Thus preached the Pasteur, and what he said gave Godfrey the greatest comfort. Still, being young, he made one mistake. He did send Madame Riennes some money, partly out of pity--ten pounds in a postal order without any covering letter, a folly that did not tend to a cessation of her epistolatory efforts.
On reaching town Godfrey went straight to Hampstead. There to his surprise he found all prepared for his reception.
"I was expecting you, my dear," said Mrs. Parsons, "and even have a little bit extra in the house in case you should come."
"Why, when I told you I had gone home for a month?" asked Godfrey.
"Why? For the same reason as I knows that oil and vinegar won't abide mixed in the same bottle. I was sure enough that being a man grown, you and your father could never get on together in one house. But perhaps there is something else in it too," she added doubtfully.
Then Godfrey told her that there was something else, and indeed all about the business.
"Well, there you are, and there's nothing to be said, or at least so much that it comes to the same thing," remarked Mrs. Parsons, in a reflective tone, when he had finished his story. "But what I want to know," she went on, "is why these kind of things happen. You two--I mean you and Miss Isobel--are just fitted to each other, appointed together by Nature, so to speak, and fond as a couple of doves upon a perch. So why shouldn't you take each other and have done? What is there to come between a young man and a young woman such as you are?"
"I don't know," groaned Godfrey.
"No, nor don't I; and yet something does come between. What's the meaning of it all? Why do things always go cussed in this 'ere world? Is there a devil about what manages it, or is it just chance? Why shouldn't people have what they want and when it's wanted, instead of being forced to wait until perhaps it isn't, or can't be enjoyed, or often enough to lose it altogether? You can't answer, and nor can't I; only at times I do think, notwithstanding all my Christian teachings and hundreds and hundreds of your father's sermons, that the devil, he's top-dog here. And as for that there foreign woman whose letter you've read to me, she's his housemaid. Not but what I'm sure it will all come right at last," she added, with an attempt at cheerfulness.
"I hope so," replied Godfrey, without conviction, and went to bed.
Presently he descended from his room again, bearing a pill-box in which was enclosed a certain ring that years before he had bought at Lucerne, a ring set with two hearts of turquoise.