As it happened, at about the same time Destiny had arranged that another character in this history was returning to that quiet Essex village, namely Isobel Blake.

Isobel went to Mexico with her uncle and there had a most interesting time. She studied Aztec history with her usual thoroughness; so well, indeed, that she became a recognised authority on the subject. She climbed Popocatepetl, the mysterious "Sleeping Woman" that overhands the ancient town, and looked into its crater. Greatly daring, she even visited Yucatan and saw some of the pre-Aztec remains. For this adventure she paid with an attack of fever which never quite left her system. Indeed, that fever had a peculiar effect upon her, which may have been physical or something else. Isobel's fault, or rather characteristic, as the reader may have gathered, was that she built too much upon the material side of things. What she saw, what she knew, what her body told her, what the recorded experience of the world taught—these were real; all the rest, to her, was phantasy or imagination. She kept her feet upon the solid ground of fact, and left all else to dreamers; or, as she would have expressed it, to the victims of superstition inherited or acquired.

Well, something happened to her at the crisis of that fever, which was sharp, and took her on her return from Yucatan, at a horrible port called Frontera, where there were palm trees and zopilotes—a kind of vile American vulture—which sat silently on the verandah outside her door in the dreadful little hotel built upon piles in the mud of the great river, and mosquitoes by the ten million, and sleepy-eyed, crushed-looking Indians, and horrible halfbreeds, and everything else which suggests an earthly hell, except the glorious sunshine.

Of a sudden, when she was at her worst, all the materiality—if there be such a word—which circumstances and innate tendency had woven about her as a garment, seemed to melt away, and she became aware of something vast in which she floated like an insect in the atmosphere—some surrounding sea which she could neither measure nor travel.

She knew that she was not merely Isobel Blake, but a part of the universe in its largest sense, and that the universe expressed itself in miniature within her soul. She knew that ever since it had been, she was, and that while it existed she would endure. This imagination or inspiration, whichever it may have been, went no further than that, and afterwards she set it down to delirium, or to the exaltation that often accompanies fever. Still, it left a mark upon her, opening a new door in her heart, so to speak.

For the rest, the life in Mexico City was gay, especially in the position which she filled as the niece of the British Minister, who was often called upon to act as hostess, as her aunt was delicate and her cousin was younger than herself and not apt at the business. There were Diaz and the foreign Diplomatic Ministers; also the leading Mexicans to be entertained, for which purpose she learned Spanish. Then there were English travellers, distinguished, some of them, and German nobles, generally in the Diplomatic Service of their country, whom by some peculiar feminine instinct of her own, she suspected of being spies and generally persons of evil intentions. Also there was the British colony, among whom were some very nice people that she made her friends, the strange, adventurous pioneers of our Empire who are to be bound in every part of the world, and in a sense its cream.

Lastly, there were the American tourists and business men, many of whom she thought amusing. One of these, a millionaire who had to do with a "beef trust," though what that might be she never quite understood, proposed to her. He was a nice young fellow enough, of a real old American family whose ancestors were supposed to have come over in the Mayflower, and possessed of a remarkable vein of original humour; also he was much in love. But Isobel would have none of it, and said so in such plain, unmistakable language that the millionaire straightway left Mexico City in his private railway car, disconsolately to pursue his beef speculations in other lands.

On the day that he departed Isobel received a note from him which ran:

"I have lost you, and since I am too sore-hearted to stay in this antique country and conclude the business that brought me here, I reckon that I have also lost 250,000 dollars. That sum, however, I would gladly have given for the honour and joy of your friendship, and as much more added. So I think it well spent, especially as it never figured in my accounts. Good-bye. God bless you and whoever it may be with whom you are in love, for that there is someone I am quite sure, also that he must be a good fellow."

From which it will be seen that this millionaire was a very nice young man. So, at least, thought Isobel, though he did write about her being in love with someone, which was the rankest nonsense. In love, indeed! Why, she had never met a man for whom she could possibly entertain any feelings of that sort, no, not even if he had been able to make a queen of her, or to endow her with all the cash resources of all the beef trusts in the world. Men in that aspect were repellent and hateful to her; the possibility of such a union with any one of them was poisonous, even unnatural to her, soul and body.

Once, it is true, there had been a certain boy—but he had passed out of her life—oh! years ago, and, what is more, had affronted her by refusing to answer a letter which she had written to him, just, as she imagined—though of course this was only a guess—because of his ridiculous and unwarrantable jealousy and the atrocious pride that was his failing. Also she had read in the papers of a very brave act which he had done on the Alps, one which filled her with a pride that was not atrocious, but quite natural where an old playmate was concerned, and had noticed that it was a young lady whom he had rescued. That, of course, explained everything, and if her first supposition should be incorrect, would quite account for her having received no answer to her letter.

It was true, however, that she had heard no more of this young lady, though scraps of gossip concerning Godfrey did occasionally reach her. For instance, she knew that he had quarrelled with his father because he would not enter the Church and was going into the army, a career which she much preferred, especially as she did not believe in the Church and could not imagine what Godfrey would look like in a black coat and a white tie.

By the way, she wondered what he did look like now. She had an old faded photograph of him as a lanky youth, but after all this time he could not in the least resemble that. Well, probably he had grown as plain and uninteresting—as she was herself. It was wonderful that the American young man could have seen anything in her, but then, no doubt he went on in the same kind of way with half the girls he met.

Thus reflected Isobel, and a little while later paid a last visit to the museum, which interested her more than any place in Mexico, perhaps because its exhibits strengthened her theories as to comparative religion, and shook off her feet the dust of what her American admirer had called that "antique land." It was with a positive pang that from the deck of the steamship outside Vera Cruz she looked her last on the snows of the glorious peak of Orizaba, but soon these faded away into the skyline and with them her life in Mexico.



Returning to England via the West Indies in the company of her uncle who was coming home on leave before taking up an appointment as Minister to one of the South American republics, she was greeted on the platform at Waterloo by her father. Sir John Blake had by this time forgotten their previous disagreements, or, at any rate, determined to ignore them, and Isobel, who was now in her way a finished woman of the world, though she did not forget, had come to a like conclusion. So their meeting was cordial enough, and for a while, not a very long while, they continued to live together in outward amity, with a tacit understanding that they should follow their respective paths, unmolested by each other.



CHAPTER XIV

TOGETHER

On the afternoon of the first day after his arrival at the Abbey, some spirit in his feet moved Godfrey to go into the church. As though by instinct, he went to the chancel, and stood there contemplating the brass of the nameless Plantagenet lady. How long it was since he had looked upon her graven face and form draped in the stately habiliments of a bygone age! Then, he remembered with a pang, Isobel was with him, and they had seemed to be very near together. Now there was no Isobel, and they were very far apart, both in the spirit and in the flesh. For he had not heard of her return to England and imagined that she was still in Mexico, whence no tidings of her came to him.

There he stood among the dead, reflecting that we do not need to pass out of the body to know the meaning of death, since, as once Isobel had said herself, some separations are as bad, or worse. The story of the dead is, at any rate, completed; there is nothing more to be learned about them, and of them we imagine, perhaps quite erroneously, that we have no need to be jealous, since we cannot conceive that they may form new interests in another sphere. But with the living it is otherwise. Somewhere their life is continued; somewhere they are getting themselves friends or lovers and carrying on the daily round of being, and we have no share in them or in aught that they may do. And probably they have forgotten us. And, if we still happen to be attached to them, oh! it hurts.

Thus mused Godfrey, trying to picture to himself what Isobel looked like when she had stood by his side on that long-past autumn eve, and only succeeded in remembering exactly what she looked like when she was kissing a rose with a certain knight in armour in a square garden, since for some perverse reason it was this picture that remained so painfully clear to his mind. Then he drifted off into speculations upon the general mystery of things of a sort that were common with him, and in these became oblivious of all else.

He did not even hear or see a tall young woman enter the church, clad in summer white, no, not when she was within five pace and, becoming suddenly aware of his presence, had stopped to study him with the acutest interest. In a flash Isobel knew who he was. Of course he was much changed, for Godfrey, who had matured early, as those of his generation were apt to do, especially if they had led a varied life, was now a handsome and well-built young man with a fine, thoughtful face and a quite respectable moustache.

"How he has changed, oh! how he has changed," she thought to herself. The raw boy had become a man, and as she knew at once by her woman's instinct, a man with a great deal in him. Isobel was a sensible member of her sex; one, too, who had seen something of the world by now, and she did not expect or wish for a hero or a saint built upon the mid-Victorian pattern, as portrayed in the books of the lady novelists of that period. She wanted a man to be a man, by preference with the faults pertaining to the male nature, since she had observed that those who lacked these, possessed others, which to her robust womanhood seemed far worse, such as meanness and avarice and backbiting, and all the other qualities of the Pharisee.

Well, in Godfrey, whether she were right or wrong, with that swift glance of hers, she seemed to recognise a man as she wished a man to be. If that standard of hers meant that very possibly he had admired other women, the lady whom he had pulled up a precipice, for instance, she did not mind particularly, so long as he admired her, Isobel, most of all. That was her one sine qua non, that he should admire her most of all, or rather be fondest of her in his innermost self.

What was she thinking about? What was there to show that he cared one brass farthing about her? Nothing at all. And yet, why was he here where she had parted from him so long ago? Surely not to stare at the grave of a dead woman with whom he could have had nothing to do, since she left the world some five centuries before. And another question. What had brought her here, she who hated churches and all the mummery that they signified?

Would he never wake up? Would he never realise her presence? Oh! then he could care nothing about her. Probably he was thinking of the girl he had pulled up a cliff in the Alps. But why did he come to this place to think of her?

