Once indeed Mrs.
Parsons did write, or got someone else to write, to him that she had seen Isobel drive past her in the street, and that she looked well, though rather "stern and quiet-like." That was all the news Godfrey had of Isobel during those ten years, since she was not a person who advertised her movements in the papers, although for her sake he became a great student of society gossip.

Also he read with care all announcements of engagements and marriages in _The Times_, and the deaths, too, for the matter of that, but happily quite without result.

Indeed in view of her declaration he ought to have been, and, in fact, was, ashamed of his research; but then, who could be quite sure of anything in this world?
Sir John, he knew, was living, because from time to time he saw his name in lists of subscriptions of a sort that appear under royal patronage and are largely advertised.
So between these two swung a veil of darkness, although, had he but known it, this was not nearly so impenetrable to Isobel as to himself.
Somehow--possibly Arthur Thorburn had friends with whom he corresponded in England who knew Isobel--she acquired information as to every detail of his career.

Indeed when he came to learn everything he was absolutely amazed at the particulars with which she was acquainted, whereof there were certain that he would have preferred to have kept to himself.

But she had them all, with dates and surrounding circumstances and the rest; thousands of miles of ocean had been no bar to her searching gaze.
For his part he was not without consolations, since, strangely enough, he never felt as if she were lost to him, or indeed far away; it was always as though she were in the next room, or at any rate in the next street.