“Cousin Mary Leicester?” said the Duchess.  “Well, she was rather an oddity.  She was Low Church, like my mother-in-law; but, oh, so much nicer!  Once I let her come to Grosvenor Square and speak to the servants about going to church.  The groom of the chambers said she was ’a dear old lady, and if she were his cousin he wouldn’t mind her being a bit touched,’ My maid said she had no idea poke-bonnets could be so sweet.  It made her understand what the Queen looked like when she was young.  And none of them have ever been to church since that I can make out.  There was one very curious thing about Cousin Mary Leicester,” added the Duchess, slowly—­“she had second sight.  She saw her old mother, in this room, once or twice, after she had been dead for years.  And she saw Freddie once, when he was away on a long voyage—­”

“Ghosts, too!” said Julie, crossing her hands before her with a little shiver—­“that completes it.”

“Sixty years,” said the Duchess, musing.  “It was a long time—­wasn’t it?—­to live in this little house, and scarcely ever leave it.  Oh, she had quite a circle of her own.  For many years her funny little sister lived here, too.  And there was a time, Freddie says, when there was almost a rivalry between them and two other famous old ladies who lived in Bruton Street—­what was their name?  Oh, the Miss Berrys!  Horace Walpole’s Miss Berrys.  All sorts of famous people, I believe, have sat in these chairs.  But the Miss Berrys won.”

“Not in years?  Cousin Mary outlived them.”

“Ah, but she was dead long before she died,” said the Duchess as she came to perch on the arm of Julie’s chair, and threw her arm round her friend’s neck.  “After her little sister departed this life she became a very silent, shrivelled thing—­except for her religion—­and very few people saw her.  She took a fancy to me—­which was odd, wasn’t it, when I’m such a worldling?—­and she let me come in and out.  Every morning she read the Psalms and Lessons, with her old maid, who was just her own age—­in this very chair.  And two or three times a month Freddie would slip round and read them with her—­you know Freddie’s very religious.  And then she’d work at flannel petticoats for the poor, or something of that kind, till lunch.  Afterwards she’d go and read the Bible to people in the workhouse or in hospital.  When she came home, the butler brought her the Times; and sometimes you’d find her by the fire, straining her old eyes over ‘a little Dante.’  And she always dressed for dinner—­everything was quite smart—­and her old butler served her.  Afterwards her maid played dominoes or spillikins with her—­all her life she never touched a card—­and they read a chapter, and Cousin Mary played a hymn on that funny little old piano there in the corner, and at ten they all went to bed.  Then, one morning, the maid went in to wake her, and she saw her dear sharp nose and chin against the light, and her hands like that, in front of her—­and—­well, I suppose, she’d gone to play hymns in heaven—­dear Cousin Mary!  Julie, isn’t it strange the kind of lives so many of us have to lead?  Julie”—­the little Duchess laid her cheek against her friend’s—­“do you believe in another life?”