was eleven years old--just the same age as I am."

For answer the colonel took Isobel by the shoulders, and holding her
beneath the portrait, looked narrowly at her face. The evening sunshine,
flooding through the window, fell on the fair hair, and lighted it up
with the same golden gleam as that of the child in the picture above;
the gray eyes of both seemed to meet him with the same half-wistful,
half-trustful gaze.

"The likeness is extraordinary," he murmured. "I wonder I have never
noticed it before. Is it possible I could have made so great a mistake?
In what regiment was your father?"

"He was in the Fifth Dragoon Guards."

"You have told me he is dead?"

"Yes; he was killed in the Boer war."

"How long ago?"

"Six years on my birthday."

"Was it near Bloemfontein?"

"Yes, in a night skirmish. He is buried there, just where he fell."

"Had he any other relations besides yourself and your mother?"

"Only my grandfather, whom I have never seen."

"And your name?--your name?" cried the colonel, white to the lips with
an emotion he could not control.

"Isobel Stewart."

CHAPTER XVIII.

GOOD-BYE.

"We say it for an hour, or for years;
We say it smiling, say it choked with tears;
We say it coldly, say it with a kiss,
And yet we have no other word than this--
Good-bye!"

Colonel Stewart's very natural mistake in confusing the namesakes, and
Isobel's equal error in believing her grandfather to be Colonel Smith,
were soon explained. The former, full of relief at this unexpected turn
of affairs, paid a visit to Marine Terrace that same evening, and in the
interview with his daughter-in-law which followed he begged her pardon
frankly and freely for his prejudice and injustice.

"It seems late in life for a gray-haired old man to turn over a new
leaf," he said, "but if you can overlook my misconception and neglect of
you in the past, I trust we may prove firm friends in the future. And as
for Isobel, she is a granddaughter after my own heart. Will you forget
that miserable letter which I wrote (it was intended not for you, as I
know you now, but for the mother of that other child), and show your
forgiveness by coming to cheer my loneliness at the Chase? Now that we
understand each other, I think we need have no fear of disagreements,
and our mutual love for the one who is gone and the other who is left
will make a bond of sympathy between us."

Isobel's joyful a