Love stories; Nobility -- Great Britain -- Fiction; Switzerland -- Fiction
“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.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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