Isobel stood quite still there and waited in the shadow of a Georgian tomb, till presently Godfrey did seem to grow aware that he was no longer alone. Something or somebody had impinged upon his intelligence. He began to look about him, though always in the wrong direction. Then, convinced that he was the victim of fancy, he spoke aloud as he had a bad habit of doing when by himself.

"It's very curious," he said, "but I could have sworn that Isobel was here, as near me as when we parted. I suppose that is what comes of thinking so much about her. Or do people leave something of themselves behind in places where they have experienced emotion? If so, churches ought to be very full of ghosts. I dare say that they are, only then no one could know it except those who had shared the emotion, and therefore they remain intangible. Still, I could have sworn that Isobel was here. Indeed, I seem to feel her now, and I hope that the dream will go on."

Listening there in the shadow, she heard, and flushed in her flesh and rejoiced in her innermost being. So he had not forgotten her, which is the true and real infidelity that never can be forgiven, at any rate, by a woman. So she was still something in his life, although he had not answered her letter years ago.

Then she grew angry with herself. What did it matter to her what he was, or thought, or did? It was absurd that she could be dependent morally upon anyone, who must rely in life or death upon herself alone and on the strong soul within her. She was wroth with Godfrey for exciting such disturbance in—what was it—her spirit or her body? Nonsense, she had no spirit. That was a phantasy. Therefore it must be in her body which was her own particular property that should remain uninfluenced by any other body.

So it came about that the first words she spoke to him were somewhat rough in their texture. She stepped forward out of the shadow of the Georgian tomb and confronted him with a defiant air, her head thrown back, looking, to tell the truth, rather stately.

"I hoped that by this time you had given up talking to yourself, Godfrey, which, as I always told you, is a bad habit. I did not hear much of what you were mumbling, but I understood you to say that you thought I was here. Well, why shouldn't I be here?"

He stared at her blankly and answered:

"God knows, I don't! But since you ask the question, why are you here, Isobel? It is Isobel, isn't it, or am I still dreaming? Let me touch you and I shall know."

She drew back a little way, quite three inches.

"Of course it is Isobel, don't your senses tell you that without wanting to touch me? Why, I knew it was you from the end of the church. But you ask me why I am here. I wish you would tell me. I was passing, and something drew me into this place. I suppose it was you, and if so, I say at once that I resent it; you have no right——"

"No, no, certainly not, but do let me touch you to make sure that you are Isobel."

"Very well," she said, and stretched out a hand towards him.

He caught it with his left which was nearest, and then with his right hand reached forward and seized her other hand. With a masterful movement he draw her towards him, and though she was a strong woman she seemed to have no power to resist. She thought that he was going to kiss her and did not care greatly if he did.

But he checked himself in time, and instead of pressing his lips upon hers, only kissed her hands, first one and then the other, for quite a long while: nor did she attempt to deny him, perhaps because a wild impulse took possession of her to kiss his in answer. Yes, his hands, or his lips, or even his coat or anything about him. Oh! it made her very angry, but there it was, for something rushed up in her which she had never felt before, something mad and wild and sweet.

She wrenched herself away at last and began to scold him again.

"What have you been doing all these years? Why did you never write to me?"

"Because I was too proud, as you never wrote to me."

"Too proud! Pride will be your ruin; it goes before every sort of fall. Besides, I did write to you. I can show you a copy of the letter, if I haven't torn it up."

"I never got it; did you post it yourself?"

"Yes, that is I took it to the Abbey House and left it to be addressed there."

"Oh! then perhaps it is there still," and he looked at her.

"Nonsense, no one could have been so mean, not even——"

He shrugged his shoulders, a trick he had learned abroad, then said:

"Well, it doesn't matter now, does it, Isobel?"

"Yes, it matters a lot. Years of misunderstanding and doubt and loss, when life is so short. I might have married or all sorts of things."

"What has my not receiving your letter got to do with that?" he asked, astonished.

"Nothing at all. Why do you ask such silly questions? I only meant that if I had married I should not have been here, and we should never have met again."

"Well, you are here and we have met in this church, where we parted."

"Yes, it's odd, isn't it? I wish it had been somewhere else. I don't like this gloomy old place with its atmosphere of death. Come outside."

They went, and when they were through the churchyard gates walked at hazard towards the stream which ran through the grounds of Hawk's Hall. Here they sat down upon a fallen willow, watching the swallows skim over the surface of the placid waters, and for a while were silent. They had so much to say to each other that it seemed as though scarcely they knew where to commence.

"Tell me," she said at length, "were you in the square garden on the night of that dance at which I came out? Oh! I see by your look that you were. Then why did you not speak to me instead of standing behind a bush, watching in that mean fashion?"

"I wasn't properly dressed for parties, and—and—you seemed to be—very much engaged—with a rose and a knight in armour."

"Engaged! It was only part of a game. I wrote and told you all about it in the letter you did not get. Did you never kiss a flower for a joke and give it to someone, not knowing that you were being watched?"

Godfrey coloured and shifted uneasily on his log.

"Well, as a matter of fact," he said, "it is odd that you should have guessed—for something of the sort did once happen quite by accident. Also I was watched."

"I!—you mean we. One doesn't kiss flowers by oneself and give them to the air. It would be more ridiculous even than the other thing."

"I will tell you all about it if you like," he stammered confusedly.

She looked at him with her large, steady grey eyes, and answered in a cold voice:

"No, thank you, I don't like. Nothing bores me so much as other people's silly love affairs."

Baffled in defence, Godfrey resorted to attack.

"What has become of the knight in armour?" he asked.

"He is married and has twins. I saw the announcement of their birth in the paper yesterday. And what has become of the lady with the flower? For since there was a flower, there must have been a lady; I suppose the same whom you pulled up the precipice."

"She is married also, to her cousin, but I don't know that she has any children yet, and I never pulled her up any precipice. It was a man I pulled, a very heavy one. My arm isn't quite right yet."

"Oh!" said Isobel. Then with another sudden change of voice she went on. "Now tell me all about yourself, Godfrey. There must be such lots to say, and I long to hear."

So he told her, and she told him of herself, and they talked and talked till the shadows of advancing night began to close around them. Suddenly Godfrey looked at his watch, of which he could only just see the hands.

"My goodness!" he said, "it is half-past seven."

"Well, what about it? It doesn't matter when I dine, for I have come down alone here for a few days, a week perhaps, to get the house ready for my father and his friends."

"Yes, but my father dines at seven, and if there is one thing he hates it is being kept waiting for dinner."

She looked as though she thought that it did not much matter whether or no Mr. Knight waited for his dinner, then said:

"Well, you can come up to the Hall and dine with me."

"I think I had better not," he answered. "You see, we are getting on so well together—I mean my father and I, and I don't want to begin a row again. He would hate it."

"You mean, Godfrey, that he would hate your dining with me. Well, that is true, for he always loathed me like poison, and I don't think he is a man to change his mind. So perhaps you had better go. Do you think we shall be allowed to see each other again?" she added with sarcasm.

"Of course. Let's meet here to-morrow at eleven. My father is going to a Diocesan meeting and won't be back till the evening. So we might spend the day together if you have nothing better to do."

"Let me see. No, I have no engagement. You see, I only came down half an hour before we met in the church."

Then they rose from their willow log and stood looking at each other, a very proper pair. Something welled up in him and burst from his lips.

"How beautiful you have grown," he said.

She laughed a little, very softly, and said:

"Beautiful! I? Those Alpine snows affect the sight, don't they? I felt like that on Popocatepetl. Or is it the twilight that I have to thank? Oh! you silly old Godfrey, you must have been living among very plain people."

"You are beautiful," he replied stubbornly, "the most beautiful woman I ever saw. You always were, and you always will be."

Again she laughed, for who of her sex is there that does not like to be called beautiful, especially when she knows that it is meant, and that whatever her personal shortcomings, to the speaker she is beautiful? But this time the only answer she attempted was:

"You said you were late, and you are getting later. Run home, there's a good little boy."

"Why do you laugh at me?" he asked.

"Because I am laughing at myself," she answered, "and you should have your share."

Then very nearly he kissed her, only he was in such a hurry, also the willow log, a large one, was between them; possibly she had arranged that this should be so. So he could only press her hand and depart, muttering something indistinguishable. She watched him vanish, after which she sat down again on the log and really did laugh. Still, it was a queer kind of merriment, for by degrees it turned into little sobs and tears.

"You little fool, what has happened to you?" she asked herself. "Are you—are you—and if so, is he—? Oh! nonsense, and yet, something has happened, for I never felt like this before. I thought it was all rubbish, mere natural attraction, part of Nature's scheme and so on, as they write in the clever books. But it's more than that—at least it would be if I were—— Besides, I'm ages older than he is, although I was born six months later. I'm a woman full-grown, and he is only a boy. If he hadn't been a boy he would have taken his advantage when he must have known that I was weak as water, just for the joy of seeing him again. Now he has lost his chance, if he wanted one, for by to-morrow I shall be strong again, and there shall be no more——"

Then she looked at the backs of her hands which she could not see because of the gathering darkness, and as they were invisible, kissed them instead, just as though they belonged to someone else. After this she sat a while brooding and listening to the pulsing of her heart, which was beating with unusual strength this night. As she did so in that mysterious hour which sometimes comes to us in English summers, a great change fell upon her. When she sat down upon that fallen tree she was still a girl and virginal; when she rose from it she was a developed, loving woman. It was as though a spirit had visited her and whispered in her ear. She could almost hear the words. They were:

"Fulfil your fate. Love and be loved with body and with spirit, with heart and soul and strength."

