were far more genteel and less dangerous than the untidy,
flaring spill, which she abhorred as a vulgarity. As for matches,
frankly it would not have occurred to her to waste a match when fire
was available. In the matter of her sharp insistence on drawn blinds
at night, domestic privacy seemed to be one of the fundamental
decencies of life--simply that! And as for house-pride, she considered
that she locked away her fervent feeling for her parlour in a manner
marvellous and complete.

No one could or ever would guess the depth of her attachment to that
sitting-room, nor the extent to which it engrossed her emotional life.
And yet she had only occupied the house for fourteen years out of the
forty-five years of her widowhood, and the furniture had at intervals
been renewed (for Mrs. Maldon would on no account permit herself to
be old-fashioned). Indeed, she had had five different sitting-rooms in
five different houses since her husband's death. No matter. They were
all the same sitting-room, all rendered identical by the mysterious
force of her dreamy meditations on the past. And, moreover, sundry
important articles had remained constant to preserve unbroken the
chain that linked her to her youth. The table which Rachel had so
nicely laid was the table at which Mrs. Maldon had taken her first
meal as mistress of a house. Her husband had carved mutton at it, and
grumbled about the consistency of toast; her children had spilt jam on
its cloth. And when on Sunday nights she wound up the bracket-clock on
the mantelpiece, she could see and hear a handsome young man in a long
frock-coat and a large shirt-front and a very thin black tie winding
it up too--her husband--on Sunday nights. And she could simultaneously
see another handsome young man winding it up--her son.

Her pictures were admired.

"Your son painted this water-colour, did he not, Mrs. Maldon?"

"Yes, my son Athelstan."

"How gifted he must have been!"

"Yes, the best judges say he showed very remarkable promise. It's
fading, I fear. I ought to cover it up, but somehow I can't fancy
covering it up--"

The hand that h