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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14708 ***
+
+THE LAUREL BUSH
+
+An Old-Fashioned Love Story
+
+by
+
+DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK
+
+Author of _John Halifax, Gentleman_,
+&c., &c., &c.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 1.
+
+It was a very ugly bush indeed; that is, so far as any thing in nature
+can be really ugly.  It was lopsided--having on the one hand a stunted
+stump or two, while on the other a huge heavy branch swept down to the
+gravel-walk.  It had a crooked gnarled trunk or stem, hollow enough to
+entice any weak-minded bird to build a nest there--only it was so near
+to the ground, and also to the garden gate. Besides, the owners of
+the garden, evidently of practical mind, had made use of it to place
+between a fork in its branches a sort of letter-box--not the government
+regulation one, for twenty years ago this had not been thought of; but a
+rough receptacle, where, the house being a good way off, letters might be
+deposited, instead of; as hitherto, in a hole in the trunk--near the foot
+of the tree, and under shelter of its mass of evergreen leaves.
+
+This letter-box; made by the boys of the family at the instigation and
+with the assistance of their tutor, had proved so attractive to some
+exceedingly incautious sparrow that during the intervals of the post she
+had begun a nest there, which was found by the boys.  Exceedingly wild
+boys they were, and a great trouble to their old grandmother, with whom
+they were staying the summer, and their young governess--"Misfortune,"
+as they called her, her real name being Miss Williams--Fortune Williams.
+The nickname was a little too near the truth, as a keener observer than
+mischievous boys would have read in her quiet, sometimes sad, face; and
+it had been stopped rather severely by the tutor of the elder boys, a
+young man whom the grandmother had been forced to get, to "keep them in
+order!" He was a Mr. Robert Roy, once a student, now a teacher of the
+"humanities," from the neighboring town--I beg its pardon--city; and a
+lovely old city it is!--of St. Andrews. Thence he was in the habit of
+coming to them three and often four days in the week, teaching of
+mornings and walking of afternoons.  They had expected him this
+afternoon, but their grandmother had carried them off on some pleasure
+excursion; and being a lady of inexact habits--one, too, to whom tutors
+were tutors and nothing more--she had merely said to Miss Williams, as
+the carriage drove away, "When Mr. Roy comes, tell him he is not wanted
+till tomorrow."
+
+And so Miss Williams had waited at the gate, not wishing him to have the
+additional trouble of walking up to the house, for she knew every minute
+of his time was precious. The poor and the hard-working can understand
+and sympathize with one another. Only a tutor and only a governess: Mrs.
+Dalziel drove away and never thought of them again. They were mere
+machines--servants to whom she paid their wages, and so that they did
+sufficient service to deserve these wages, she never interfered with
+them, nor, indeed, wasted a moment's consideration upon them or their
+concerns.
+
+Consequently they were in the somewhat rare and peculiar position of
+a young man and young woman (perhaps Mrs. Dalziel would have taken
+exception to the words "young lady and young gentleman") thrown together
+day after day, week after week--nay, it had now become month after
+month--to all intents and purposes quite alone, except for the children.
+They taught together, there being but one school-room; walked out
+together, for the two younger boys refused to be separated from their
+older brothers; and, in short, spent two-thirds of their existence
+together, without let or hindrance, comment or observation, from any
+mortal soul.
+
+I do not wish to make any mystery in this story.  A young woman of
+twenty-five and a young man of thirty, both perfectly alone in the
+world--orphans, without brother or sister--having to earn their own
+bread, and earn it hardly, and being placed in circumstances where they
+had every opportunity of intimate friendship, sympathy, whatever you like
+to call it: who could doubt what would happen?  The more so, as there was
+no one to suggest that it might happen; no one to watch them or warn
+them, or waken them with worldly-minded hints; or else to rise up, after
+the fashion of so many wise parents and guardians and well-intentioned
+friends, and indignantly shut the stable door _after_ the steed is
+stolen.
+
+No.  That something which was so sure to happen had happened; you might
+have seen it in their eyes, have heard it in the very tone of their
+voices, though they still talked in a very commonplace way, and still
+called each other "Miss Williams" and "Mr. Roy."  In fact, their whole
+demeanor to one another was characterized by the grave and even formal
+decorum which was natural to very reserved people, just trembling on the
+verge of that discovery which will unlock the heart of each to the other,
+and annihilate reserve forever between the two whom Heaven has designed
+and meant to become one; a completed existence.  If by any mischance this
+does not come about, each may lead a very creditable and not unhappy
+life; but it will be a locked-up life, one to which no third person is
+ever likely to find the key.
+
+Whether such natures are to envied or pitied is more than I can say; but
+at least they are more to be respected than the people who wear their
+hearts upon their sleeves for daws to peck at, and very often are all the
+prouder the more they are pecked at, and the more elegantly they bleed;
+which was not likely to be the case with either of these young folks,
+young as they were.
+
+They were young, and youth is always interesting and even comely; but
+beyond that there was nothing remarkable about either.  He was Scotch;
+she English, or rather Welsh.  She had the clear blue Welsh eye, the
+funny _retrousee_ Welsh nose; but with the prettiest little mouth
+underneath it--firm, close, and sweet; full of sensitiveness, but a
+sensitiveness that was controlled and guided by that best possession to
+either man or woman, a good strong will.  No one could doubt that the
+young governess had, what was a very useful thing to a governess, "a will
+of her own;" but not a domineering or obnoxious will, which indeed is
+seldom will at all, but merely obstinacy.
+
+For the rest, Miss Williams was a little woman, or gave the impression of
+being so, from her slight figure and delicate hands and feet.  I doubt if
+any one would have called her pretty, until he or she had learned to love
+her. For there are two distinct kinds of love, one in which the eye
+instructs the heart, and the other in which the heart informs and guides
+the eye.  There have been men who, seeing an unknown beautiful face, have
+felt sure it implied the most beautiful soul in the world, pursued it,
+worshiped it, wooed and won it, found the fancy true, and loved the woman
+forever. Other men there are who would simply say, "I don't know if such
+a one is handsome or not; I only know she is herself--and mine."  Both
+loves are good; nay, it is difficult to say which is best.  But the
+latter would be the most likely to any one who became attached to Fortune
+Williams.
+
+Also, perhaps to Robert Roy, though no one expects good looks in his sex;
+indeed, they are mostly rather objectionable.  Women do not usually care
+for a very handsome man; and men are prone to set him down as conceited.
+No one could lay either charge to Mr. Roy.  He was only an honest-looking
+Scotchman, tall and strong and manly.  Not "red," in spite of his name,
+but dark-skinned and dark-haired; in no way resembling his great
+namesake, Rob Roy Macgregor, as the boys sometimes called him behind
+his back--never to his face.  Gentle as the young man was, there was
+something about him which effectually prevented any one's taking the
+smallest liberty with him.  Though he had been a teacher of boys ever
+since he was seventeen--and I have heard one of the fraternity confess
+that it is almost impossible to be a school-master for ten years without
+becoming a tyrant--still it was a pleasant and sweet-tempered face.  Very
+far from a weak face, though; when Mr. Roy said a thing must be done,
+every one of his boys knew it _must_ be done, and there was no use saying
+any more about it.
+
+He had unquestionably that rare gift, the power of authority; though this
+did not necessarily imply self-control; for some people can rule every
+body except themselves.  But Robert Roy's clear, calm, rather sad eye,
+and a certain patient expression about the mouth, implied that he too had
+enough of the hard training of life to be able to govern himself.  And
+that is more difficult to a man than to a woman.
+
+   "all thy passions, matched with mine,
+   Are as moonlight unto sunlight,
+   and as water unto wine."
+
+A truth which even Fortune's tender heart did not fully take in, deep as
+was her sympathy for him; for his toilsome, lonely life, lived more in
+shadow than in sunshine, and with every temptation to the selfishness
+which is so apt to follow self-dependence, and the bitterness that to a
+proud spirit so often makes the sting of poverty.  Yet he was neither
+selfish nor bitter; only a little reserved, silent, and--except with
+children--rather grave.
+
+She stood watching him now, for she could see him a long way off across
+the level Links, and noticed that he stopped more than once to look at
+the golf-players.  He was a capital golfer himself, but had never any
+time to play.  Between his own studies and the teaching by which he
+earned the money to prosecute them, every hour was filled up.  So he
+turned his back on the pleasant pastime, which seems to have such an
+extraordinary fascination for those who pursue it, and came on to his
+daily work, with that resolute deliberate step, bent on going direct to
+his point and turning aside for nothing.
+
+Fortune knew it well by this time; had learned to distinguish it from all
+others in the world.  There are some footsteps which, by a pardonable
+poetical license, we say "we should hear in our graves," and though this
+girl did not think of that, for death looked far off, and she was
+scarcely a poetical person, still, many a morning, when, sitting at
+her school-room window, she heard Mr. Roy coming steadily down the
+gravel-walk, she was conscious of--something that people can not feel
+twice in a life-time.
+
+And now, when he approached with that kind smile of his, which brightened
+into double pleasure when he saw who was waiting for him, she was aware
+of a wild heartbeat, a sense of exceeding joy, and then of relief and
+rest.  He was "comfortable" to her.  She could express it in no other
+way.  At sight of his face and at sound of his voice all worldly cares
+and troubles, of which she had a good many, seemed to fall off.  To be
+with him was like having an arm to lean on, a light to walk by; and she
+had walked alone so long.
+
+"Good-afternoon, Miss Williams."
+
+"Good-afternoon, Mr. Roy."
+
+They said no more than that, but the stupidest person in the world might
+have seen that they were glad to meet, glad to be together.  Though
+neither they nor any one else could have explained the mysterious fact,
+the foundation of all love stories in books or in life--and which the
+present author owns, after having written many books and seen a great
+deal of life, is to her also as great a mystery as ever--Why do certain
+people like to be together?  What is the inexplicable attraction which
+makes them seek one another, suit one another, put up with one another's
+weaknesses, condone one another's faults (when neither are too great to
+lessen love), and to the last day of life find a charm in one another's
+society which extends to no other human being.  Happy love or lost love,
+a full world or an empty world, life with joy or life without it--that is
+all the difference.  Which some people think very small, and that does
+not matter; and perhaps it does not--to many people.  But it does to
+some, and I incline to put in that category Miss Williams and Mr. Roy.
+
+They stood by the laurel bush, having just shaken hands more hastily than
+they usually did; but the absence of the children, and the very unusual
+fact of their being quite alone, gave to both a certain shyness, and she
+had drawn her hand away, saying, with a slight blush:
+
+"Mrs. Dalziel desired me to meet you and tell you that you might have a
+holiday today.  She has taken her boys with her to Elie.  I dare say you
+will not be sorry to gain an hour or two for yourself; though I am sorry
+you should have the trouble of the walk for nothing."