At length she rose, and as she did so said aloud:

"I do not know who or what I have to thank for life and all that makes me, me. But I am glad to have been born, now, who have often wished that I had never been born. Even if I knew that I must pass away to-night, I should still be glad, since I have learned that there is something in me which cannot die. It came when that man kissed my hands, and it will endure for ever."



Godfrey was late for dinner, very late, and what was worse, his father had waited for him.

"I suppose you forgot that I dined at seven, not at eight," was his cold greeting, for Mr. Knight, a large eater like many teetotallers, was one of those people who make a fetish of punctuality at meals, and always grow cross when they are hungry.

Godfrey, whose mind had not been steadied by the events of the afternoon, became confused and replied that he was extremely sorry, but the fact was he had met Isobel and, in talking to her, had not noticed the time.

"Isobel!" exclaimed his father, whose voice was now icy. "What Isobel?"

"I never knew but one, Father."

"Oh! I suppose you mean Miss Blake. I had no idea she was here; indeed, I thought she was still in Mexico. But doubtless you were better informed."

"No, Father, I met her accidentally. She has returned to England."

"That is obvious, Godfrey——"

"She has come down," he continued in a hurry, "to get the house ready for Sir John, who arrives shortly."

"Oh! has she? What a strange coincidence! All the years of our separation while you were way she was away, but within two days of your return she returns."

"Yes, it does seem odd," agreed the flustered Godfrey, "but it's lucky, isn't it, for, of course, I am glad to see her again."

Mr. Knight finished carving himself a helping of beef, and let the knife fall with a clatter into the dish. Then he said in carefully chosen words:

"You may think it lucky—or well arranged—but I must differ. I tell you at once that I consider Miss Blake a most pernicious young woman, and as your father I can only express the hope that you do not intend to allow her to re-assert her evil influence over you."

Godfrey was about to answer with wrath, but changed his mind and remained silent. So the topic dropped, but that it stood very straight upon its feet in Mr. Knight's mind was clear from the compression of his thin lips and the ill-humour of his remarks about the coldness and overdone character of the beef and sundry other household matters. As soon as the meal was concluded and he had washed it down with a last glass of water and with a very wry face thanked Providence for all that he had received, he retired into his study and was seen no more till prayer-time.

Nor was he seen then by Godfrey, who had gone out to smoke his pipe since his father could not bear the smell of tobacco in the house, and wandered unconsciously towards the Hall. There he stood, gazing at a light which he knew came from Isobel's window, and lost in this unfruitful contemplation, once more forgot the time. When he arrived home it was to find the house in darkness and a note in his father's handwriting on the hall table requesting him to be careful to lock the door, as everyone had gone to bed.

He went, too, but could not sleep, for, strangely enough, that disturbance of body and spirit which had afflicted Isobel possessed him also. It seemed wonderful to him that he should have found her again, whom he thought to be so utterly lost, and grown so sweet and dear. How could he have lived all this while without her, he wondered, and, another thought, how could he bear to part with her once more? Oh! she was his life, and—why should they part? She had not minded when he kissed her hands, at which, of course, she might have been angry; indeed, she left them to be kissed for quite a long while, though not half long enough. Perhaps she did not wish that they should part either, or perhaps she only desired that they should be just friends as before. It seemed almost impossible that they could become more than friends, even if she cared to do so, which he could scarcely hope.

What was he? A young fellow, twenty, with only a little money and all his way to make in the world. And what was she? A grand young lady, rather younger than himself, it was true, but seeming years older, who was a great heiress, they said, and expected to marry a lord, someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth, whose fortune had been made for him by other people. Moreover, his father hated her because their religious views were different, and her father hated him, or used to, for other reasons.

Yes, it was quite impossible—and yet Nature seemed to take no account of that: Nature seemed to tell him that it was absolutely possible, and indeed right, and what she, Nature, wished. Also this same persistent Nature seemed to suggest to him that Isobel was her most willing and obedient pupil, and that perhaps if he could look into her heart he would find that she did care, and very much more than for the wealth and the hypothetical lord.

Nature seemed to suggest, too, that Isobel's thoughts were with him at that moment; that she was uncommonly near to him in soul if not in body; that she was thinking about him as he was thinking about her, and saying much the same things to herself as he was saying to himself. Indeed, he even began a whispered conversation with her, of a sort he would not have ventured upon had she been there, pausing between the sentences for her answers, which, as he imagined them, were very satisfactory indeed.

By degrees, however, question and answer grew less frequent and further apart as he dozed off and finally sank into a deep sleep. So deep was it, indeed, that he was awakened only by the clamour of the breakfast bell, and when he arrived downstairs, to be confronted by some cold bacon on an uncovered dish, his father had departed to the Diocesan Conference. Well, this fact had its consolations, and bacon, however cold, with contentment is better than bacon hot where contention is.

So he ate it and anything else he could find with appetite, and then went upstairs to shave and do his hair nicely and to put on a new suit of clothes, which he considered became him. Also, as he had still three-quarters of an hour to spare, he began to write a little poem about Isobel, which was a dismal failure, to tell the truth, since he could think of no satisfactory rhyme to her name, except "O well!" which, however he put it, sounded silly.

At last, rather too early, he threw the sheet of paper into the fireplace and started, only to find that although it still lacked a quarter of an hour to eleven, Isobel was already seated on that tree.

"What have you been doing to yourself?" she asked, "putting on those smart London clothes? I like the old grey things you had on last night ever so much better, and I wanted you to climb a tree to get me some young jackdaws. And—good gracious! Godfrey, your head smells like a whole hairdresser's shop. Please come to the other side, to leeward of me."

He murmured something about liking to look tidy, and then remarked that she seemed rather finely dressed herself.

"It's only my Mexican hat," she answered, touching the big sombrero, woven from the finest Panama grass, which she was wearing, "and the necklace is made of little gold Aztec idols that were found in a grave. They are very rare; a gentleman gave them to me, and afterwards I was horrified to find that he had paid an awful lot for them, L200, I believe. Do you understand about the Aztec gods? If not I will explain them all to you. This big one in the middle is Huitzilcoatl, the god of——"

"No, no," interrupted Godfrey, "I don't and I don't want to. I think them very ugly, and I always understood that ladies did not accept such expensive presents from gentlemen. Who was he?"

"An American millionaire who didn't wear armour," she answered blandly. Then she changed the subject with the original remark that the swallows were flying higher than they had done on the previous evening, when they looked as though one could almost catch them with one's hand.

Godfrey reflected to himself that other things which had seemed quite close on the previous night were now like the swallows, far out of reach. Only he took comfort in the remembrance that swallows, however near, are evasive birds, not easy to seize unless you can find them sleeping. Next she began to tell him all about the Mexican gods, whether he wanted to listen or not, and he sat there in the glory of his new clothes and brilliantined hair, and gazed at her till she asked him to desist as she felt as though she were being mesmerised.

This led him to his spiritualistic experiences of which he told her all the story, and by the time it was finished, behold! it was the luncheon hour.

"It is very interesting," she said as they entered the Hall, "and I can't laugh at it all as I should have done once, I don't quite know why. But I hope, Godfrey, that you will have no more to do with spirits."

"No, not while——" and he looked at her.

"While what?"

"While—there are such nice bodies in the world," he stammered, colouring.

She coloured also, tossed her head, and went to wash her hands.

The afternoon they spent in hunting for imaginary young jackdaws in a totally nebulous tree. Isobel grew rather cross over its non-discovery, swearing that she remembered it well years ago, and that there were always young jackdaws there.

"Perhaps it has been cut down," suggested Godfrey. "I am told that your father has been improving the place a great deal in that kind of way, so as to make it up to date and scientific and profitable, and all the rest of it. Also if it hasn't, there would have been no young jackdaws, since they must have flown quite six weeks ago."

"Then why couldn't you say that at once, instead of making us waste all this time?" asked Isobel with indignation.

"I don't know," replied Godfrey in a somewhat vacuous fashion. "It was all the same to me if we were hunting for young jackdaws or the man in the moon, as long as we were together."

"Godfrey, it is evident that you have been overworking and are growing foolish. I make excuses for you, since anybody who passed first out of Sandhurst must have overworked, but it does not alter the fact. Now I must go home and see about that house, for as yet I have arranged nothing at all, and the place is in an awful state. Remember that my father is coming down presently with either six or eight terrible people, I forget which. All I know about them is that they are extremely rich and expect to be what is called 'done well.'"

"Must you?" remarked Godfrey, looking disappointed.

"Yes, I must. And so must you. Your father is coming back by the five o'clock train, and I advise you to be there to meet him. Perhaps I shall see you to-morrow some time."

"I can't," exclaimed Godfrey in a kind of wail. "I am to be taken off to a school in some town or other, I forget which, that my father has been examining. I suppose it is the speech day, and he proposes to introduce me as a kind of object lesson because I have passed first in an examination."

"Yes, as a shining example and—an advertisement. Well, perhaps we shall meet later," and without giving him an opportunity of saying more she vanished away.



CHAPTER XV

FOR EVER

Godfrey managed to be late again, and only reached home five minutes after his father, who had bicycled instead of walking from the station as he supposed that he would do.

"I forgot to give orders about your lunch," said Mr. Knight tentatively. "I hope that you managed to get some."

"Oh, yes, Father; that is, I lunched out, at the Hall."

"Indeed! I did not know that Sir John had arrived."

"No, he hasn't; at least I have not seen him. I lunched with Isobel."

"Indeed!" remarked Mr. Knight again, and the subject dropped.

