He was a man with large ideas of paternal rights, of which an example may be given that was not without its effect upon the vital interests of others. When Isobel returned from London, after the fancy-dress ball, at which she thought she had seen a ghost whilst sitting in the square with her young admirer who was dressed as a knight, she waited for a long while expecting to receive a letter from Godfrey. As none came, although she knew from Mrs. Parsons that he had written home several times, she began to wonder as to the cause of his silence. Then an idea occurred to her. Supposing that what she had seen was no fancy of her mind, but Godfrey himself, who in some mysterious fashion had found his way into that square, perhaps in the hope of seeing her at the ball in order to say goodbye? This was possible, since she had ascertained from some casual remark by his father that he did not leave London until the following morning. If this had happened, if he had seen her “playing the fool,” as she expressed it to herself with that good-looking man in the square, what would he have thought of her? She never paused to remember that he had no right to think anything. Somehow from childhood she acknowledged in her heart that he had every right, though when she said this to herself, she did not in the least understand all that the admission conveyed. Although she bullied and maltreated him at times, yet to herself she always confessed him to be her lord and master. He was the one male creature for whom she cared in the whole world, indeed, putting her mother out of the question, she cared for no other man or woman, and would never learn to do so. For hers was a singular and very rare instance of almost undivided affection centred on a single object. So far as his sex was concerned Godfrey was her all, a position of which any man might well be proud in the case of any woman, and especially of one who had many opportunities of devoting herself to others. In her example, however, she was not to be thanked, for the reason that she only followed her nature, or perhaps the dictates of that fate which inspires and rules very great love, whether it be between man and woman, between parent and child, between brother and brother, or between friend and friend. Such feelings do not arise, or grow. They simply _are_; the blossoms of a plant that has its secret roots far away in the soil of Circumstance beyond our ken, and that, mayhap, has pushed its branches through existences without number, and in the climates of many worlds.