+
+"For nothing?"--with the least shadow of a smile, not of annoyance,
+certainly.
+
+"Indeed, I would have let you know if I could, but she decided at the
+very last minute; and if I had proposed that a messenger should have been
+sent to stop you, I am afraid--it would not have been answered."
+
+"Of course not;" and they interchanged an amused look--these
+fellow-victims to the well-known ways of the household--which, however,
+neither grumbled at; it was merely an outside thing, this treatment of
+both as mere tutor and governess.  After all (as he sometimes said, when
+some special rudeness--not himself, but to her--vexed him), they were
+tutor and governess; but they were something else besides; something
+which, the instant their chains were lifted off, made them feel free and
+young and strong, and comforted them with comfort unspeakable.
+
+"She bade me apologize.  No, I am afraid, if I tell the absolute truth,
+she did not bid me, but I do apologize."
+
+"What for, Miss Williams?"
+
+"For your having been brought out all this way just to go back again."
+
+"I do not mind it, I assure you."
+
+"And as for the lost lesson--"
+
+"The boys will not mourn over it, I dare say.  In fact, their term with
+me is so soon coming to an end that it does not signify much.  They told
+me they are going back to England to school next week.  Do you go back
+too?"
+
+"Not just yet--not till next Christmas.  Mrs. Dalziel talks of wintering
+in London; but she is so vague in her plans that I am never sure from one
+week to another what she will do."
+
+"And what are your plans?  _You_ always know what you intend to do."
+
+"Yes, I think so," answered Miss Williams, smiling.  "One of the few
+things I remember of my mother was hearing her say of me, that 'her
+little girl was a little girl who always knew her own mind.'  I think I
+do.  I may not be always able to carry it out, but I think I know it."
+
+"Of course," said Mr. Roy, absently and somewhat vaguely, as he stood
+beside the laurel bush, pulling one of its shiny leaves to pieces, and
+looking right ahead, across the sunshiny Links, the long shore of
+yellow sands, where the mermaids might well delight to come and "take
+hands"--to the smooth, dazzling, far-away sea.  No sea is more beautiful
+than that at St. Andrews.
+
+Its sleepy glitter seemed to have lulled Robert Roy into a sudden
+meditation, of which no word of his companion came to rouse him.  In
+truth, she, never given much to talking, simply stood, as she often did,
+silently beside him, quite satisfied with the mere comfort of his
+presence.
+
+I am afraid that this Fortune Williams will be considered a very
+weak-minded young woman.  She was not a bit a coquette, she had not the
+slightest wish to flirt with any man.  Nor was she a proud beauty
+desirous to subjugate the other sex; and drag them triumphantly at her
+chariot wheels.  She did not see the credit, or the use, or the pleasure
+of any such proceeding.  She was a self-contained, self-dependent woman.
+Thoroughly a woman; not indifferent at all to womanhood's best blessing;
+still she could live without it if necessary, as she could have lived
+without anything which it had pleased God to deny her.  She was not a
+creature likely to die for love, or do wrong for love, which some people
+think the only test of love's strength, instead of its utmost weakness;
+but that she was capable of love, for all her composure and quietness,
+capable of it, and ready for it, in its intensest, most passionate, and
+most enduring form, the God who made her knew, if no one else did.
+
+Her time would come; indeed, had come already.  She had too much
+self-respect to let him guess it, but I am afraid she was very fond
+of--or, if that is a foolish phrase, deeply attached to--Robert Roy.
+He had been so good to her, at once strong and tender, chivalrous,
+respectful, and kind; and she had no father, no brother, no other man
+at all to judge him by, except the accidental men whom she had met in
+society, creatures on two legs who wore coats and trousers, who had been
+civil to her, as she to them, but who had never interested her in the
+smallest degree, perhaps because she knew so little of them.  But no; it
+would have been just the same had she known them a thousand years.  She
+was not "a man's woman," that is, one of those women who feel interested
+in any thing in the shape of a man, and make men interested in them
+accordingly, for the root of much masculine affection is pure vanity.
+That celebrated Scottish song,
+
+   "Come deaf, or come blind, or come cripple,
+   O come, ony ane o' them a'!
+   Far better be married to something,
+   Than no to be married ava,"
+
+was a rhyme that would never have touched the stony heart of Fortune
+Williams.  And yet, let me own it once more, she was very, very fond of
+Robert Roy.  He had never spoken to her one word of love, actual love, no
+more than he spoke now, as they stood side by side, looking with the same
+eyes on the same scene.  I say the same eyes, for they were exceedingly
+alike in their tastes.  There was no need ever to go into long
+explanations about this or that; a glance sufficed, or a word, to show
+each what the other enjoyed; and both had the quiet conviction that they
+were enjoying it together.  Now as that sweet, still, sunshiny view met
+their mutual gaze, they fell into no poetical raptures, but just stood
+and looked, taking it all in with exceeding pleasure, as they had done
+many and many a time, but never, it seemed, so perfectly as now.
+
+"What a lovely afternoon!" she said at last.
+
+"Yes.  It is a pity to waste it.  Have you any thing special to do?  What
+did you mean to employ yourself with, now your birds are flown?"
+
+"Oh, I can always find something to do."
+
+"But need you find it?  We both work so hard.  If we could only now and
+then have a little bit of pleasure!"
+
+He put it so simply, yet almost with a sigh.  This poor girl's heart
+responded to it suddenly, wildly.  She was only twenty-five, yet
+sometimes she felt quite old, or rather as if she had never been young.
+The constant teaching, teaching of rough boys too--for she had had the
+whole four till Mr. Roy took the two elder off her hands--the necessity
+of grinding hard out of school hours to keep herself up in Latin, Euclid,
+and other branches which do not usually form a part of a feminine
+education, only having a great natural love of work, she had taught
+herself--all these things combined to make her life a dull life, a hard
+life, till Robert Roy came into it.  And sometimes even now the desperate
+craving to enjoy--not only to endure, but to enjoy--to take a little of
+the natural pleasures of her age--came to the poor governess very sorely,
+especially on days such as this, when all the outward world looked so
+gay, so idle, and she worked so hard.
+
+So did Robert Roy.  Life was not easier to him than to herself; she knew
+that; and when he said, half joking, as if he wanted to feel his way,
+"Let us imitate our boys, and take a half holiday," she only laughed, but
+did not refuse.
+
+How could she refuse?  There were the long smooth sands on either side
+the Eden, stretching away into indefinite distance, with not a human
+being upon them to break their loneliness, or, if there was, he or she
+looked a mere dot, not human at all.  Even if these two had been afraid
+of being seen walking together--which they hardly were, being too
+unimportant for any one to care whether they were friends or lovers, or
+what not--there was nobody to see them, except in the character of two
+black dots on the yellow sands.
+
+"It is low water; suppose we go and look for sea-anemones.  One of my
+pupils wants some, and I promised to try and find one the first spare
+hour I had."
+
+"But we shall not find anemones on the sands."
+
+"Shells, then, you practical woman!  We'll gather shells.  It will be
+all the same to that poor invalid boy--and to me," added he, with that
+involuntary sigh which she had noticed more than once, and which had
+begun to strike on her ears not quite painfully.  Sighs, when we are
+young, mean differently to what they do in after-years.  "I don't care
+very much where I go, or what I do; I only want--well, to be happy for
+an hour, if Providence will let me."
+
+"Why should not Providence let you?" said Fortune, gently.  "Few people
+deserve it more."
+
+"You are kind to think so; but you are always kind to every body."
+
+By this time they had left their position by the laurel bush, and were
+walking along side by side, according as he had suggested.  This silent,
+instinctive acquiescence in what he wished done--it had happened once or
+twice before, startling her a little at herself; for, as I have said,
+Miss Williams was not at all the kind of person to do every thing that
+every body asked her, without considering whether it was right or wrong.
+She could obey, but it would depend entirely upon whom she had to obey,
+which, indeed, makes the sole difference between loving disciples and
+slavish fools.
+
+It was a lovely day, one of those serene autumn days peculiar to
+Scotland--I was going to say Saint Andrews; and any one who knows the
+ancient city will know exactly how it looks in the still, strongly
+spiritualized light of such an afternoon, with the ruins, the castle,
+cathedral, and St. Regulus's tower standing out sharply against the
+intensely blue sky, and on the other side--on both sides--the yellow
+sweep of sand curving away into the distance, and melting into the
+sunshiny sea.
+
+Many a time, in their prescribed walks with their young tribe, Miss
+Williams and Mr. Roy had taken this stroll across the Links and round by
+the sands to the mouth of the Eden, leaving behind them a long and
+sinuous track of many footsteps, little and large, but now there were
+only two lines--"foot-prints on the sands of Time," as he jestingly
+called them, turning round and pointing to the marks of the dainty feet
+that walked so steadily and straightly beside his own.
+
+"They seem made to go together, those two tracks," said he.
+
+Why did he say it?  Was he the kind of man to talk thus without meaning
+it?  If so, alas! she was not exactly the woman to be thus talked to.
+Nothing fell on her lightly.  Perhaps it was her misfortune, perhaps even
+her fault, but so it was.
+
+Robert Roy did not "make love;" not at all.  Possibly he never could
+have done it in the ordinary way.  Sweet things, polite things were very
+difficult to him either to do or to say.  Even the tenderness that was in
+him came out as if by accident; but, oh! how infinitely tender he could
+be!  Enough to make any one who loved him die easily, quietly, if only
+just holding his hand.
+
+There is an incident in Dickens's touching _Tale of two Cities_, where a
+young man going innocent to the guillotine, and riding on the death-cart
+with a young girl whom he had never before seen, is able to sustain and
+comfort her, even to the last awful moment, by the look of his face and
+the clasp of his hand.  That man, I have often thought, must have been
+something not unlike Robert Roy.
+
+Such men are rare, but they do exist; and it was Fortune's lot, or she
+believed it was, to have found one.  That was enough.  She went along
+the shining sands in a dream of perfect content, perfect happiness,
+thinking--and was it strange or wrong that she should so think?--that if
+it were God's will she should thus walk through life, the thorniest path
+would seem smooth, the hardest road easy.  She had no fear of life, if
+lived beside him; or of death--love is stronger than death; at least this
+sort of love, of which only strong natures are capable, and out of which
+are made, not the lyrics, perhaps, but the epics, the psalms, or the
+tragedies of our mortal existence.