Next day, Godfrey, once more arrayed in his best clothes, attended the prize-giving and duly was made to look foolish, only getting home just in time for dinner, after which his father requested him to check certain examination papers. Then came Sunday and church at which Isobel did not appear; two churches in fact, and after these a tea party to the churchwardens and their wives, to whom Godfrey was expected to explain the wonders of the Alps. Before it was over, if he could have managed it, these stolid farmers with their families would have lain at the bottom of the deepest moraine that exists amid those famous mountains. But there they were, swallowing tea and munching cake while they gazed on him with ox-like eyes, and he plunged into wild explanations as to the movements of glaciers.

"Something like one of them new-fangled machines what carry hay up on to the top of stacks," said Churchwarden No. 1 at length.

"Did you ever sit on a glacier while it slided from the top to the bottom of a mountain, Master Godfrey, and if so, however did you get up again?" asked Churchwarden No. 2.

"Is a glacier so called after the tradesman what cuts glass, because glass and ice are both clear-like?" inquired Churchwarden No. 1, filled with sudden inspiration.

Then Godfrey, in despair, said that he thought it was and fled away, only to be reproached afterwards by his father for having tried to puzzle those excellent and pious men.

On Monday his luck was better, since Mr. Knight was called away immediately after lunch to take a funeral in a distant parish of which the incumbent was absent at the seaside. Godfrey, by a kind of instinct, sped at once to the willow log by the stream, where, through an outreaching of the long arm of coincidence, he found Isobel seated. After casually remarking that the swallows were flying neither high nor low that day, but as it were in mid-air, she added that she had not seen him for a long while.

"No, you haven't—say for three years," he answered, and detailed his tribulations.

"Ah!" said Isobel, "that's always the way; one is never left at leisure to follow one's own fancies in this world. To-morrow, for instance, my father and all his horrible friends—I don't know any of them, except one, but from past experience I presume them to be horrible—are coming down to lunch, and are going to stop for three days' partridge shooting. Their female belongings are going to stop also, or some of them are, which means that I shall have to look after them."

"It's all bad news to-day," remarked Godfrey, shaking his head. "I've just had a telegram saying that I must report myself on Wednesday, goodness knows why, for I expected to get a month's leave."

"Oh!" said Isobel, looking a little dismayed. "Then let us make the best of to-day, for who knows what to-morrow may bring forth?"

Who indeed? Certainly not either of these young people.

They talked awhile seated by the river; then began to walk through certain ancient grazing grounds where the monks used to run their cattle. Their conversation, fluent enough at first, grew somewhat constrained and artificial, since both of them were thinking of matters different from those that they were trying to dress out in words; intimate, pressing, burning matters that seemed to devour their intelligences of everyday with a kind of eating fire. They grew almost silent, talking only at random and listening to the beating of their own hearts rather than to the words that fell from each other's lips.

The sky clouded over, and some heavy drops of rain began to fall.

"I suppose that we must go in," said Isobel, "we shall be soaked presently," and she glanced at her light summer attire.

"Where?" exclaimed Godfrey. "The Abbey? No, my father will be back by now; it must be the Hall."

"Very well, but I dare say my father is there by now, for I understand that he is coming down this afternoon to arrange about the shooting."

"Great heavens!" groaned Godfrey, "and I wanted to—tell you a story which I thought perhaps might interest you, and I don't know when I shall get another chance—now."

"Then why did you not tell your story before?" she inquired with some irritation.

"Oh! because I have only just thought of it," he replied rather wildly.

At this moment they were passing the church, and the rain began to fall in earnest. By some mutual impulse they entered through the chancel door which was always unlocked, and by some mutual folly, left it open.

Advancing instinctively to the tombs of the unknown Plantagenet lady and her knight which were so intimately connected with the little events of their little lives, they listened for a while to the rush of the rain upon the leaden roof, saying nothing, till the silence grew irksome indeed. Each waited for the other to break it, but with a woman's infinite patience Isobel waited the longer. There she stood, staring at the brass of the Plantagenet lady, still as the bones of that lady which lay beneath.

"My story," said Godfrey at last with a gasp, and stopped.

"Yes," said Isobel. "What is it?"

"Oh!" he exclaimed in an agony, "a very short one. I love you, that's all."

A little quiver ran through her, causing her dress to shake and the gold Mexican gods on her necklace to tinkle against each other. Then she grew still as a stone, and raising those large and steady eyes of hers, looked him up and down, finally fixing them upon his own.

"Is that true?" she asked.

"True! It is as true as life and death, or as Heaven and Hell."

"I don't know anything about Heaven and Hell; they are hypothetical, are they not? Life and death are enough for me," and she stopped.

"Then by life and death, for life and death, and for ever, I love you, Isobel."

"Thank you," she said, and stopped once more.

"You don't help one much. Have you nothing to say?"

"What is there to say? You made a statement for which I thanked you. You asked no question."

"It is a question," he exclaimed indignantly. "If I love you, of course I want to know if you love me."

"Then why did you not say so? But," she added very deliberately, "since you want to know, I do and always have and always shall, in life or death—and for ever—if that means anything."

He stared at her, tried to utter something and failed. Then he fell back upon another very primitive and ancient expedient. Flinging his arms about her, he pressed her to his heart and kissed her again and again and again; nor, in her moment of complete surrender, did she scruple to kiss him back.

It was while they were thus engaged, offering a wonderful spectacle of love triumphant and rejoicing in its triumph, that another person who was passing the church bethought him of its shelter as a refuge from the pouring rain. Seeing the open door, Mr. Knight, for it was he, slipped into the great building in his quiet, rather cat-like fashion, but on its threshold saw, and stopped. Notwithstanding the shadows, he recognised them in a moment. More, the sight of this pair, the son whom he disliked and the woman whom he hated, thus embraced, thus lost in a sea of passion, moved him to white fury, so that he lifted his clenched hands above his head and shook them, muttering:

"And in my church, my church!"

Then unable to bear more of this spectacle, he slipped away again, heedless of the pouring skies.

By nature, although in obedience to a rash promise once he had married, Mr. Knight was a true woman-hater. That sex and everything to do with it were repellent to him. Even the most harmless manifestations of natural affection between male and female he considered disgusting, indeed indecent, and if these were carried any further he held it to be among the greatest of crimes. He was one of those who, if he had the power, would have hounded any poor girl who, in the country phrase, "had got into trouble," to the river brink and over it, as a creature not fit to live; or if she escaped destruction, would have, and indeed often had, pursued her with unceasing malignity, thinking that thereby he did God service. His attitude towards such a person was that of an Inquisitor towards a fallen nun.

Moreover, he could do this with a clear conscience, since he could truly say that he was qualified to throw the first stone, being of those who mistake personal aversion for personal virtue. Because his cold-hearted nature rejected it, he loathed this kind of human failing and felt good in the loathing. Nor did it ever occur to him to reflect that others, such as secret malice, jealousy and all uncharitableness on which his heart fed, might be much worse than the outrush of human passion in obedience to the almighty decree of Nature that is determined not to die.

These being his views, the feelings that the sight awoke in him of this pair declaring their holy love in the accustomed, human fashion, can scarcely be measured and are certainly beyond description. Had he been another sort of man who had found some devil flogging a child to death, the rage and indignation aroused in his breast could not have been greater, even if it were his own child.

The one thing that Mr. Knight had feared for years was that Godfrey, who, as he knew, was fonder of Isobel than of any other living creature, should come to love her in a fuller fashion: Isobel, a girl who had laughed at and flouted him and once told him to his face that a study of his character and treatment of others had done more to turn her from the Christian religion than anything else.

In a sense he was unselfish in this matter, or rather his hate mastered his selfishness. He knew very well that Isobel would be a great match for Godfrey, and he was by no means a man who underrated money and position and their power. He guessed, too, that she really loved him and would have made him the best of wives; that with her at his side he might do almost anything in the world. But these considerations did not in the least soften his loathing of the very thought of such a marriage. Incredible as it may seem, he would rather have seen Godfrey dead than the happy husband of Isobel.

Mr. Knight, drunk with rage, reeled rather than walked away from the church door, wondering what he might do to baulk and shame that living, loving pair who could kiss and cling even among the tombs. A thought came to him, a very evil thought which he welcomed as an inspiration sent straight from an offended Heaven. Sir John Blake had come home; he knew it, for he had passed him on the road seated alone in a fine motor-car, and they had waved their hands to each other not ten minutes before. He would go and tell him all; in the character of an upright man who does not like to see his rich neighbour harmed by the entanglement of that neighbour's daughter in an undesirable relationship. That Sir John would consider himself to be harmed, he was sure enough, being by no means ignorant of his plans and aspirations for the future of that daughter, who was expected to make a great alliance in return for the fortune which she would bring to her husband.

No sooner said than done. In three minutes he was at the Hall and, as it chanced, met Sir John by the front door.

"Hullo, Reverend! How are you? You look very wet and miserable; taking refuge from the rain, I suppose, though it is clearing off now. Have a brandy and soda, or a glass of port?"

"Thank you, Sir John, I am an abstainer, but a cup of hot tea would be welcome."

"Tea—ah! yes, but that takes time to make, so I should have to leave you to drink it by yourself. Fact is I want to find my daughter. Some of those blessed guests of mine, including Mounteroy, the young Earl, you know, whom I wish her to meet particularly, are coming down to-night by the last train and not to-morrow, so I must get everything arranged in a hurry. Can't make out where the girl has gone."

"I think I can tell you, Sir John," said Mr. Knight with a sickly smile; "at least I saw her a little while ago rather peculiarly engaged."

"Where, and how was she engaged?"

