Chapter XXIV: Epilogue

Thirty years later, on the anniversary of Antonia's death, George Stobart, Bishop of Northborough--the fighting bishop, as some of his admirers called him, a profound scholar, a fiery controversialist, a celibate and an ascetic, once famous as a Methodist field-preacher, and now the leader of the extreme High Church party--sat by the fireside in his library in the episcopal Palace, a lofty and spacious room, where a pair of wax candles on the writing-table served but to accentuate the darkness. He sat leaning forward in the candlelight, with one elbow on the arm of his chair, looking at a long dark ringlet that lay in his open hand, bound with a black ribbon to which was attached a label in Wesley's writing--

"Antonia's hair, cut after death by her sorrowing friend, J. W."

"Only a woman's hair," murmured the bishop. "'Tis said that Swift spoke those words in pure cynicism over a ringlet of his ill-used Stella. Only a woman's hair! And for me the memorial of a life's love, the one earthly relic which reminds the priest that he was once a man. Oh, thou who wert the idol of this heart, dost thou in some undiscovered region still live to pity thy desolate lover? Shall we meet and know each other again, where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage? Or is it all a dream, nothing but a dream?"