+
+I have explained thus much about these two friends--lovers that may be,
+or might have been--because they never would have done it themselves.
+Neither was given to much speaking.  Indeed, I fear their conversation
+this day, if recorded, would have been of the most feeble kind--brief,
+fragmentary, mere comments on the things about them, or abstract remarks
+not particularly clever or brilliant.  They were neither of them what you
+would call brilliant people; yet they were happy, and the hours flew by
+like a few minutes, until they found themselves back again beside the
+laurel bush at the gate, when Mr. Roy suddenly said:
+
+"Do not go in yet.  I mean, need you go in?  It is scarcely past sunset;
+the boys will not be home for an hour yet; they don't want you, and I--I
+want you so.  In your English sense," he added, with a laugh, referring
+to one of their many arguments, scholastic or otherwise, wherein she had
+insisted that to want meant _Anglice_, to wish or to crave, whereas in
+Scotland it was always used like the French _manquer_, to miss or to
+need.
+
+"Shall we begin that fight over again?" asked she, smiling; for every
+thing, even fighting, seemed pleasant today.
+
+"No, I have no wish to fight; I want to consult you seriously on a purely
+personal matter, if you would not mind taking that trouble."
+
+Fortune looked sorry.  That was one of the bad things in him (the best
+man alive have their bad things), the pride which apes humility, the
+self-distrust which often wounds another so keenly.  Her answer was given
+with a grave and simple sincerity that ought to have been reproach
+enough.
+
+"Mr. Roy, I would not mind any amount of trouble if I could be of use to
+you; you know that."
+
+"Forgive me! Yes, I do know it.  I believe in you and your goodness to
+the very bottom of my heart."
+
+She tried to say "Thank you," but her lips refused to utter a word.  It
+was so difficult to go on talking like ordinary friends, when she knew,
+and he must know she knew, that one more word would make them--not
+friends at all--something infinitely better, closer, dearer; but that
+word was his to speak, not hers.  There are women who will "help a man
+on"--propose to him, marry him indeed--while he is under the pleasing
+delusion that he does it all himself; but Fortune Williams was not one of
+these.  She remained silent and passive, waiting for the next thing he
+should say.  It came: something the shock of which she never forgot as
+long as she lived; and he said it with his eyes on her face, so that, if
+it killed her, she must keep quiet and composed, as she did.
+
+"You know the boys' lessons end next week.  The week after I go--that is,
+I have almost decided to go--to India."
+
+"To India!"
+
+"Yes,  For which, no doubt, you think me very changeable, having said so
+often that I meant to keep to a scholar's life, and be a professor one
+day, perhaps, if by any means I could get salt to my porridge.  Well, now
+I am not satisfied with salt to my porridge; I wish to get rich."
+
+She did not say, "Why?"  She thought she had not looked it; but he
+answered: "Never mind why.  I do wish it, and I will be rich yet, if I
+can. Are you very much surprised?"
+
+Surprised she certainly was; but she answered, honestly, "Indeed, you are
+the last person I should suspect of being worldly-minded."
+
+"Thank you; that is kind.  No, just; merely just.  One ought to have
+faith in people; I am afraid my own deficiency is want of faith.  It
+takes so much to make me believe for a moment that any one cares for me."
+
+How hard it was to be silent--harder still to speak!  But she did not
+speak.
+
+"I can understand that; I have often felt the same.  It is the natural
+consequence of a very lonely life.  If you and I had had fathers and
+mothers and brothers and sisters, we might have been different."
+
+"Perhaps so.  But about India.  For a long time--that is, for many
+weeks--I have been casting about in my mind how to change my way of life,
+to look out for something that would help me to earn money, and quickly,
+but there seemed no chance whatever.  Until suddenly one has opened."
+
+And then he explained how the father of one of one of his pupils,
+grateful for certain benefits, which Mr. Roy did not specify, and
+noticing certain business qualities in him--"which I suppose I have,
+though I didn't know it," added he, with a smile--had offered him a
+situation in a merchant's office at Calcutta: a position of great trust
+and responsibility, for three years certain, with the option of then
+giving it up or continuing it.
+
+"And continuing means making a fortune.  Even three years means making
+something, with my 'stingy' habits.  Only I must go at once.  Nor is
+there any time left me for my decision; it must be yes or no.  Which
+shall it be?"
+
+The sudden appeal--made, too, as if though it was nothing--that terrible
+yes or no, which to her made all the difference of living or only half
+living, of feeling the sun in or out of the world.  What could she
+answer? What could she answer?  Trembling violently, she yet answered,
+in a steady voice, "You must decide for yourself.  A woman can not
+understand a man."
+
+"Nor a man a woman, thoroughly.  There is only one thing which helps both
+to comprehend one another."
+
+One thing! she knew what it was.  Surely so did he.  But that strange
+distrustfulness of which he had spoken, or the hesitation which the
+strongest and bravest men have at times, came between.
+
+   "Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
+   Oh, the little less, and what worlds away!"
+
+If, instead of looking vaguely out upon the sea, he had looked into this
+poor girl's face; if, instead of keeping silence, he had only spoken one
+word!  But he neither looked nor spoke, and the moment passed by.  And
+there are some moments which people would sometimes give a whole lifetime
+to recall and use differently; but in vain.
+
+"My engagement is only for three years," he resumed; "and, if alive, I
+mean to come back.  Dead or alive, I was going to say, but you would not
+care to see my ghost, I presume?  I beg your pardon: I ought not to make
+a joke of such serious things."
+
+"No, you ought not."
+
+She felt herself almost speechless, that in another minute she might
+burst into sobs.  He saw it--at least he saw a very little of it, and
+misinterpreted the rest.
+
+"I have tired you.  Take my arm.  You will soon be at home now."  Then,
+after a pause, "You will not be displeased at any thing I have said?  We
+part friends?  No, we do not part; I shall see you every day for a week,
+and be able to tell you all particulars of my journey, if you care to
+hear."
+
+"Thank you, yes--I do care."
+
+They stood together, arm in arm.  The dews were falling; a sweet, soft
+lilac haze had begun to creep over the sea--the solemn; far-away sea that
+he was so soon to cross.  Involuntarily she clung to his arm.  So near,
+yet so apart!  Why must it be?  She could have borne his going away, if
+it was for his good, if he wished it; and something whispered to her that
+this sudden desire to get rich was not for himself alone.  But, oh! If he
+would only speak!  One word--one little word!  After that, any thing
+might come--the separation of life, the bitterness of death.  To the two
+hearts that had once opened each to each, in the full recognition of
+mutual love, there could never more be any real parting.
+
+But that one word he did not say.  He only took the little hand that lay
+on his arm and pressed it, and held it--years after, the feeling of that
+clasp was as fresh on her fingers as yesterday--the hearing the foot of
+some accidental passer-by, he let it go, and did not take it again.
+
+Just at this moment the sound of distant carriage wheels was heard.
+
+"That must be Mrs. Dalziel and the boys."
+
+"Then I had better go.  Good-by"
+
+The daydream was over.  It had all come back again--the forlorn, dreary,
+hard-working world.
+
+"Good-by, Mr. Roy."  And they shook hands.
+
+"One word," he said hastily.  "I shall write to you--you will allow
+me?--and I shall see you several times, a good many times before I go?"
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"Then, for the present, good-by.  That means," he added, earnestly,
+"'God be with you!'  And I know he always will."
+
+In another minute Fortune found herself standing beside the laurel
+bush, alone, listening to the sound of Mr. Roy's footsteps down the
+road--listening, listening, as if, with the exceeding tension, her
+brain would burst.
+
+The carriage came, passed by; it was not Mrs. Dalziel's after all.  She
+thought he might discover this, and come back again; so she waited a
+little--five minutes, ten--beside the laurel bush.  But he did not come.
+No footstep, no voice; nothing but the faint, far-away sound of the long
+waves washing in upon the sands.
+
+It was not the brain that felt like to burst now, but the heart.  She
+clasped her hands above her head.  It did not matter; there was no
+creature to see or hear that appeal--was it to man or God?--that wild,
+broken sob, so contrary to her usual self-controlled and self-contained
+nature.  And then she learned her forehead against the gate, just where
+Robert Roy had accidentally laid his hand in opening it, and wept
+bitterly.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 2.
+
+The "every day" on which Mr. Roy had reckoned for seeing his friend, or
+whatsoever else he considered Miss Williams to be, proved a failure. Her
+youngest pupil fell ill, and she was kept beside him, and away from the
+school-room, until the doctor could decide whether the illness was
+infectious or not.  It turned out to be very trifling--a most trivial
+thing altogether, yet weighted with a pain most difficult to bear, a
+sense of fatality that almost overwhelmed one person at least.  What the
+other felt she did not know.  He came daily as usual; she watched him
+come and go, and sometimes he turned and they exchanged a greeting from
+the window.  But beyond that, she had to take all passively.  What could
+she, only a woman, do or say or plan?  Nothing.  Women's business is to
+sit down and endure.
+
+She had counted these days--Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
+Saturday--as if they had been years.  And now they were all gone, had
+fled like minutes, fled emptily away.  A few fragmentary facts she had
+had to feed on, communicated by the boys in their rough talk.
+
+"Mr. Roy was rather cross today."
+
+"Not cross, Dick--only dull."
+
+"Mr. Roy asked why David did not come in to lessons, and said he hoped he
+would be better by Saturday."
+
+"Mr. Roy said good-by to us all, and gave us each something to remember
+him by when he was out in India.  Did Miss Williams know he was going out
+to India?  Oh, how jolly!"
+
+"Yes, and he sails next week, and the name of his ship is the _Queen of
+the South_, and he goes by Liverpool instead of Southampton, because it
+costs less; and he leaves St. Andrews on Monday morning."
+
+"Are you sure he said Monday morning?"  For that was Saturday night.
+
+"Certain, because he has to get his outfit still.  Oh, what fun it must
+be!"
+
+And the boys went on, greatly excited, and repeating everything Mr. Roy
+had told them--for he had made them fond of him, even in those few
+months--expatiating with delight on his future career, as a merchant or
+something, they did not quite know what; but no doubt it would be far
+nicer and more amusing than stopping at home and grinding forever on
+horrid books.  Didn't Miss Williams think so?
+
+Miss Williams only smiled.  She knew how all his life he had loved "those
+horrid books," preferring them to pleasure, recreation, almost to daily
+bread; how he had lived on the hope that one day he--born only a farmer's
+son--might do something, write something.  "I also am of Arcadia."  He
+might have done it or not--the genius may or may not have been there; but
+the ambition certainly was.  Could he have thrown it all aside?  And Why?