Without asking permission Mr. Knight entered the house and stepped into a cloak-room that opened out of the hall. Being curious, Sir John followed him. Mr. Knight shut the door and, supporting himself against the frame of a marble wash-basin with gilded taps, said:

"I saw her in the chancel of the Abbey Church and she was kissing my son, Godfrey; at least he was kissing her, and she seemed to be responding to his infamous advances, for her arms were round his neck and I heard sounds which suggested that this was so."

"Holy Moses!" ejaculated Sir John, "what in the name of hell are they after?"

"Your question, stripped of its unnecessary and profane expletives, seems easy to answer. I imagine that my immoral son has just proposed to your daughter, and been accepted with—well, unusual emphasis."

"Perhaps you are right. But if he had I don't see anything particularly immoral about it. If I had never done anything worse than that I shouldn't feel myself called to go upon my knees and cry peccavi. However, that ain't the point. The point is that a game of this sort don't at all suit my book, but," here he looked at the clergyman shrewdly, "why do you come to tell about it? I should have thought that under all the circumstances you should have been glad. Isobel isn't likely to be exactly a beggar, you know, so it seems devilish queer that you should object, as I gather you do; unless it is to the kissing, which has been heard of before."

"I do object most strongly, Sir John," replied Mr. Knight in his iciest tones. "I disapprove entirely of your daughter, whose lack of any Christian feeling is notorious, and whose corrupting influence will, I fear, make my son as bad as herself."

"Damn her lack of Christian feeling, and damn yours and your impudence too, you half-drowned church rat! Why don't you call her Jezebel at once, and have done with it? One of the things I like about her is that she has the pluck to snap her fingers at such as you and all your ignorant superstitions. What are you getting at? That is what I want to know."

"I put aside your insults to which as a clergyman it is my duty to turn the other cheek," replied Mr. Knight, with a furious gasp. "As to the rest I am trying to get at the pure and sacred truth."

"You look as though you would do better to get at the pure and sacred brandy," remarked Sir John, surveying him critically, "but that's your affair. Now, what is the truth?"

"Alas! that I must say it. I believe my son to be that basest of creatures, a fortune-hunter. How did he get that money left to him by another woman?"

"Don't know, I'm sure. Perhaps the old girl found the young chap attractive, and wished to acknowledge favours received. Such things have been known. You don't suppose he forged her will, do you?"

"You are ribald, Sir, ribald."

"Am I? Well, and you are jolly offensive. Thank God you weren't my father. Now, from what I remember of that boy of yours, I shouldn't have thought that he was a fortune-hunter. I should have thought that he was a young beggar who wished to get hold of the girl he fancies, and that's all. Still, you know him best, and I dare say you are right. Anyway, for your own peculiar and crack-brained reasons, you don't want this business, and I say at once you can't want it less than I do. Do you suppose that I wish to see my only child, who will have half a million of money and might be a countess, or half a dozen countesses, to-morrow, married to the son of a beggarly sniveller like you, for as you are so fond of the pure and sacred truth, I'll give it you—a fellow who can come and peach upon your own boy and his girl."

"My conscience and my duty——" began Mr. Knight.

"Oh! drat your conscience and blow your duty. You're a spy and a backbiting tell-tale, that's what you are. Did you never kiss a girl yourself?"

"Never until after I was married, when we are specially enjoined by the great Apostle——"

"Then I'm sorry for your wife, for she must have had a lot to teach you. But let's stop slanging, we have our own opinions of each other and there's an end. Now we have both the same object, you because you are a pious crank and no more human than a dried eel, and I because I am a man of the world who want to see my daughter where she ought to be, wearing a coronet in the House of Lords. The question is: How is the job to be done? You don't understand Isobel, but I do. If her back is put up, wild horses won't move her. She'd snap her fingers in my face, and tell me to go to a place that you are better acquainted with than I am, or will be, and take my money with me. Of course, I could hold her for a few months, till she is of age perhaps, but after that, No. So it seems that the only chance is your son. Now, what's his weak point? Can he be bought off?"

"Certainly not," said Mr. Knight.

"Oh! that's odd in one who, you say, is a fortune-hunter. Well, what is it? Everyone has a weak point, and another girl won't do just now."

"His weakest point is his fondness for that treacherous and abominable sex of which I have just had so painful an example; and in the church too, yes, in my church."

"And a jolly good place to get to in such a rain, for of course they didn't know that you were hiding under the pews. But I've told you that cock won't fight at present. What's the next?"

At these accumulated insults Mr. Knight turned perfectly livid with suppressed rage. But he did suppress it, for he had an object to gain which, to his perverted mind, was the most important in the whole world—namely, the final separation of his son and Isobel.

"His next bad point," he went on, "is his pride, which is abnormal, although from childhood I have done my best to inculcate humility of spirit into his heart. He cannot bear any affront, or even neglect. For instance, he left me for some years just because he did not consider that he was received properly on his return from Switzerland; also because he went into a rage, for he has a very evil temper if roused, when I suggested that he wanted to run after your daughter's money."

"Well, it wasn't a very nice thing to say, was it? But I think I see light. He's proud, is he, and don't like allusions to fortune-hunting. All right; I'll rub his nose in the dirt and make him good. I'm just the boy for a job of that sort, as perhaps you will agree, my reverend friend; and if he shows his airs to me, I'll kick him off the premises. Come on! I dare say we shall find them still in the church, where they think themselves so snug, although the rain has stopped."

So this precious pair started, each of them bent, though for different reasons, upon as evil a mission as the mind of man can conceive. For what is there more wicked than to wish to bring about the separation and subsequent misery of two young people who, as they guessed well enough, loved each other body and soul, and thereby to spoil their lives? Yet, so strange is human nature, that neither of them thought that they were committing any sin. Mr. Knight, now and afterwards, justified himself with the reflection that he was parting his son from a "pernicious" young woman of strong character, who would probably lead him away from religion as it was understood by him. One also whom he looked upon as the worst of outcasts, who deserved and doubtless was destined to inhabit hell, because hastily she had rejected his form of faith, as the young are apt to do, for reasons, however hollow, that seemed to her sufficient.

He took no account of his bitter, secret jealousy of this girl, who, as he thought, had estranged his son from him, and prevented him from carrying out his cherished plans of making of him a clergyman like himself, or of his innate physical hatred of women which caused him to desire that Godfrey should remain celibate. These motives, although he was well aware of them, he set down as naught, being quite sure, in view of the goodness of his aims, that they would be overlooked or even commended by the Power above Whom he pictured in his mind's eye as a furious old man, animated chiefly by jealousy and a desire to wreak vengeance on and torture the helpless. For it is the lessons of the Old Testament that sink most deeply into the souls of Mr. Knight and his kind.

Sir John's ends were quite different. He was the very vulgarest of self-made men, coarse and brutal by nature, a sensualist of the type that is untouched by imagination; a man who would crush anyone who stood in his path without compunction, just because that person did stand in his path. But he was extremely shrewd—witness the way he saw through Mr. Knight—and in his own fashion very able—witness his success in life.

Moreover, since a man of his type has generally some object beyond the mere acquiring of money, particularly after it has been acquired, he had his, to rise high, for he was very ambitious. His natural discernment set all his own failings before him in the clearest light; also their consequences. He knew that he was vulgar and brutal, and that as a result all persons of real gentility looked down upon him, however much they might seem to cringe before his money and power, yes, though they chanced to be but labouring men.

For instance, his wife had done so, which was one of the reasons why he hated her, as indeed had all her distinguished relatives, after they came to know him, although he lent them money. He knew that even if he became a peer, as he fully expected to do, it would be the same story; outward deference and lip service, but inward dislike and contempt. In short, there were limits which he could never hope to pass, and therefore so far as he was concerned, his ambitious thirst must remain unslaked.

But he had a daughter whom Nature, perhaps because of her mother's blood, had set in quite a different class. She had his ability, but she was gentle-born, which he was not, one who could mix with and be welcomed by the highest in the world, and this without the slightest question. If not beautiful, she was very distinguished; she had presence and what the French call "the air." Further, she would be one of the richest women in England. Considered from his point of view, therefore, it was but natural that he should desire her to make a brilliant marriage and found a great family, which he would thus have originated—at any rate, to some extent. Night and day he longed that this should come about, and it was the reason why the young Lord Mounteroy was visiting Hawk's Hall.

Mounteroy had met Isobel at a dinner-party in London the other day and admired her. He had told an old lady—a kind of society tout—who had repeated it to Sir John, that he wished to get married, and that Isobel Blake was the sort of girl he would like to marry. He was a clever man, also ambitious, one who had hopes of some day ruling the country, but to do this he needed behind him great and assured fortune in addition to his ancient but somewhat impoverished rank. In short, she suited his book, and he suited that of Sir John. Now, the thing to do was to bring it about that he should also suit Isobel's book. And just at the critical moment this accursed accident had happened. Oh! it was too much.

No wonder that Sir John was filled with righteous wrath and a stern determination to "make things hot" for the cause of the "accident" as, led to the attack by the active but dripping Mr. Knight whom he designated in his heart as that "little cur of a parson," much as an overfed and bloated bloodhound might be by some black and vicious mongrel, he tramped heavily towards the church. Indeed they made a queer contrast, this small, active but fierce-faced man in his sombre, shiny garments and dingy white tie, and the huge, ample-paunched baronet with his red, flat face, heavy lips and projecting but intelligent eyes, clothed in a new suit, wearing an enormous black pearl in his necktie and a diamond ring on his finger; the very ideal of Mammon in every detail of his person and of his carefully advertised opulence.

Isobel, whose humour had its sardonic side, and who was the first to catch sight of them when they reached the church, Mr. Knight tripping ahead, and Sir John hot with the exercise in the close, moist air, lumbering after him with his mouth open, compared them in her mind to a fierce little pilot fish conducting an overfed shark to some helpless prey which it had discovered battling with the waters of circumstance; that after all, was only another version of the mongrel and the bloodhound. Also she compared them to other things, even less complimentary.

