ISOBEL. Oh!... oh!... (But there are no words available.)
MARION comes in.
MARION (excitedly). Isobel, dear, have you heard? Have you heard the wonderful news?
ISOBEL (turning to her blankly). News?
MARION. About the hallucination. I always felt that there must have been some mistake. And now our faith has been justified—as faith always is. It’s such a comfort to know. Really to know at last. Poor dear Grandfather! He was so very old. I think sometimes we forget how very old he was. And the excitement of that last day—his birthday—and perhaps the glass of port. No wonder.
[252]WILLIAM (shaking his head wisely). Very strange, very strange, but, as you say, not unexpected. One might almost have predicated some such end.
MARION. I shall never forgive myself for having doubted. (To ISOBEL) I think Grandfather will forgive us, dear. I can’t help feeling that wherever he is, he will forgive us.
WILLIAM (nodding). Yes, yes.... I shall say nothing about it in the book, of course—this curious lapse in his faculties at the last.
MARION. Of course not, dear.
WILLIAM. I shall merely——