+
+Not for mere love of money; she knew him too well for that.  He was a
+thorough book-worm, simple in all his tastes and habits--simple almost to
+penuriousness; but it was a penuriousness born of hard fortunes, and he
+never allowed it to affect any body but himself.  Still, there was no
+doubt he did not care for money, or luxury, or worldly position--any of
+the things that lesser men count large enough to work and struggle and
+die for.  To give up the pursuits he loved, deliberately to choose
+others, to change his whole life thus, and expatriate himself, as it
+were, for years--perhaps for always--why did he do it, or for whom?
+
+Was it for a woman?  Was it for her?  If ever, in those long empty days
+and wakeful nights, this last thought entered Fortune's mind, she stifled
+it as something which, once to have fully believed and then disbelieved
+would have killed her.
+
+That she should have done the like for him--that or any thing else
+involving any amount of heroism or self-sacrifice--well, it was natural,
+right; but that he should do it for her?  That he should change his whole
+purpose of life that he might be able to marry quickly, to shelter in his
+bosom a poor girl who was not able to fight the world as a man could,
+the thing--not so very impossible, after all--seemed to her almost
+incredible!  And yet (I am telling a mere love story, remember--a
+foolish, innocent love story, without apologizing for either the folly or
+the innocence) sometimes she was so far "left to herself," as the Scotch
+say, that she did believe it: in the still twilights, in the wakeful
+nights, in the one solitary half hour of intense relief, when, all her
+boys being safe in bed, she rushed out into the garden under the silent
+stars to sob, to moan, to speak out loud words which nobody could
+possibly hear.
+
+"He is going away, and I shall never see him again.  And I love him
+better than any thing in all this world.  I couldn't help it--he couldn't
+help it.  But, oh! It's hard--hard!"
+
+And then, altogether breaking down, she would begin to cry like a child.
+She missed him so, even this week, after having for weeks and months been
+with him every day; but it was less like a girl missing her lover--who
+was, after all, not her lover--than a child mourning helplessly for
+the familiar voice, the guiding, helpful hand.  With all the rest of
+the world Fortune Williams was an independent, energetic woman,
+self-contained, brave, and strong, as a solitary governess had need to
+be; but beside Robert Roy she felt like a child, and she cried for him
+like a child,
+
+   "And with no language but a cry."
+
+So the week ended and Sunday came, kept at Mrs. Dalziel's like the Scotch
+Sundays of twenty years ago.  No visitor ever entered the house, wherein
+all the meals were cold and the blinds drawn down, as if for a funeral.
+The family went to church for the entire day, St. Andrews being too far
+off for any return home "between sermons."  Usually one servant was left
+in charge, turn and turn about; but this Sunday Mrs. Dalziel, having put
+the governess in the nurse's place beside the ailing child, thought
+shrewdly she might as well put her in the servant's place too, and let
+her take charge of the kitchen fire as well as of little David. Being
+English,  Miss Williams was not so exact about "ordinances" as a Scotch
+woman would have been; so Mrs. Dalziel had no hesitation in asking her to
+remain at home alone the whole day in charge of her pupil.
+
+Thus faded, Fortune thought, her last hope of seeing Robert Roy again,
+either at church--where he usually sat in the Dalziel pew, by the old
+lady's request, to make the boys "behave"--or walking down the street,
+where he sometimes took the two eldest to eat their "piece" at his
+lodgings.  All was now ended; yet on the hope--or dread--of this last
+Sunday she had hung, she now felt with what intensity, till it was gone.
+
+Fortune was the kind of woman who, were it given her to fight, could
+fight to the death, against fate or circumstances; but when her part was
+simply passive, she could also endure.  Not, as some do, with angry grief
+or futile resistance, but with a quiet patience so complete that only a
+very quick eye would have found out she was suffering at all.
+
+Little David did not, certainly.  When hour after hour, she sat by his
+sofa, interesting him as best she could in the dull "good" books which
+alone were allowed of Sundays, and then passing into word-of-mouth
+stories--the beautiful Bible stories over which her own voice trembled
+while she told them--Ruth, with her piteous cry, "Whither thou goest, I
+will go; where thou diest, I will die, and there will I be buried;"
+Jonathan, whose soul "clave to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him
+as his own soul"--all these histories of passionate fidelity and agonized
+parting--for every sort of love is essentially the same--how they went to
+her heart.
+
+Oh, the awful quietness of that Sunday, that Sabbath which was not rest,
+in which the hours crawled on in sunshiny stillness, neither voices nor
+steps nor sounds of any kind breaking the death-like hush of everything.
+At length the boy fell asleep; and then Fortune seemed to wake up for the
+first time to the full consciousness of what was and what was about to
+be.
+
+All of a sudden she heard steps on the gravel below; then the hall bell
+rang through the silent house.  She knew who it was even before she
+opened the door and saw him standing there.
+
+"May I come in?  They told me you were keeping house alone, and I said I
+should just walk over to bid you and Davie good-by."
+
+Roy's manner was grave and matter-of-fact--a little constrained, perhaps,
+but not much--and he looked so exceedingly pale and tired that; without
+any hesitation, she took him into the school-room, where they were
+sitting, and gave him the arm-chair by Davie's sofa.
+
+"Yes, I own to being rather overdone; I have had so much to arrange, for
+I must leave here tomorrow, as I think you know."
+
+"The boys told me."
+
+"I thought they would.  I should have done it myself, but every day I
+hoped to see you.  It was this fellow's fault, I suppose," patting
+Davie's head.  "He seems quite well now, and as jolly as possible.  You
+don't know what it is to say 'Good-by,' David, my son." Mr. Roy, who
+always got on well with children, had a trick of calling his younger
+pupils "My Son."
+
+"Why do you say 'good-by' at all, then!" asked the child, a mischievous
+but winning young scamp of six or seven, who had as many tricks as a
+monkey or a magpie.  In fact, in chattering and hiding things he was
+nearly as bad as a magpie, and the torment of his governess's life; yet
+she was fond of him.  "Why do you bid us good-by, Mr. Roy?  Why don't you
+stay always with Miss Williams and me?"
+
+"I wish to God I could."
+
+She heard that, heard it distinctly, though it was spoken beneath his
+breath; and she felt the look, turned for one moment upon her as she
+stood by the window.  She never forgot either--never, as long as she
+lived.  Some words, some looks, can deceive, perhaps quite unconsciously,
+by being either more demonstrative than was meant, or the exaggeration of
+coldness to hide its opposite; but sometimes a glance, a tone, betrays,
+or rather reveals, the real truth in a manner that nothing afterward can
+ever falsify.  For one instant, one instant only, Fortune felt sure,
+quite sure, that in some way or other she was very dear to Robert Roy.
+If the next minute he had taken her into his arms, and said or looked the
+words which, to an earnest-minded, sincere man like him, constitute a
+pledge for life, never to be disannulled or denied, she could have hardly
+have felt more completely his own.
+
+But he did not say them; he said nothing at all; sat leaning his head on
+his hand, with an expression so weary, so sad, that all the coaxing ways
+of little Davie could hardly win from him more than a faint smile.  He
+looked so old, too, and he was but just thirty.  Only thirty--only
+twenty-five; and yet these two were bearing, seemed to have borne for
+years, the burden of life, feeling all its hardships and none of its
+sweetnesses. Would things ever change?  Would he have the courage (it was
+his part, not hers) to make them change, at least in one way, by bringing
+about that heart-union which to all pure and true natures is consolation
+for every human woe?
+
+"I wonder," he said, sitting down and taking David on his knee--"I
+wonder if it is best to bear things one's self, or to let another share
+the burden?"
+
+Easily--oh, how easily!--could Fortune have answered this--have told him
+that, whether he wished it or not, two did really bear his burdens, and
+perhaps the  one who bore it secretly and silently had not the lightest
+share.  But she did not speak: it was not possible.
+
+"How shall I hear of you Miss Williams?" he said, after a long silence.
+"You are not likely to leave the Dalziel family?"
+
+"No," she answered; "and if I did, I could always be heard of, the
+Dalziels are so well known hereabouts.  Still, a poor wandering governess
+easily drops out of people's memory."
+
+"And a poor wandering tutor too.  But I am not a tutor any more, and I
+hope I shall not be poor long.  Friends can not lose one another; such
+friends as you and I have been.  I will take care we shall not do it,
+that is, if--but never mind that.  You have been very good to me, and I
+have often bothered you very much, I fear.  You will be almost glad to
+get rid of me."
+
+She might have turned upon him eyes swimming with tears--woman's
+tears--that engine of power which they say no man can ever resist; but I
+think, if so, a woman like Fortune would have scorned to use it.  Those
+poor weary eyes, which could weep oceans alone under the stars, were
+perfectly dry now--dry and fastened on the ground, as she replied, in a
+grave steady voice,
+
+"You do not believe that, else you would never have said it."
+
+Her composure must have surprised him, for he looked suddenly up, then
+begged her pardon.  "I did not hurt you, surely?  We must not part with
+the least shadow of unkindness between us."
+
+"No."  She offered her hand, and he took it--gently, affectionately, but
+only affectionately.  The one step beyond affection, which leads into
+another world, another life, he seemed determined not to pass.
+
+For at least half an hour he sat there with David on his knee, or rising
+up restlessly to pace the room with David on his shoulder; but apparently
+not desiring the child's absence, rather wishing to keep him as a sort of
+barrier.  Against what?--himself?  And so minute after minute slipped by;
+and Miss Williams, sitting in her place by the window, already saw,
+dotting the Links, group after group of the afternoon church-goers
+wandering quietly home--so quietly, so happily, fathers and mothers and
+children, companions and friends--for whom was no parting and no pain.
+
+Mr. Roy suddenly took out his watch.  "I must go now; I see I have spent
+all but my last five minutes.  Good-by, David, my lad; you'll be a big
+man, maybe, when I see you again.  Miss Williams" (standing before her
+with an expression on his face such as she had never seen before),
+"before I go there was a question I had determined to ask you--a purely
+ethical question which a friend of mine has been putting to me, and I
+could not answer; that is, I could from the man's side, the worldly side.
+A woman might think differently."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Simply this.  If a man has not a half-penny, ought he to ask a woman to
+share it?  Rather an Irish way of putting the matter," with a laugh, not
+without bitterness, "but you understand.  Ought he not to wait till he
+has at least something to offer besides himself:  Is it not mean,
+selfish, cowardly, to bind a woman to all the chances or mischances of
+his lot, instead of fighting it out alone like a man:  My friend  thinks
+so, and I--I agree with him."