Yet none of these, perhaps, was really adequate, either to the evil intentions or the repellent appearance of this pair as they advanced upon their wicked mission of jealousy and hate.



CHAPTER XVI

LOVE AND LOSS

All unaware that they had been seen and by no friendly eyes, Godfrey and Isobel remained embracing each other for quite a long while. At length she wrenched herself away and, sinking on to a chancel bench, motioned to him to seat himself beside her.

"Let us talk," she said in a new voice, a strange voice that was low and rich, such as he had never heard her use, "let us talk, my dear."

"What of?" he asked almost in a whisper as he took his place, and her hand, which he held against his beating heart. "My soul has been talking to yours for the last five minutes, or is it five seconds or five years? It does not seem to have anything more to say."

"Yet I think there is plenty to be said, Godfrey. Do you know that while we were kissing each other there some very queer ideas got hold of me, not only of the sort which might be expected in our case? You remember that Plantagenet lady who lies buried beneath where we were standing, she whose dress I once copied to wear at the ball when I came out."

"Don't speak of that," he interrupted, "for then you were kissing someone else."

"It is not true. I never kissed anyone else in that way, and I do not think I ever shall. I kissed a rose, that's all, and I gather that you have done as much and very likely a great deal more. But it is of the lady I am speaking, not of the ball. She seemed to come up from her grave and enter into me, and say something."

"Well, what did she say, Isobel?" he asked dreamily.

"That's it, I don't know, although she talked to me as one might to oneself. All I know is that it was of trouble and patience and great joy, and war and tragedy in which I must be intimately concerned, and—after the tragedy—of a most infinite rest and bliss."

"I expect she was telling you her own story, which seems to have ended well," he replied in the same dreamy fashion.

"Yes, I think so, but also that she meant that her story would be my story, copied you know, as I copied her dress. Of course it is all nonsense, just the influence of the place taking hold of me when overcome by other things, but at the time it seemed very real."

"So does a bad dream," said Godfrey, "but for all that it isn't real. Still it is odd that everything important seems to happen to us within a few feet of that lady's dust, and I can't quite disbelieve in spirits and their power of impressing themselves upon us; I wish I could. The strange thing is that you should put any faith in them."

"I don't, though I admit that my views about such matters are changing. You know I used to be sure that when we die everything is over with us. Now I think differently, why I cannot say."

Then the subject dropped, because really they were both wrapped in the great joy of a glorious hour and disinclined to dwell upon fancies about a woman who had died five hundred years ago, or on metaphysical speculations. Also the fear of what might follow upon that hour haunted them more vividly than any hovering ghost, if such there were.

"My dear," said Isobel, "I am sorry, but I must say it; I am sure that there will be trouble about this business."

"No doubt, Isobel; there always is trouble, at least where I am concerned; also one can't be happy without paying. But what does it matter so long as we stick to each other? Soon we shall both be of age and can do what we like."

"One always thinks that, Godfrey, and yet, somehow, one never can. Free will is a fraud in that sense as in every other."

"I have something, as you know, enough with my pay to enable us to get on, even if you were disinherited, dear, though, of course, you could not live as you have been accustomed to do."

"Oh! don't talk to me of money," she said impatiently, "though for the matter of that, I have something, too, a little that comes to me from my mother. Money won't divide us, Godfrey."

"Then what will, Isobel?"

"Nothing in the long run," she answered with conviction, "not even death itself, since in a way we are one and part of each other and therefore cannot be separated for always, whatever happens for a while, as I am sure that something will happen which will make you leave me."

"I swear that I will never leave you, I will die with you first," he exclaimed, springing up.

"Such oaths have been made often and broken—before the dawn," she answered, smiling and shaking her head.

"I swear that I will always love you," he went on.

"Ah! now I believe you, dear!" she broke in again. "However badly you may behave, you will always love me because you must."

"Well, and will you always love me however badly I behave?"

"Of course," she answered simply, "because I must. Oh! whatever we may hear about each other, we may be quite certain that we still love each other—because we must—and all your heaven and hell cannot make any difference, no, not if they were both to join forces and try their best. But that does not mean that necessarily we shall marry each other, for I think that people who love like that rarely do marry, because, you see, they would be too happy, which something is always trying to prevent. It may mean, however," she added reflectively, "that we shall not marry anybody else, though even that might happen in your case—not in mine. Always remember, Godfrey, that I shall never marry anybody else, not even if you took three wives one after the other."

"Three wives!" gasped Godfrey.

"Yes, why not? It would be quite natural, wouldn't it, if you wouldn't marry me, and even proper. Only I should never take one—husband, I mean—not from any particular virtue, but just because I couldn't. You see, it would make me ill. And if I tried I should only run away."

"Oh! stop talking nonsense," said Godfrey, "when so soon you will have to go to see about those people," and he held out his arms.

She sank into them, and for a little while they forgot their doubts and fears.

The rain had ceased, and the triumphant sun shining gloriously through the west window of stained glass, poured its rays upon them, dyeing them all the colours of an angel's wings. Also incidentally it made them extremely conspicuous in that dusky church, of which they had all this while forgotten to shut the door.



"My word!" said Sir John to Mr. Knight in tones of savage sarcasm as they surveyed the two through this door. "We've got here just at the right time. Don't they look pretty, and don't you wish that you were his age and that was someone else's daughter? I tell you, I do."

Mr. Knight gurgled something in his inarticulate wrath, for at that moment he hated Isobel's father as much as he did Isobel, which was saying a great deal.

"Well, my pretty pair of cooing turtle-doves," went on Sir John in a sort of shout, addressing himself to them, "be so good as to stop that, or I think I shall wring both your necks, damn you."

"Not in this Holy House, which these infamous and shameless persons have desecrated with their profane embraces," interrupted Mr. Knight.

"Yes, according to your ideas it will be almost a case of re-consecration. You'll have to write to the bishop about it, Mr. Parson. Oh! confound you. Don't stand there like a couple of stuck pigs, but come out of that and let us have a little chat in the churchyard."

Now, at the first words that reached their ears Godfrey and Isobel had drawn back from each other and stood side by side quite still before the altar, as a pair about to be married might do.

They were dumbfounded, and no wonder. As might be expected Isobel was the first to recover herself.

"Come, my dear," she said in a clear voice to Godfrey, "my father and yours wish to speak to us. I am glad we have a chance of explaining matters so soon."

"Yes," said Godfrey, but in a wrathful voice, for he felt anger stirring in him. Perhaps it was excited by that ancient instinct which causes the male animal to resent the spying upon him when he is courting his female as the deadliest of all possible insults, or perhaps by some prescience of affronts which were about to be offered to him and Isobel by these two whom he knew to be bitterly hostile. At least his temper was rising, and like most rather gentle-natured men when really provoked and cornered, he could be dangerous.

"Yes," he repeated, "let us go out and see this matter through."

So they went, Sir John and Mr. Knight drawing back a little before them, till they were brought to a halt by the horrible memorial which the former had erected over his wife's grave. Here they stood, prepared for the encounter. Sir John was the first to take the lists, saying:

"Perhaps you will explain, Isobel, why I found you, as I thought, kissing this young fellow—like any village slut beneath a hedge."

Isobel's big eyes grew steely as she answered:

"For the same reason, Father. Like your village slut, I kissed this man because he is my lover whom I mean to marry. If, as I gather, you are not certain as to what you saw, I will kiss him again, here in front of you."

"I have no doubt you will; just like your cheek!" ejaculated Sir John, taken a little aback.

Then Mr. Knight took up the ball, addressing himself to his son:

"Could you find no other place for your immoral performances except the church, Godfrey, and my chancel too?"

"No," answered Godfrey, "because it was raining and we sheltered there. And what do you mean by your talk about immorality? Is it not lawful for a man to love a woman? I should have thought that the Bible, which you are always quoting, would have taught you otherwise. Also, once you were married yourself else I should not be here, for which I am not sure that I thank you; at least, I shouldn't were it not for Isobel."

For a moment Mr. Knight could think of no answer to these arguments, but Sir John having recovered his breath, attacked again:

"Look here, young fellow, I have no time to listen to jaw about the Bible and moral and immoral and all that bosh, which you can have out with your reverend parent afterwards. I am a plain man, I am, and want a plain answer to a plain question. Do you think that you are going to marry my daughter, Isobel?"

"Such is my desire and intention," replied Godfrey, with vague recollections of the baptismal service, though of these at the moment he was not aware.

"Oh, is it? Then you are jolly well mistaken in your desire and intention. Let's make things clear. You are a beggarly youngster who propose to enter the army at some future date, which you may or may not do. And you have the impudence to wish to marry one of the biggest heiresses in England against my will."

"And against mine," burst in Mr. Knight, "who consider her a most pernicious young woman, one who rejects the Christian faith and will lead you to perdition. That is why, when I chanced to espy you in such a compromising position, I hastened to inform the lady's father."

"Oh! you did that, did you?" interposed Isobel, contemplating him steadily. "Well, I am glad to know who could have been so cowardly," she added with withering contempt. "Now I begin to wonder whether a letter which some years ago, I brought to the Abbey House to be forwarded to Godfrey, was ever posted to him who did not receive it, or whether, perhaps, it fell into the hands of—someone like you."

"It did," said Mr. Knight. "I read it and have it to this day. In my discretion as a father I did not consider it desirable that my young son should receive that letter. What I have witnessed this afternoon shows me how right was my judgment."

