"I won't try to argue with you, because I am not wise enough to understand such things," she said to Isobel, "but I wish, dearest, that you would not be so certain as to matters which are too high for us."
"I can't help it, Mother," she answered.
Lady Jane looked at her and smiled, and then said: "No, darling, you can't help it now, but I am sure that a time must come when you will think differently. I say this because something tells me that it is so, and the knowledge makes me very happy. You see we must all of us go through darkness and storms in life; that is if we are worth anything, for, of course, there are people who do not feel. Yet at the end there is light, and love, and peace, for you as well as for me, Isobel; yes, and for all of us who have tried to trust and to repent of what we have done wrong."
"As you believe it I hope that it is true; indeed, I think that it must be true, Mother dear," said Isobel with a little sob.
The subject was never discussed between them again, but although Isobel showed no outward change of attitude, from that time forward till the end, her mother seemed much easier in her mind about her and her views.
"It will all come right. We shall meet again. I know it. I know it," were her last words.
She died quite suddenly on the 27th of December, the day upon which Sir John had announced that they were to move to London.
As a matter of fact, one of the survivors of this trio was to move much further than to London, namely, Isobel herself. It happened thus. The funeral was over; the relatives and the few friends who attended it had departed to their rooms if they were stopping in the house, or elsewhere; Isobel and her father were left alone. She confronted him, a tall, slim figure, whose thick blonde hair and pale face contrasted strikingly with her black dress. Enormous in shape, for so Sir John had grown, carmine-coloured shading to purle about the shaved chin and lips (which were also of rather a curious hue), bald-headed, bold yet shifty-eyed, also clad in black, with a band of crape like to that of a Victorian mute, about his shining tall hat, he leaned against the florid, marble mantelpiece, a huge obese blot upon its whiteness. They were a queer contrast, as dissimilar perhaps as two human beings well could be.
For a while there was silence between them, which he, whose nerves were not so young or strong as his daughter's, was the first to break.