The Lady of the Basement Flat, by Mrs George de Horne Vaizey.
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The scene opens with the marriage of one of a pair of sisters, and her
departure for North America. The other sister is left feeling very much
at a loss, but she hits on the idea of renting a small London flat in a
poor area, making herself look like a very elderly woman, and finding
acts of kindness to do for her neighbours. She takes the name of Miss
Harding.
However the married sister's marriage founders, and she comes back to
England. Both the sisters rent a nice place in the country and spend a
lot of effort in decorating it. So Miss Harding has occasional spells
of living as her original young self with her sister, before returning
to her basement flat. As usual with this author, with her fascination
with illness, a child of one of the neighbours, Billie, becomes very ill
and needs roound-the-clock nursing. Miss Harding plays a big part in
this. But one day a chance remark by another of the tenants in the
block of flats makes it clear that the reason why the married sister's
marriage had foundered was no more than a misunderstanding. So Miss
Harding is able to fix her sister's problems, and Miss Harding herself
finds a husband, in her true and original identity, and so ends her
parallel existence as Miss Harding.
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