Love stories; Nobility -- Great Britain -- Fiction; Switzerland -- Fiction
“So you have come back, my dear,” she said, “and only half
dead. Well, we won’t have no young woman pushing between you and me
just at present, Commandant or not. Time enough for love-making when
you are stronger. Oh! and I never thought to see you again. There must
be a good God somewhere after all, although He did make them
Germans.”
Then again she fell to kissing and blessing him, her hot tears dropping
on his face and upsetting him ten times as much as Isobel had done.
Since in this topsy-turvy world often things work by contraries, oddly
enough no harm came to Godfrey from these fierce excitements. Indeed he
slept better than he had done since he found his mind again, and awoke,
still weak of course, but without any temperature or pains in his head.
Now it was that there began the most blissful period of all his life.
Isobel, when she had recovered her balance, made him understand that he
was a patient, and that exciting talk or acts must be avoided. He on
his part fell in with her wishes, and indeed was well content to do so.
For a while he wanted nothing more than just to lie there and watch her
moving in and out of his room, with his food or flowers, or whatever it
might be, for a burst of bad weather prevented him from going out of
doors. Then, as he strengthened she began to talk to him (which Mrs.
Parsons did long before that event), telling him all that for years he
had longed to know; no, not all, but some things. Among other matters
she described to him the details of her father’s end, which occurred
in a very characteristic fashion.
“You see, dear,” she said, “as he grew older his passion for
money-making increased more and more; why, I am sure I cannot say,
seeing that Heaven knows he had enough.”
“Yes,” said Godfrey, “I suppose you are a very rich
woman.”
She nodded, saying: “So rich that I don’t know how rich, for really
I haven’t troubled even to read all the figures, and as yet they are
not complete. Moreover, I believe that soon I shall be much richer.
I’ll tell you why presently. The odd thing is, too, that my father
died intestate, so I get every farthing. I believe he meant to make a
will with some rather peculiar provisions that perhaps you can guess.
But this will was never made.”
“Why not?” asked Godfrey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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