+
+"Then why did you ask me."
+
+The words, though low and clear, were cold and sharp--sharp with almost
+unbearable pain.  Every atom of pride in her was roused. Whether he loved
+her and would not tell her so, or loved some other woman and wished her
+know it, it was all the same.  He was evidently determined to go away
+free and leave her free; and perhaps many sensible men or women would say
+he was right in so doing.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said, almost humbly.  "I ought not to have spoken
+of this at all.  I ought just to have said 'Good-by,' and nothing more."
+And he took her hand.
+
+There was on it one ring, not very valuable, but she always liked to wear
+it, as it had belonged to her mother.  Robert Roy drew it off, and put it
+deliberately into his pocket.
+
+"Give me this; you shall have it back again when I am dead, or you are
+married, whichever happens first.  Do you understand?"
+
+Putting David aside (indeed, he seemed for the first time to forget the
+boy's presence), he took her by the two hands and looked down into her
+face.  Apparently he read something there, something which startled him,
+almost shocked him.
+
+Irresolute, alas!  Too late; for just then all the three Dalziel boys
+rushed into the house and the school-room, followed by their grandmother.
+The old lady looked a good deal surprised, perhaps a little displeased,
+fro on to the other.
+
+Mr. Roy perceived it, and recovered himself in an instant, letting go
+Fortune's hands and placing himself in front of her, between her and Mrs.
+Dalziel.  Long afterward she remembered that trivial act--remembered it
+with the tender gratitude of the protected toward the protector, if
+nothing more.
+
+"You see, I came, as I told you I should, if possible, to bid Miss
+Williams good-by, and wee Davie.  They both kindly admitted me, and we
+have had half an hour's merry chat, have we not Davie?  Now, my man,
+good-by."  He took up the little fellow and kissed him, and then
+extended his hand.  "Good-by, Miss Williams.  I hope your little pupils
+will value you as you deserve."
+
+Then, with a courteous and formal farewell to the old lady, and a most
+uproarious one from the boys, he went to the door, but turned round,
+saying to the eldest boy, distinctly and clearly--though she was at the
+farther end of the room, she heard, and was sure he meant her to hear
+every word:
+
+"By-the-by, Archy, there is something I was about to explain to Miss
+Williams.  Tell her I will write it.  She is quite sure to have a letter
+from me tomorrow--no, on Tuesday morning."
+
+And so he went away, bravely and cheerily, the boys accompanying him to
+the gate, and shouting and waving their hats to him as he crossed the
+Links, until their grandmother reprovingly suggested that it was Sunday.
+
+"But Mr. Roy does not go off to India every Sunday.  Hurrah!  I wish we
+were all going too.  Three cheers for Mr. Roy." "Mr. Roy is a very fine
+fellow, and I hope he will do well," said Mrs. Dalziel, touched by their
+enthusiasm; also by some old memories, for, like many St. Andrews folk,
+she was strongly linked with India, and had sent off one-half of her
+numerous family to live or die there.  There was something like a tear in
+her old eyes, though not for the young tutor; but it effectually kept her
+from either looking at or thinking of the governess. And she forgot them
+both immediately.  They were merely the tutor and the governess.
+
+As for the boys, they chattered vehemently all tea-time about Mr. Roy,
+and their envy of the "jolly" life he was going to; then their minds
+turned to their own affairs, and there was silence.
+
+The kind of silence, most of us know it, when any one belonging to a
+household, or very familiar there, goes away on a long indefinite
+absence.  At first there is little consciousness of absence at all; we
+are so constantly expecting the door to be opened for the customary
+presence that we scarcely even miss the known voice, or face, or hand.
+By-and-by, however, we do miss it, and there comes a general, loud,
+shallow lamentation which soon cures itself, and implies an easy and
+comfortable forgetfulness before long.  Except with some, or possibly
+only one, who is, most likely the one who has never been heard to utter a
+word of regret, or seen to shed a single tear.
+
+Miss Williams, now left sole mistress in the school room, gave her
+lessons as usual there that Monday morning, and walked with all four boys
+on the Links all afternoon.  It was a very bright day, as beautiful as
+Sunday had been, and they communicated to her the interesting facts,
+learned at golfing that morning, that Mr. Roy and his portmanteau had
+been seen at Leuchars on the way to Burntisland, and he would likely have
+a good crossing, as the sea was very calm.  There had lately been some
+equinoctial gales, which had interested the boys amazingly, and they
+calculated with ingenious pertinacity whether such gales were likely to
+occur again when Mr. Roy was in the Bay of Biscay, and, if his ship were
+wrecked, what he would be supposed to do.  They were quite sure that he
+would conduct himself with great heroism, perhaps escape on a single
+plank, or a raft made by his own hands, and they consulted Miss Williams,
+who of course was peripatetic cyclopedia of all scholastic information,
+as to which port in France of Spain he was likely to be drifted to,
+supposing this exciting event did happen.
+
+She answered their questions with her usual ready kindliness.  She felt
+like a person in a dream, yet a not unhappy dream, for she still heard
+the voice, still felt the clasp of the strong, tender, sustaining hands.
+And tomorrow would be Tuesday.
+
+Tuesday was a wet morning.  The bright days were done.  Soon after dawn
+Fortune had woke up and watched the sunrise, till a chill fog crept over
+the sea and blotted it out; then gradually blotted out the land also, the
+Links, the town, every thing.  A regular St. Andrews "haar;" and St.
+Andrews people know what that is.  Miss Williams had seen it once or
+twice before, but never so bad as this--blighting, penetrating, and so
+dense that you could hardly see your hand before you.
+
+But Fortune scarcely felt it.  She said to herself, "Today is Tuesday,"
+which meant nothing to any one else, every thing to her.  For she knew
+the absolute faithfulness, the careful accuracy, in great things and
+small, with which she had to do.  If Robert Roy said, "I will write on
+such a day," he was as sure to write as that the day would dawn; that is,
+so far as his own will went; and will, not circumstance, is the strongest
+agent in this world.
+
+Therefore she waited quietly for the postman's horn.  It sounded at last.
+
+"I'll go," cried Archy.  "Just look at the haar!  I shall have to grope
+my way to the gate."
+
+He came back, after what seemed an almost endless time, rubbing his head
+and declaring he had nearly blinded himself by running right into the
+laurel bush.
+
+"I couldn't see for the fog.  I only hope I've left none of the letters
+behind.  No, no; all right.  Such a lot!  It's the Indian mail.  There's
+for you, and you, boys."  He dealt them out with a merry, careless hand.
+
+There was no letter for Miss Williams--a circumstance so usual that
+nobody noticed it or her, as she sat silent in her corner, while the
+children read noisily and gaily the letters from their far-away parents.
+
+_Her_ letter--what had befallen it?  Had he forgotten to write?  But
+Robert Roy never forgot any thing.  Nor did he delay any thing that he
+could possibly do at the time he promised.  He was one of the very few
+people in this world who in small things as in great are absolutely
+reliable.  It seemed so impossible to believe he had not written, when he
+said he would, that as a last hope, she stole out with a plaid over her
+head and crept through the sidewalks of the garden, almost groping her
+way through the fog, and, like Archy, stumbling over the low boughs of
+the laurel bush to the letter-box it held.  Her trembling hands felt in
+every corner, but no letter was there.
+
+She went wearily back; weary at heart, but patient still.  A love like
+hers, self-existent and sufficient to itself, is very patient, quite
+unlike the other and more common form of the passion; not love, but a
+diseased craving to be loved, which causes a thousand imaginary miseries
+and wrongs. Sharp was her pain, poor girl; but she was not angry, and
+after her first stab of disappointment her courage rose.  All was well
+with him; he had been seen cheerily starting for Edinburgh; and her own
+temporary suffering was a comparatively a small thing.  It could not
+last: the letter would come tomorrow.
+
+But it did not, nor the next day, nor the next.  On the fourth day her
+heart felt like to break.
+
+I think, of all pains not mortal, few are worse than this small silent
+agony of waiting for the post; letting all the day's hope climax upon a
+single minute, which passes by, and the hope with it, and then comes
+another day of dumb endurance, if not despair.  This even with ordinary
+letters upon which any thing of moment depends.  With others, such as
+this letter of Robert Roy's--let us not speak of it.  Some may imagine,
+others may have known, a similar suspense.  They will understand why,
+long years afterward, Fortune Williams was heard to say, with a quiver of
+the lip that could have told its bitter tale, "No; when I have a letter
+to write, I never put off writing it for single day."
+
+As these days wore on--these cruel days, never remembered without a
+shiver of pain, and of wonder that she could have lived through them at
+all--the whole fabric of reasons, arguments, excuses, that she had built
+up, for him and herself, gradually crumbled away.  Had she altogether
+misapprehended the purport of his promised letter?  Was it just some
+ordinary note, about her boys and their studies perhaps, which, after
+all, he had not thought it worthwhile to write?  Yet surely it was worth
+while, if only to send a kindly and courteous farewell to a friend, after
+so close an intimacy and in face of so indefinite a separation.
+
+A friend?  Only a friend?  Words may deceive, eyes seldom can.  And there
+had been love in his eyes.  Not mere liking, but actual love.  She had
+seen it, felt it, with that almost unerring instinct that women have,
+whether they return the love or not.  In the latter case, they seldom
+doubt it; in the former, they often do.
+
+"Could I have been mistaken?" she thought, with a burning pang of shame.
+"Oh, why did he not speak--just one word?  After that, I could have borne
+any thing."
+
+But he had not spoken, had not written.  He had let himself drop out of
+her life as completely as a falling star drops out of the sky, a ship
+sinks down in mid-ocean, or--any other poetical simile, used under such
+circumstances by romantic people.
+
+Fortune Williams was not romantic; at least, what romance was in her lay
+deep down, and came out in act rather than word.  She neither wept nor
+raved nor cultivated any external signs of a breaking heart.  A little
+paler she grew, a little quieter, but nobody observed this: indeed, it
+came to be one of her deepest causes of thankfulness that there was
+nobody to observe any thing--that she had no living soul belonging to
+her, neither father, mother, brother, nor sister, to pity her or to blame
+him; since to think him either blamable or blamed would have been the
+sharpest torture she could have known.
+
+She was saved that and some few other things by being only a governess,
+instead of one of Fate's cherished darlings, nestled in a family home.
+She had no time to grieve, except in the dead of night, when "the rain
+was on the roof."  It so happened that, after the haar, there set in a
+season of continuous, sullen, depressing rain.  But at night-time, and
+for the ten minutes between post hour and lesson hour--which she
+generally passed in her own room--if her mother, who died when she was
+ten-years old, could have seen her, she would have said, "My poor child."