"Thank you so much," said Isobel. "That takes a great weight off my mind. Godfrey, my dear, I apologise to you for my doubts. The truth did occur to me, but I thought it impossible that a clergyman," here she looked again at Mr. Knight, "could be a thief also who did not dare to own to his theft."

"Never mind all that," went on Sir John in his heavy, masterful voice. "It stands like this. You," and he pointed a fat finger at Godfrey, "are—well, I'll tell you what you are—you're just a cunning young fortune-hunter. You found out that this property and a good bit besides are coming to Isobel, and you want to collar the sag, like you did that of the old woman out in Lucerne. Well, you don't do it, my boy. I've other views for Isobel. Do you think I want to see her married to—to—the son of a fellow like that—a canting snuffler who prigs letters and splits on his own son?" and swinging the fat finger round he thrust it almost into the face of Mr. Knight.

"What did you say?" gasped Godfrey. "That I am a fortune-hunter?"

"Yes, that's what I said, and I'll repeat it if you like."

"Then," went on Godfrey, speaking in a thick, low voice, for now his temper had mastered him thoroughly, "I say that you are a liar. I say that you are a base and vulgar man who has made money somehow and thinks that this justifies him in insulting those who are not base or vulgar, because they have less money."

"You infernal young scamp," shouted Sir John in a roar like to that of an angry bull. "Do you dare to call me a liar? Apologise at once, or——" and he stopped.

"I do not apologise. I repeat that you are a liar, the greatest liar I ever met. Now—or what?"

Thus spoke Godfrey, drawing up his tall, slim young form to its full height, his dark eyes flashing, his fine face alight with righteous rage. Isobel, who was standing quite still and smiling a little, rather contemptuously, looked at him out of the corners of her eyes and thought that anger became him well. Never before had he seemed so handsome to her approving judgment.

"Or this," bellowed Sir John, and, lifting the tightly rolled umbrella he carried, he struck Godfrey with all his strength upon the side of the head.

Godfrey staggered, but fortunately the soft hat he was wearing, upon the brim of which the stroke fell, broke its weight to some extent, so that he was not really hurt. Only now he went quite mad in a kind of icy way, and, springing at Sir John with the lightness of a leopard, dealt him two blows, one with his left hand and the next with his right.

They were good, straight blows, for boxing had been his favourite amusement at Sandhurst where he was a middleweight champion. The first caught Sir John upon his thick lips which were badly cut against the teeth, causing him to stagger; while the second, that with the right, landed on the bridge of his nose and blacked both his eyes. This, so strong and heavy was it, notwithstanding Sir John's great weight, knocked him clean off his feet. Back he went, and in his efforts to save himself gripped Mr. Knight with one hand and with the other the legs of the early Victorian angel that surmounted Lady Jane's grave against which they were standing. Neither of these could withstand the strain. The angel, which was only pinned by lead-coated rivets to its base and the column behind, flew from its supports, as did Mr. Knight from his, so that in another second, the men having tripped against the surround of the grave, all three rolled upon the path, the marble luckily falling clear of both of them.

"Now I've done it," said Godfrey in a reflective voice as he contemplated the tangled ruin.

"Yes," exclaimed Isobel, "I think you have."

Then they remained grim and silent while the pair, who were not really much injured, picked themselves up with groans.

"I am sorry that I knocked you down, since I am young and you are not," said Godfrey, "but I repeat that you are a liar," he added by an afterthought.

Sir John spat out a tooth, and began to mop the blood from his nose with a silk pocket-handkerchief.

"Oh! you do, do you?" he said in a somewhat subdued voice. "Well, you'll find out that I'm other things too before I'm done with you. And I repeat that you are fortune-hunting young rascal and that I would rather see my daughter dead than married to you."

"And I say, Godfrey, I would rather see you dead than married to her!" broke in Mr. Knight, spitting out his words like an angry cat.

"I don't think that you need be afraid, Father," answered Godfrey quietly, although his rage burned as fiercely as ever. "You have worked this business well, and it seems a little impossible now, doesn't it? Listen, Sir John Blake. Not even for the sake of Isobel will I submit to such insults. I will not give her up, but I swear by God that while you are alive I will not marry Isobel, nor will I write to her or speak to her again. After you are dead, which I dare say will be before so very long," and he surveyed the huge, puffy-fleshed baronet with a critical eye, "then—if she cares to wait for me—I will marry her, hoping that in the meanwhile you may lose your money or dispose of it as you like."

Sir John stared, still mopping his face, but finding no words. He feared death very much and this prophecy of it, spoken with such a ring of truth, as though the speaker knew, frightened him. At that moment in his heart he cursed the Reverend Mr. Knight and his tale-bearing, and wished most earnestly that he had never been led into interference with this matter. After all Godfrey was a fine young man whom his daughter cared for, and might do well in life, and he had struck him first after offering him intentional and pre-arranged insult. Such were the thoughts that flashed through his somewhat muddled brain. Also another, that they were too late. The evil was done and never could be undone.

Then Isobel spoke in cold, clear tones, saying:

"Godfrey is quite right and has been right all through. Had you, Father, and that man," and she pointed contemptuously at Mr. Knight, "left us alone we should have come and told you what had happened between us, and if you disapproved we would have waited until we were of full age and have married as we should have been free to do. But now that is impossible, for blows have passed between you. After slandering him vilely, you struck Godfrey first, Father, and he would not have been a man if he had not struck you back; indeed I should have thought little of him afterwards. Well, he has made an oath, and I know that he will keep it. Now I, too, make an oath which certainly I shall keep. I swear in the presence of both of you, by myself and by Godfrey, that neither in this world or in any other, should I live again and have remembrance, will I marry any man or exchange tendernesses with any man, except himself. So all your plans come to nothing; yes, you have brought all this misery upon us for nothing, and if you want to found a great family, as I know you do, you had better marry again yourself and let me go my way. In any case, if I should survive you and should Godfrey live, I will marry him after your death, even if we have to wait until we are old to do so. As to your fortune, I care nothing for it, being quite ready to work in the world with the help of the little I have."

She paused as though for an answer, but none came, for if Sir John had been frightened before, now he was terrified of this outraged young woman who, tall, commanding and stern-eyed, looked to him like an avenging angel.

"There doesn't seem much more to say, does there?" she went on, "except that I think, Father, you had better telegraph to your guests that you are not well and cannot receive them, for I won't. So good-bye, dearest Godfrey. I shall remember all that you have said, and you will remember all that I have said, and as I believe, we shall live to meet again one day. Meanwhile, don't think too bitterly of my father, or of your own, because they have acted according to their natures and lights, though where these will lead them I am sure I do not know. Good-bye, dearest, dearest Godfrey. Do your best in the world and keep out of troubles if you can. Oh! what a lot we shall have to tell each other when we meet again."

Then before them both she kissed him, and he kissed her back, saying:

"I will remember. I am glad you think there was nothing else to be done. God bless you, Isobel. Make the best of your life, as I will try to do with mine. Good-bye."

"Good-bye, dear," she answered, "think of me always when you wake and before you go to sleep, as I will think of you."

Then she turned and went, never looking behind her.



Godfrey watched her tall form vanish through the churchyard gate and over the slope of a little hill that lay between it and Hawk's Hall, and that was the last sight he had of her for many a year. When she was quite lost to view, he spoke to the two men who still stood irresolute before him.

"Isobel I shall meet again," he said, "but not either of you, for I have done with you both. It is not for me to judge you. Judge yourself and be judged."

Then he turned, too, and went.



"It's all right," said Sir John to Mr. Knight, "that is, he won't marry her, at any rate at present, so I suppose that we should both be pleased, if anyone can be pleased with cut lips and two black eyes. And yet somehow we seem to have made a mess of it," and he glanced at the shattered marble statue of the Victorian angel of which both the wings were broken off.

"We have done our duty," replied Mr. Knight, pursing up his thin lips, "and at least Godfrey is freed from your daughter."

"I'm not so sure of that, my reverend friend. But of one thing I am sure, that I am freed from her also, or rather that she is freed from me. Also you are freed from him. Don't you understand, you vicious little viper, that you will never see that young man again, and that thanks to your cursed advice I shall never see my daughter again, at least not really? What devil was it that sent you to play upon my weaknesses and ambition? If you had left things alone and they had come to me in a natural way there would have been a row, of course, but I dare say it would have ended all right. But you told me how to work on him and I overdid the part. Now nothing can ever be all right for either of us, or for them either, until we are both dead. Do you understand also that we have made two young people who should have been the supports of our old age desire above everything our deaths because we have given them cause to hate us, and since they are of the sort that keep their word, only by our deaths can they become free, or, at any rate, by mine? Well, it doesn't matter what you understand, you little bigot, but I know what I do."

"I have done my duty," repeated Mr. Knight sullenly, "and I don't care what happens afterwards. 'Fiat justita ruat coelum,'" he added in the Latin tag.

"Oh, yes. Justice may say fie and the sky may be rude, and anything else may happen, but we've dished our lives and theirs, my friend, and—damn you! get out of my sight. Rows I am accustomed to with Isobel and others, but this isn't a row, it's an earthquake; it's a catastrophe, for which I have to thank you. Lord! how my mouth hurts, and I can't see out of my right eye. Talk of a mailed fist, that young beggar has one like a pole-axe. Now I must go to telegraph to all those people. Temporary indisposition, yes—temporary indisposition, that's it. Good-bye, my holy friend. You won't do as much mischief in one day again in a hurry, spy as hard as you like."

Then Sir John departed, nursing his cut lips with one hand and his broken umbrella with the other.

