As soon as Frank had passed to his well-earned reward, Fay followed out all his instructions to the letter, and succeeded, after many vicissitudes, in escaping to England with a crowd of Belgian refugees. No one penetrated her disguise--not even Isabel Chayford, who put down Fay's extraordinary likeness to her own self to the fact that she and Frank were twins, and so were expected to resemble one another. And Fay kept to her own room most of the time that she was at the Chayfords', for fear Isabel should discover her identity. Ponty found her out at once: there was never any deceiving Ponty! But Fay could always twist my old nurse round her little finger, and therefore Ponty kept her secret for her. To this hour I cannot conceive how I could have been such a fool as not to know my darling the moment I set eyes on her. But the grim fact remains that I am by nature a fool, and this was one of the occasions of my displaying my folly. My one excuse--and a feeble one it is!--is my extreme short-sightedness: the first moment that Fay's dear face was close to my own I recognised her like a shot: but lying in the Chesterfield on the other side of the fire-place, with her short curly hair and elfin face, she looked so like Frank that I took it for granted she was Frank; and she was so much aged and changed, alas! by all she had suffered, that she had lost much of her likeness to the Fay of the past. As to her voice, Frank's was so high for a man's and hers was so deep for a woman's that I frequently had mistaken the one for the other in the old days: so no wonder I did so now, when I was convinced in my own mind that Fay was dead, and that Frank was talking to me from the other side of the great fire-place. I gathered that Fay's original idea was to find out whether or not I had forgiven her. If I had, she meant to reveal herself to me and to ask me to take her back as my wife: but if I had not forgiven her, she intended to return to Australia, leaving me with the idea that she was dead and I was free. A wild, childish scheme, just like my impracticable darling! But when Isabel told her how deeply my anger against Frank had eaten into my very soul, destroying my gift of healing and coming between me and my God, Fay realised that there was far more at stake than just the relations between herself and me. The salvation of my soul was hanging in the balance, and it was for her dear hands to adjust the scales. With an insight beyond her years, she understood that before I could find peace I must forgive Frank, believing him to be alive: the easy forgiveness which we accord to the dead, who can no longer hurt or be hurt by us, was not the thing that was demanded of me. I was called upon to forgive Frank fully and freely, even although I believed that it was through him that my darling had gone to her death, and that therefore there was no possibility of her ever coming back to me, or of the wrong which he had done me ever being rectified.