+
+Robert Roy had once involuntarily called her so, when by accident one of
+her rough boys hurt her hand, and he himself bound it up, with the
+indescribable tenderness which the strong only know how to show or feel.
+Well she remembered this; indeed, almost every thing he had said or done
+came back upon her now--vividly, as we recall the words and looks of the
+dead--mingled with such a hungering pain, such a cruel "miss" of him,
+daily and hourly, his companionship, help, counsel, every thing she had
+lacked all her life, and never found but with him and from him.  And he
+was gone, had broken his promise, had left her without a single farewell
+word.
+
+That he had cared for her, in some sort of way, she was certain; for he
+was one of those who never say a word too large--nay, he usually said
+much less than he felt.  Whatever he had felt for her--whether
+friendship, affection, love--must have been true.  There was in his
+nature intense reserve, but no falseness, no insincerity, not an atom of
+pretense of any kind.
+
+If he did not love her, why not tell her so?  What was there to hinder
+him?  Nothing, except that strange notion of the "dishonorableness" of
+asking a woman's love when one has nothing but love to give her in
+return.  This, even, he had seemed at the last to have set aside, as if
+he could not go away without speaking.  And yet he did it.
+
+Perhaps he thought she did not care for him?  He had once said a man
+ought to feel quite sure of a woman before he asked her.  Also, that he
+should never ask twice, since, if she did not know her own mind then, she
+never would know it, and such a woman was the worst possible bargain a
+man could make in marriage.
+
+Not know her own mind!  Alas, poor soul, Fortune knew it only too well.
+In that dreadful fortnight it was "borne in upon her," as pious people
+say, that though she felt kindly to all human beings, the one human being
+who was necessary to her--without whom her life might be busy, indeed,
+and useful, but never perfect, an endurance instead of joy--was this
+young man, as solitary as herself, as poor, as hard-working; good,
+gentle, brave Robert Roy.
+
+Oh why had they not come together, heart to heart--just they two, so
+alone in the world--and ever after belonged to one another, even though
+it had been years and years before they were married?
+
+"If only he had love me, and told me so!" was her bitter cry.  "I could
+have waited ever so hardly, and quite alone, if only I might have had a
+right to him, and been his comfort, as he was mine.  But now--now--"
+
+Yet still she waited, looking forward daily to that dreadful post hour;
+and when it had gone by, nerving herself to endure until tomorrow.  At
+last hope, slowly dying, was killed outright.
+
+One day at tea-time the boys blurted out, with happy carelessness, their
+short-lived regrets for him being quite over, the news that Mr. Roy had
+sailed.
+
+"Not for Calcutta, but Shanghai, a much longer voyage.  He can't be heard
+of for a year at least, and it will be many years before he comes back.
+I wonder if he will come back rich.  They say he will: quite a nabob,
+perhaps, and take a place in the Highlands, and invite us all--you too,
+Miss Williams.  I once asked him, and he said, 'Of course.'  Stop, you
+are pouring my tea over into the saucer."
+
+This was the only error she made, but went on filling the cups with a
+steady hand, smiling and speaking mechanically, as people can sometimes.
+When the tea was quite over, she slipped away into her room, and was
+missing for a long time.
+
+So all was over.  No more waiting for that vague "something to happen."
+Nothing could happen now.  He was far away across the seas, and she must
+just go back to her old monotonous life, as if it had never been any
+different--as if she had never seen his face nor heard his voice, never
+known the blessing of his companionship, friendship, love, whatever it
+was, or whatever he had meant it to be.  No, he could not have loved her;
+or to have gone away would have been--she did not realize whether right
+or wrong--but simply impossible.
+
+Once, wearying herself with helpless conjectures, a thought, sudden and
+sharp as steel, went through her heart.  He was nearly thirty; few lives
+are thus long without some sort of love in them.  Perhaps he was already
+bound to some other woman, and finding himself drifting into too pleasant
+intimacy with herself, wished to draw back in time.  Such things had
+happened, sometimes almost blamelessly, though most miserably to all
+parties.  But with him it was not likely to happen.  He was too clear
+sighted, strong, and honest.  He would never "drift" into anything.  What
+he did would be done with a calm deliberate will, incapable of the
+slightest deception either toward others or himself.  Besides, he had at
+different times told her the whole story of his life, and there was no
+love in it; only work, hard work, poverty, courage, and endurance, like
+her own.
+
+"No, he could never have deceived me, neither me nor any one else," she
+often said to herself, almost joyfully, though the tears were running
+down.  "What ever it was, it was not that.  I am glad--glad.  I had far
+rather believe he never loved me than that he had been false to another
+woman for my sake.  And I believe in him still; I shall always believe in
+him.  He is perfectly good, perfectly true.  And so it does not much
+matter about me."
+
+I am afraid those young ladies who like plenty of lovers, who expect to
+be adored, and are vexed when they are not adored, and most nobly
+indignant when forsaken, will think very meanly of my poor Fortune
+Williams.  They may console themselves by thinking she was not a young
+lady at all--only a woman.  Such women are not too common, but they exist
+occasionally.  And they bear their cross and dree their weird (i.e.,
+endure); but their lot, at any rate, only concerns themselves, and has
+one advantage, that it in no way injures the happiness of other people.
+
+Humble as she was, she had her pride.  If she wept, it was out of sight.
+If she wished herself dead, and a happy ghost, that by any means she
+might get near him, know where he was, and what he was doing, these
+dreams came only when her work was done, her boys asleep.  Day never
+betrayed the secrets of the night.  She set to work every morning at her
+daily labors with a dogged persistence, never allowing herself a minute's
+idleness wherein to sit down and mourn.  And when, despite her will, she
+could not conquer the fits of nervous irritability that came over her at
+times--when the children's innocent voices used to pierce her like
+needles, and their incessant questions and perpetual company were almost
+more than she could bear--still, even then, all she did was to run away
+and hide herself for a little, coming back with a pleasant face and a
+smooth temper.  Why should she scold them, poor lambs?  They were all she
+had to love, or that loved her.  And they did love her, with all their
+boyish hearts.
+
+One day, however--the day before they all left St. Andrews for England,
+the two elder to go to school, and the younger ones to return with her to
+their maternal grand-mother in London--David said something which wounded
+her, vexed her, made her almost thankful to be going away.
+
+She was standing by the laurel bush, which somehow had for her a strange
+fascination, and her hand was on the letter-box which the boys and Mr.
+Roy had made.  There was a childish pleasure in touching it or any thing
+he had touched.
+
+"I hope grandmamma won't take away that box," said Archy.  "She ought to
+keep it in memory of us and Mr. Roy.  How cleverly he made it! Wasn't he
+clever now, Miss Williams?"
+
+"Yes," she answered and no more.
+
+"I've got a better letter-box than yours," said little Davie,
+mysteriously. "Shall I show it to you, Miss Williams?  And perhaps,"
+with a knowing look--the mischievous lad! and yet he was more loving and
+lovable than all the rest, Mr. Roy's favorite, and hers--"perhaps you
+might even find a letter in it.  Cook says she has seen you many a time
+watching for a letter from your sweetheart.  Who is he?"
+
+"I have none.  Tell cook she should not talk such nonsense to little
+boys," said the governess, gravely.  But she felt hot from head to foot,
+and turning, walked slowly in-doors.  She did not go near the laurel bush
+again.
+
+After that, she was almost glad to get away, among strange people and
+strange places, where Robert Roy's name had never been heard.  The
+familiar places--hallowed as no other spot in this world, could ever
+be--passed out of sight, and in another week her six months' happy life
+at St. Andrews had vanished, "like a dream when one awaketh."
+
+Had she awaked?  Or was her daily, outside life to be henceforth the
+dream, and this the reality?
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 3.
+
+What is a "wrecked" life?  One which the waves of inexorable fate have
+beaten to pieces, or one that, like an unseaworthy ship, is ready to go
+down in any waters?  What most destroy us? the things we might well blame
+ourselves for, only we seldom do, our follies, blunders, errors, not
+counting actual sins? or the things for which we can blame nobody but
+Providence--if we dared--such as our losses and griefs, our sicknesses of
+body and mind, all those afflictions which we call "the visitation of
+God?"  Ay, and so they are, but not sent in wrath, or for ultimate evil.
+No amount of sorrow need make any human life harmful to man or unholy
+before God, as a discontented, unhappy life must needs be unholy in the
+sight of Him who in the mysterious economy of the universe seems to have
+one absolute law--He wastes nothing.  He modifies, transmutes,
+substitutes, re-applies material to new uses; but apparently by Him
+nothing is ever really lost, nothing thrown away.
+
+Therefore, I incline to believe, when I hear people talking of a
+"wrecked" existence, that whosoever is to blame, it is not Providence.
+
+Nobody could have applied the term to Fortune Williams, looking at
+her as she sat in the drawing-room window of a house at Brighton, just
+where the gray of the Esplanade meets the green of the Downs--a ladies'
+boarding-school, where she had in her charge two pupils, left behind
+for the holidays, while the mistress took a few weeks' repose.  She sat
+watching the sea, which was very beautiful, as even the Brighton sea can
+be sometimes.  Her eyes were soft and calm; her hands were folded on her
+black silk dress, her pretty little tender-looking hands, unringed, for
+she was still Miss Williams, still a governess.
+
+But even at thirty-five--she had now reached that age, nay, passed
+it--she was not what you would call "old-maidish."  Perhaps because the
+motherly instinct, naturally very strong in her, had developed more and
+more.  She was one of those governesses--the only sort who ought ever to
+attempt to be governesses--who really love children, ay, despite their
+naughtinesses and mischievousnesses and worrying ways; who feel that,
+after all, these little ones are "of the kingdom of heaven," and that the
+task of educating them for that kingdom somehow often brings us nearer to
+it ourselves.
+
+Her heart, always tender to children, had gone out to them more and more
+every year, especially after that fatal year when a man took it and broke
+it.  No, not broke it, but threw it carelessly away, wounding it so
+sorely that it never could be quite itself again.  But it was a true and
+warm and womanly heart still.
+
+She had never heard of him--Robert Roy--never once, in any way, since
+that Sunday afternoon when he said, "I will write tomorrow," and did not
+write, but let her drop from him altogether like a worthless thing.
+Cruel, somewhat, even to a mere acquaintance--but to her?
+
+Well, all was past and gone, and the tide of years had flowed over it.
