o
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