ould 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 int