+Whatever it was, a mistake, a misfortune, or a wrong, nobody knew any
+thing about it.  And the wound even was healed, in a sort of a way, and
+chiefly by the unconscious hands of these little "ministering angels,"
+who were angels that never hurt her, except by blotting their copy-books
+or not learning their lessons.
+
+I know it may sound a ridiculous thing that a forlorn governess should
+be comforted for a lost love by the love of children; but it is true to
+nature. Women's lives have successive phases, each following the other in
+natural gradation--maidenhood, wifehood, motherhood: in not one of which,
+ordinarily, we regret the one before it, to which it is nevertheless
+impossible to go back.  But Fortune's life had had none of these,
+excepting, perhaps, her one six months' dream of love and spring.  That
+being over, she fell back upon autumn days and autumn pleasures--which
+are very real pleasures, after all.
+
+As she sat with the two little girls leaning against her lap--they were
+Indian children, unaccustomed to tenderness, and had already grown very
+fond of her--there was a look in her face, not at all like an ancient
+maiden or a governess, but almost motherly.  You see the like in the
+faces of the Virgin Mary, as the old monks used to paint her, quaint, and
+not always lovely, but never common or coarse, and spiritualized by a
+look of mingled tenderness and sorrow into something beyond all beauty.
+
+This woman's face had it, so that people who had known Miss Williams as
+a girl were astonished to find her, as a middle-aged woman, grown "so
+good-looking."  To which one of her pupils once answered, naively, "It
+is because she looks so good."
+
+But this was after ten years and more.  Of the first half of those years
+the less that is said, the better.  She did not live; she merely endured
+life. Monotony without, a constant aching within--a restless gnawing
+want, a perpetual expectation, half hope, half fear; no human being could
+bear all this without being the worse for it, or the better.  But the
+betterness came afterward, not first.
+
+Sometimes her cravings to hear the smallest tidings of him, only if he
+were alive or dead, grew into such an agony that, had it not been for
+her entire helplessness in the matter, she might have tried some means
+of gaining information.  But from his sudden change of plans, she was
+ignorant even of the name of the ship he had sailed by, the firm he had
+gone to.  She could do absolutely nothing, and learn nothing.  Here was
+something like the "Affliction of Margaret," that poem of Wordsworth's
+which, when her little pupils recited it--as they often did--made her
+ready to sob out loud from the pang of its piteous reality:
+
+   "I look for ghosts, but none will force
+       Their way to me: 'tis falsely said
+   That there was ever intercourse
+       Betwixt the living and the dead:
+   For surely then I should have sight
+      Of him I wait for day and night
+   With love and longings infinite."
+
+Still, in the depth of her heart she did not believe Robert Roy was dead;
+for her finger was still empty of that ring--her mother's ring--which he
+had drawn off, promising its return "when he was dead or she was
+married."  This implied that he never meant to lose sight of her.  Nor,
+indeed, had he wished it, would it have been very difficult to find her,
+these ten years having been spent entirely in one place, an obscure
+village in the south of England, where she had lived as governess--first
+in the squire's family, then the rector's.
+
+From the Dalziel family, where, as she had said to Mr. Roy, she hoped to
+remain for years, she had drifted away almost immediately; within a few
+months.  At Christmas old Mrs. Dalziel had suddenly died; her son had
+returned home, sent his four boys to school in Germany, and gone back
+again to India.  There was now, for the first time for half a century,
+not a single Dalziel left in St. Andrews.
+
+But though all ties were broken connecting her with the dear old city,
+her boys still wrote to her now and then, and she to them, with a
+persistency for which her conscience smote her sometimes, knowing it was
+not wholly for their sakes.  But they had never been near her, and she
+had little expectation of seeing any of them ever again, since by this
+time she had lived long enough to find out how easily people do drift
+asunder, and lose all clue to one another, unless some strong firm will
+or unconquerable habit of fidelity exists on one side or the other.
+
+Since the Dalziels she had only lived in the two families before named,
+and had been lately driven from the last one by a catastrophe, if it may
+be called so, which had been the bitterest drop in her cup since the time
+she left St. Andrews.
+
+The rector--a widower, and a feeble, gentle invalid, to whom naturally
+she had been kind and tender, regarding him with much the same sort of
+motherly feeling as she had regarded his children--suddenly asked her to
+become their mother in reality.
+
+It was a great shock and a pang: almost a temptation; for they all loved
+her, and wished to keep her.  She would have been such a blessing, such
+a brightness, in that dreary home.  And to a woman no longer young, who
+had seen her youth pass without any brightness in it, God knows what
+an allurement it is to feel she has still the power of brightening
+other lives.  If Fortune had yielded--if she had said yes, and married
+the rector--it would have been hardly wonderful, scarcely blamable.
+Nor would it have been the first time that a good, conscientious,
+tender-hearted woman has married a man for pure tenderness.
+
+But she did not do it; not even when they clung around her--those
+forlorn, half-educated, but affectionate girls--entreating her to "marry
+papa, and make us all happy."  She could not--how could she?  She felt
+very kindly to him.  He had her sincere respect, almost affection; but
+when she looked into her own heart, she found there was not in it one
+atom of love, never had been, for any man alive except Robert Roy. While
+he was unmarried, for her to marry would be impossible.
+
+And so she had the wisdom and courage to say to herself, and to them all,
+"This can not be;" to put aside the cup of attainable happiness, which
+might never have proved real happiness, because founded on an
+insincerity.
+
+But the pain this cost was so great, the wrench of parting from her poor
+girls so cruel, that after it Miss Williams had a sharp illness, the
+first serious illness of her life.  She struggled through it, quietly and
+alone, in one of those excellent "Governesses' Homes," where every body
+was very kind to her--some more than kind, affectionate.  It was strange,
+she often thought, what an endless amount of affection followed her
+wherever she went.  She was by no means one of those women who go about
+the world moaning that nobody loves them.  Every body loved her, and she
+knew it--every body whose love was worth having--except Robert Roy.
+
+Still her mind never changed; not even when, in the weakness of illness,
+there would come vague dreams of that peaceful rectory, with its quiet
+rooms and green garden; of the gentle, kindly hearted father, and the two
+loving girls whom she could have made so happy, and perhaps won happiness
+herself in the doing of it.
+
+"I am a great fool, some people would say," thought she, with a sad
+smile; "perhaps rather worse.  Perhaps I am acting absolutely wrong in
+throwing away my chance of doing good.  But I can not help it--I can not
+help it."
+
+So she kept to her resolution, writing the occasional notes she had
+promised to write to her poor forsaken girls, without saying a word of
+her illness; and when she grew better, though not strong enough to
+undertake a new situation, finding her money slipping away--though, with
+her good salaries and small wants, she was not poor, and had already
+begun to lay up for a lonely old age--she accepted this temporary
+home at Miss Maclachlan's, at Brighton.  Was it--so strange are the
+under-currents which guide one's outward life--was it because she had
+found a curious charm in the old lady's Scotch tongue, unheard for years?
+That the two little pupils were Indian children, and that the house was
+at the seaside?--and she had never seen the sea since she left St.
+Andrews.
+
+It was going back to the days of her youth to sit, as now, watching the
+sunshine glitter on the far-away ocean.  The very smell of the sea-weed,
+the lap-lap of the little waves, brought back old recollections so
+vividly--old thoughts, some bitter, some sweet, but the sweetness
+generally over-coming the bitterness.
+
+   "I have had all the joy that the world could bestow;
+   I have lived--I have loved."
+
+So sings the poet, and truly.  Though to this woman love had brought not
+joy, but sorrow, still she had loved, and it had been the main-stay and
+stronghold of her life, even though to outsiders it might have appeared
+little better than a delusion, a dream.  Once, and by one only, her whole
+nature had been drawn out, her ideal of moral right entirely satisfied.
+And nothing had ever shattered this ideal.  She clung to it, as we cling
+to the memory of our dead children, who are children forever.
+
+With a passionate fidelity she remembered all Robert Roy's goodness, his
+rare and noble qualities, resolutely shutting her eyes to what she might
+have judged severely, had it happened to another person--his total,
+unexplained, and inexplicable desertion of herself.  It was utterly
+irreconcilable with all she had ever known of him; and being powerless to
+unravel it, she left it, just as we have to leave many a mystery in
+heaven and earth, with the humble cry, "I can not understand--I love."
+
+She loved him, that was all; and sometimes even yet, across that desert
+of despair, stretching before and behind her, came a wild hope, almost a
+conviction, that she would meet him again, somewhere, somehow.  This day,
+even, when, after an hour's delicious idleness, she roused herself to
+take her little girls down to the beach, and sat on the shingle while
+they played, the sound and sights of the sea brought old times so vividly
+back that she could almost have fancied coming behind her the familiar
+step, the pleasant voice, as when Mr. Roy and his boys used to overtake
+her on the St. Andrews shore--Robert Roy, a young man, with his life all
+before him, as was hers.  Now she was middle-aged, and he--he must be
+over forty by this time.  How strange!
+
+Stranger still that there had never occurred to her one possibility--that
+he "was not," that God had taken him.  But this her heart absolutely
+refused to accept.  So long as he was in it, the world would never be
+quite empty to her.  Afterward--But, as I said, there are some things
+which can not be faced and this was one of them.
+
+All else she had faced long ago.  She did not grieve now.  As she walked
+with her children, listening to their endless talk with that patient
+sympathy which made all children love her, and which she often found was
+a better help to their education than dozens of lessons, there was on her
+face that peaceful expression which is the greatest preservative of
+youth, the greatest antidote to change.  And so it was no wonder that a
+tall lad, passing and re-passing on the Esplanade with another youth,
+looked at her more than once with great curiosity, and advanced with
+hesitating politeness.
+
+"I beg your pardon, ma'am, if I mistake; but you are so like a lady I
+once knew, and am now looking for.  Are you Miss Williams?"
+
+"My name is Williams, certainly; and you"--something in the curly light
+hair, the mischievous twinkle of the eye, struck her--"you can not be,
+it is scarcely possible--David Dalziel?"
+
+"But, I am, though," cried the lad, shaking her hand as if he would shake
+it off.  "And I call myself very clever to have remembered you, though I
+was such a little fellow when you left us, and I have only seen your
+photograph since.  But you are not a bit altered--not one bit.  And as I
+knew by your last letter to Archy that you were at Brighton, I thought
+I'd risk it and speak.  Hurra! How very jolly!"
+
+He had grown a handsome lad, the pretty wee Davie, an honest-looking lad
+too, apparently, and she was glad to see him.  From the dignity of his
+eighteen years and five feet ten of height, he looked down upon the
+governess, and patronized her quite tenderly--dismissing his friend and
+walking home with her, telling her on the way all his affairs and that of
+his family with the volubility of little David Dalziel at St. Andrews.
