"We say it for an hour, or for years;
We say it smiling, say it choked with tears;
We say it coldly, say it with a kiss,
And yet we have no other word than this—
Good-bye!"
COLONEL STEWART'S very natural mistake in confusing the namesakes, and Isobel's equal error in believing her grandfather to be Colonel Smith, were soon explained. The former, full of relief at this unexpected turn of affairs, paid a visit to Marine Terrace that same evening, and in the interview with his daughter-in-law which followed he begged her pardon frankly and freely for his prejudice and injustice.
"It seems late in life for a gray-haired old man to turn over a new leaf," he said, "but if you can overlook my misconception and neglect of you in the past, I trust we may prove firm friends in the future. And as for Isobel, she is a granddaughter after my own heart. Will you forget that miserable letter which I wrote (it was intended not for you, as I know you now, but for the mother of that other child), and show your forgiveness by coming to cheer my loneliness at the Chase? Now that we understand each other, I think we need have no fear of disagreements, and our mutual love for the one who is gone and the other who is left will make a bond of sympathy between us."
Isobel's joyful astonishment may be pictured when she discovered that her friend of the island was in very truth her own grandfather, and her happiness when she and her mother removed the next week from Marine Terrace to the Chase can scarcely be described.
"It's just like a fairy tale!" she declared. "I never thought when I sat on the top of the Scar that afternoon, looking down at the lovely house and garden, and saying what I would do if I lived there, that it could ever really come to pass. It's almost too good to be true, and I shouldn't be in the least surprised if it were only a dream after all."
It soon proved to be no dream, but a most satisfactory reality, when she saw herself installed as her grandfather's favourite companion in the very surroundings which she had so much admired. To Colonel Stewart she filled the vacant place of the little daughter he had lost in former years; and so keen was his pleasure in his newly-found grandchild, that if Isobel had not been of a thoroughly sensible nature I fear she would have run a very great risk of becoming completely spoilt. Her mother's influence and her own naturally unselfish disposition saved her from that, however, and the wholesome discipline of school life afterwards taught her to be able to take her grandfather's kindness without acquiring an undue idea of her own importance. She was very happy at the Chase, and especially delighted when Colonel Stewart made her a formal present of the desert island.
"It shall be yours, to do what you like with," he declared. "I promised to lease it to you when you found the runic cross, and I think you deserve to have it for your own. It shall be one of my presents to you on your eleventh birthday."
That happy event was to take place in the course of a few days, and to celebrate the occasion all the Sea Urchins had been invited to a garden fête at the Chase, as a winding up of the club before the various children left Silversands; for it was September now—governesses were returning, schools were reopening, and the holidays were over at last.
It was a lovely autumn morning when Isobel, with a bright birthday face, looked out of the open window of her pretty bedroom, to see her island shining in the early sunshine against the sea, and the shadows falling over the lawns and gardens of the beautiful spot which was now her home.
"I'm the luckiest girl in the world!" she thought, as she ran down to the breakfast table, to find her plate filled with interesting-looking packages, and the prettiest white pony waiting for her outside the front steps, with a new side-saddle, quite ready for her to learn to ride.