Mr. Knight watched him go, and said to himself:

"I thought that I disliked the daughter, but the father is worse. Offensive, purse-proud, vulgar beast! How dare he speak to me like that! I'm glad, yes, I'm glad Godfrey knocked him down, though I suppose there will be a scandal. Well, my hands are clean; I have done my duty, and I must not complain if it is unpleasant, since I have dragged Godfrey back from the mouth of the pit. I think I'll take a walk to steady my nerves; it may be as well not to meet Godfrey again just now."



CHAPTER XVII

INDIA

On his road to the house to pack his portmanteau Godfrey went a little way round to arrange with a blacksmith, generally known as Tom, who jobbed out a pony-trap, to drive him to the station to catch the 7.15 train. The blacksmith remarked that they would have to hurry, and set to work to put the pony in, while Godfrey ran on to the Abbey House and hurriedly collected his clothes. He got them packed and down into the hall just as the trap arrived.

As he was entering it the servant put a letter into his hand which she said had come for him by the afternoon post. He thrust it into his pocket unlooked at, and off they went at the pony's best pace.

"You are going away oncommon quick, Master Godfrey. Coming back to these parts soon?" queried the blacksmith.

"No, not for a long while, Tom."

"I think there must have been lightning with that rain," went on Tom, after a pause, "although I heard no thunder. Else how ever did that marble angel over poor Lady Jane's grave come down with such a smash?"

Godfrey glanced at him, but Tom remained imperturbable and went on:

"They du say it wor a wunnerful smash, what broke off both the wings and nearly flattered out some as stood by. Rum thing, Master Godfrey, that the lightning should have picked out the grave of so good a lady to hit; ondiscriminating thing, lightning is."

"Stop talking humbug, Tom. Were you there?" asked Godfrey.

"Well, not exactly there, Master Godfrey, but I and one or two others was nigh, having heard voices louder than the common, just looking over the churchyard wall, to tell truth."

"Oh!" ejaculated Godfrey, and Tom continued in a reflective voice.

"My! they were two beuties, what you gave that old fat devil of a squire. If he'd been a bull instead of only roaring like one, they'd have brought him down, to say nothing of parson and the angel."

"I couldn't help it, Tom. I was mad."

"And no wonder, after being crumped on the nut with a tight umbrella. Why, I'd have done the same myself, baronite or no baronite. Oh! there's no need to explain; I knows everything about it, and so does every babe in the village by now, not to mention the old women. Master Godfrey, you take my advice, the next time you go a-courtin' shut the door behind you, which I always made a point o' doing when I was young. Being passing that way, I seed parson peeping in, and knowing you was there, guessed why. Truth is I came to warn you after he'd gone up to the Hall, but seein' how you was engaged, thought it a pity to interrupt, though now I wish I had."

Godfrey groaned; there was nothing to say.

"Well, all the soot's in the cooking-pot now, so to speak," proceeded Tom blandly, "and we're downright sad about it, we are, for as my missus was saying, you'd make a pretty pair. But, Lord, Master Godfrey, don't you take it too much to heart, for she's an upright young lady, she is, and steadfast. Or if she ain't, there's plenty of others; also one day follows another, as the saying goes, and the worst of old varmints don't live for ever. But parson, he beats me, and you his son, so they tell, though I never could think it myself. If he ain't the meanest ferret I ever clapped eyes on, may the old mare fall down and break my neck. Well, he'll hear about it, I can promise him, especially if he meets my missus what's got a tongue in her head, and is a chapel woman into the bargain. Lord! there comes the train. Don't you fear, we'll catch her. Hold tight, Master Godfrey, and be ready to jump out. No, no, there ain't nothing to pay. I'll stick it on to parson's fare next time I've druve him. Good-bye, Master Godfrey, and God bless you, if only for that there right and left which warmed my heart to see, and mind ye," he shouted after him, "there's more young women in the world than ye meets in an afternoon's walk, and one nail drives another out, as being a smith by trade I knows well."

Godfrey bundled into an empty carriage with his portmanteau and his coat, and covered his face with his hands that he might see no more of that accursed station whence he seemed always to be departing in trouble. So everything had been overheard and seen, and doubtless the story would travel far and wide. Poor Isobel!

As a matter of fact it did, but it was not Isobel who suffered, since public sympathy was strong on the side of her and of her lover. The indignation of the neighbourhood concentrated itself upon the square and the parson, especially the latter. Indeed the village showed its sympathy with the victims and its wrath with the oppressors, by going on strike. Few beaters turned up at Sir John's next shooting party, and on the following Sunday Mr. Knight preached to empty benches, a vacuum that continued from week to week. The end of it was he became so unpopular and his strained relations with Sir John grew so notorious that the bishop, who like everyone else knew the whole story, gently suggested to him that a change of livings would be to his advantage; also to that of the church in Monk's Acre and its neighbourhood.

So Mr. Knight departed to another parish in a remote part of the diocese which, having been inundated by the sea, was almost devoid of inhabitants, and saw the Abbey and Hawk's Hall no more.



In searching his pockets for matches, Godfrey found the letter which had been given to him as he left the Abbey. He knew the writing on the envelope at once, and was minded not to open it, for this and the foreign stamp told him that it came from Madame Riennes. Still curiosity, or a desire to take his mind off the miseries by which it was beset, prevailed, and he did open the envelope and read. It ran thus:

"Ah! my little friend, my godson in the speerit, Godfrey

"I daresay you thought that poor old Madame was dead, gone to join the Celestials, because you have not heard from her for so long a while. Not a bit, my little Godfrey, though perhaps I should not call you little, since my crystal shows me that you have grown taller even than you were in the old days at Lucerne, and much broader, quite a good-made man and nice to look at. Well, my Godfrey, I hear things about you sometimes, for the most part from the speerit called Eleanor who, I warn you, has a great bone to pick with you. Because, you see, people do not change so much as you think when they get to the other side. So a woman remains a woman, and being a woman she stays jealous, and does not like it when her affinity turns the back on her, as you have done on Eleanor. Therefore she will give you a bad trick if she can, just as a woman would upon the earth. Also I hear of you sometimes from Miss Ogilvy or, rather, her speerit, for she is as fond of you as ever, so fond that I think you must have mixed up together in a previous life, because otherwise there is nothing to account for it. She tries to protect you from Eleanor the indignant, with whom she has, I gather, much row.

"Now for my message, which come to me from all these speerits. I hear you have done very well in what they call examinations, and have before you a shining future. But do not think that you will be happy, my Godfrey, for you will not get that girl you want for a long, long while, and then only for the shortest of time, just enough to kiss and say, 'Oh! my pretty, how nice you are!' And then au revoir to the world of speerits. Meanwhile, being a little fool, you will go empty and hungry, since you are not one of those who hate the woman, which, after all, is the best thing in life for the man while he is young, like, so the spirits tell me, does your dear papa. And oh! how plenty this woman fruit hang on every tree, so why not pluck and eat before the time come, when you cannot, because if you still have appetite those nice plums turn your stomach? So you have a bad time before you, my Godfrey, waiting for the big fat plum far away which you cannot see or touch and much less taste, while the other nice plums fall into different hands, or wither—wither, waiting to be eaten.

"At end, when you get your big, fat plum, just as you set your teeth in it, oh! something blow it out of your mouth, I know not what, the speerits will not say, perhaps because they do not know, for they have not prescience of all things. But of this be sure, my Godfrey, when that happen, that it is your own fault, for had you trusted to your godmamma Riennes it never would have chanced, since she would have shown you how to get your plum and eat it to the stone and then throw away the stone and get other plums and be happy—happy and full instead of empty. Well, so it is, and as I must I tell you. There is but one hope for you, unless you would go sorrowful. To come back to your godmamma, who will teach you how to walk and be happy—happy and get all you want. Also, since she is now poor, you would do well to send her a little money to this address in Italy, since that old humbug of a Pasteur, whom she cannot harm because of the influences round him, still prevents her from returning to Switzerland, where she has friends. Now that big plum, it is very nice and you desire it much. Come to your godmamma and she will show you how to get it off the tree quickly. Yes, within one year. Or do not come and it will hang there for many winters and shrivel as plums do, and at last one bite and it will be gone. And then, my godson, then, my dear Godfrey—well, perhaps I will tell you the rest another time. You poor silly boy, who will not understand that the more you get the more you will always have.

"Your Godmamma, "Who love you still although you treat her so badly, "The Countess of Riennes.

"(Ah! you did not know I had that title, did you, but in the speerit world I have others which are much higher.)"

Godfrey thrust this precious epistle back into his pocket with a feeling of physical and mental sickness. How did this horrible woman know so much about him and his affairs, and why did she prophesy such dreadful things? Further, if her knowledge was so accurate, although veiled in her foreign metaphor, why should not her prophecies be accurate also? And if they were, why should he be called upon to suffer so many things?

He could find no answer to these questions, but afterwards he sent her letter to the Pasteur, who in due course returned it with some upright and manly comments both upon the epistle itself and the story of his troubles, which Godfrey had detailed to him. Amongst much else he wrote in French:

"You suffer and cannot understand why, my dear boy. Nor do I, but it is truth that all who are worth anything are called upon to suffer, to what end we do not know. Nothing of value is gained except by suffering. Why, again we do not know. This wretched woman is right in a way when she refers all solutions to another world, only her other world is one that is bad, and her solutions are very base. Be sure that there are other and better ones that we shall learn in due time, when this little sun has set for us. For it will rise elsewhere, Godfrey, in a brighter sky. Meanwhile, do not be frightened by her threats, for even if they should all be true, to those evils which she prophesies there is, be sure, another interpretation. As I think one of your poets has said, we add our figures until they come even. So go your way and keep as upright as you can, and have no fear since God is over all, not the devil."