+
+"No, I've not forgotten St. Andrews one bit, though I was so small.  I
+remember poor old grannie, and her cottage, and the garden, and the
+Links, and the golfing, and Mr. Roy.  By-the-by, what has become of Mr.
+Roy?"
+
+The suddenness of the question, nay, the very sound of a name totally
+silent for so many years, made Fortune's heart throb till its beating
+was actual pain.  Then came a sudden desperate hope, as she answered:
+
+"I can not tell.  I have never heard any thing of him.  Have you?"
+
+"No--yet, let me see.  I think Archy once got a letter from him, a year
+or so after he went away; but we lost it somehow, and never answered it.
+We have never heard any thing since."
+
+Miss Williams sat down on one of the benches facing the sea, with a
+murmured excuse of being "tired."  One of her little girls crept beside
+her, stealing a hand in hers.  She held it fast, her own shook so; but
+gradually she grew quite herself again.  "I have been ill," she
+explained, "and can not walk far.  Let us sit down here a little.  You
+were speaking about Mr. Roy, David?"
+
+"Yes.  What a good fellow he was!  We called him Rob Roy, I remember, but
+only behind his back.  He was strict, but he was a jolly old soul for all
+that.  I believe I should know him again any day, as I did you.  But
+perhaps he is dead; people die pretty fast abroad, and ten years is a
+long time, isn't it?"
+
+"A long time.  And you never got any more letters?"
+
+"No; or if they did come, they were lost, being directed probably to the
+care of poor old grannie, as ours was.  We thought it so odd, after she
+was dead, you know."
+
+Thus the boy chattered on--his tongue had not shortened with his
+increasing inches--and every idle word sank down deep in his old
+governess's heart.
+
+Then it was only her whom Robert Roy had forsaken.  He had written to his
+boys, probably would have gone on writing had they answered his letter.
+He was neither faithless nor forgetful.  With an ingenuity that might
+have brought to any listener a smile or a tear, Miss Williams led the
+conversation round again till she could easily ask more concerning that
+one letter; but David, remembered little or nothing, except that it was
+dated from Shanghai, for his brothers had had a discussion whether
+Shanghai was in China or Japan.  Then, boy-like, they had forgotten the
+whole matter.
+
+"Yes, by this time every body had forgotten him," thought Fortune to
+herself, when having bidden David good-by at her door and arranged to
+meet him again--he was on a visit at Brighton before matriculating at
+Oxford next term--she sat down in own room, with a strangely bewildered
+feeling.  "Mine, all mine," she said, and her heart closed itself over
+him, her old friend at least, if nothing more, with a tenacity of
+tenderness as silent as it was strong.
+
+From that day, though she saw, and was determined henceforward to see, as
+much as she could of young David Dalziel, she never once spoke to him of
+Mr. Roy.
+
+Still, to have the lad coming about her was a pleasure, a fond link with
+the past, and to talk to him about his future was a pleasure too.  He was
+the one of all the four--Mr. Roy always said so--who had "brains" enough
+to become a real student; and instead of following the others to India,
+he was to go to Oxford, and do his best there.  His German education had
+left him few English friends.  He was an affectionate, simple-hearted
+lad, and now that his mischievous days were done, was taking to thorough
+hard work.  He attached himself to his old governess with an enthusiasm
+that a lad in his teens often conceives for a woman still young enough to
+be sympathetic, and intelligent enough to guide without ruling the errant
+fancy of that age.  She, too, soon grew very fond of him.  It made her
+strangely happy, this sudden rift of sunshine out of the never-forgotten
+heaven of her youth, now almost as far off as heaven itself.
+
+I have said she never spoke to David about Mr. Roy, nor did she; but
+sometimes he spoke, and then she listened.  It seemed to cheer her for
+hours, only to hear that name.  She grew stronger, gayer, younger.  Every
+body said how much good the sea was doing her, and so it was; but not
+exactly in the way people thought.  The spell of silence upon her life
+had been broken, and though she knew all sensible persons would esteem
+her in this, as in that other matter, a great "fool," still she could not
+stifle a vague hope that some time or other her blank life might change.
+Every little wave that swept in from the mysterious ocean, the ocean that
+lay between them two, seemed to carry a whispering message and lay it at
+her feet, "Wait and be patient, wait and be patient."
+
+She did wait, and the message came at last.
+
+One day David Dalziel called, on one of his favorite daily rides, and
+threw a newspaper down at her door, where she was standing.
+
+"An Indian paper my mother has just sent.  There's something in it that
+will interest you, and--"
+
+His horse galloped off with the unfinished sentence; and supposing it was
+something concerning his family, she put the paper in her pocket to read
+at leisure while she sat on the beach.  She had almost forgotten it, as
+she watched the waves, full of that pleasant idleness and dreamy peace so
+new in her life, and which the sound of the sea so often brings to
+peaceful hearts, who have no dislike to its monotony, no dread of those
+solemn thoughts of infinitude, time and eternity, God and death and love,
+which it unconsciously gives, and which I think is the secret why some
+people say they have "such a horror of the sea-side."
+
+She had none; she loved it, for its sights and sounds were mixed up with
+all the happiness of her young days.  She could have sat all this
+sunshiny morning on the beach doing absolutely nothing, had she not
+remembered David's newspaper; which, just to please him, she must look
+through. She did so, and in the corner, among the brief list of names in
+the obituary, she saw that of "Roy."  Not himself, as she soon found, as
+soon as she could see to read, in the sudden blindness that came over
+her.  Not himself.  Only his child.
+
+"On Christmas-day, at Shanghai, aged three and a half years, Isabella,
+the only and beloved daughter of Robert and Isabella Roy."
+
+He was alive, then.  That was her first thought, almost a joyful one,
+showing how deep had been her secret dread of the contrary.  And he was
+married.  His "only and beloved daughter?"  Oh! how beloved she could
+well understand.  Married, and a father; and his child was dead.
+
+Many would think it strange (it would be in most women, but it was not in
+this woman) that the torrent of tears which burst forth, after her first
+few minutes of dry-eyed anguish, was less for herself, because he was
+married and he had lost him, than for him, because he had had a child and
+lost it--he who was so tender of heart, so fond of children.  The thought
+of his grief brought such a consecration with it, that her grief--the
+grief most women might be expected to feel on reading suddenly in a
+newspaper that the man they loved was married to another--did not come.
+At least not at once.  It did not burst upon her, as sorrow does
+sometimes, like a wild beast out of a jungle, slaying and devouring.  She
+was not slain, not even stunned.  After a few minutes it seemed to her as
+if it had happened long ago--as if she had always known it must happen,
+and was not astonished.
+
+His "only and beloved daughter!"  The words sung themselves in and out of
+her brain, to the murmur of the sea.  How he must have loved the child!
+She could almost see him with the little one in his arms, or watching
+over her bed, or standing beside her small coffin.  Three years and a
+half old!  Then he must have been married a good while--long and long
+after she had gone on thinking of him as no righteous woman ever can go
+on thinking of another woman's husband.
+
+One burning blush, one shiver from head to foot, one cry of piteous
+despair, which nobody heard but God--and she was not afraid of His
+hearing--and the struggle was over.  She saw Robert Roy, with his child
+in his arms with his wife by his side, the same and yet a totally
+different man.
+
+She, too, when she rose up, and tried to walk, tried to feel that it was
+the same sea, the same shore, the same earth and sky, was a totally
+different woman.  Something was lost, something never to be retrieved on
+this side the grave, but also something was found.
+
+"He is alive," she said to herself, with the same strange joy; for now
+she knew where he was, and what had happened to him.  The silence of all
+these years was broken, the dead had come to life again, and the lost, in
+a sense, was found.
+
+Fortune Williams rose up and walked, in more senses than one; went round
+to fetch her little girls, as she had promised, from that newly opened
+delight of children, the Brighton Aquarium; staid a little with them,
+admiring the fishes; and when she reached home, and found David Dalziel
+in the drawing-room, met him and thanked him for bringing her the
+newspaper. "I suppose it was on account of that obituary notice of Mr.
+Roy's child," said she, calmly naming the name now.  "What a sad thing!
+But still I am glad to know he is alive and well.  So will you be.  Shall
+you write to him?"
+
+"Well, I don't know," answered the lad, carelessly crumpling up the
+newspaper and throwing it on the fire.  Miss Williams made a faint
+movement to snatch it out, then disguised the gesture in some way, and
+silently watched it burn.  "I don't quite see the use of writing.  He's a
+family man now, and must have forgotten all about his old friends. Don't
+you think so?"
+
+"Perhaps; only he was not the sort of person easily to forget."
+
+She could defend him now; she could speak of him, and did speak more than
+once afterward, when David referred to the matter.  And then the lad
+quitted Brighton for Oxford, and she was left in her old loneliness.
+
+A loneliness which I will not speak of.  She herself never referred to
+that time.  After it, she roused herself to begin her life anew in a
+fresh home, to work hard, not only for daily bread but for that humble
+independence which she was determined to win before the dark hour when
+the most helpful become helpless, and the most independent are driven
+to fall a piteous burden into the charitable hands of friends or
+strangers--a thing to her so terrible that to save herself from the
+possibility of it, she who had never leaned upon any body, never had any
+body to lean on, became her one almost morbid desire.
+
+She had no dread of a solitary old age but an old age beholden to either
+public or private charity was to her intolerable; and she had now few
+years left her to work in--a governess's life wears women out very fast.
+She determined to begin to work again immediately, laying by as much as
+possible yearly against the days when she could work no more; consulted
+Miss Maclachlan, who was most kind; and then sought and was just about
+going to another situation, with the highest salary she had yet earned,
+when an utterly unexpected change altered every thing.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 4.
+
+The fly was already at the door, and Miss Williams, with her small
+luggage, would in five minutes have departed, followed by the good wishes
+of all the household, from Miss Maclachlan's school to her new situation,
+when the postman passed and left a letter for her.
+
+"I will put it in my pocket and read it in the train," she said, with a
+slight change of color.  For she recognized the handwriting of that good
+man who had loved her, and whom she could not love.
+
+"Better read it now.  No time like the present," observed Miss
+Maclachlan.
+
+Miss Williams did so.  As soon as she was fairly started and alone in the
+fly, she opened it, with hands slightly trembling, for she was touched by
+the persistence of the good rector, and his faithfulness to her, a poor
+governess, when he might have married, as they said in his neighborhood,
+"anybody."  He would never marry any body now--he was dying.
+
+"I have come to feel how wrong I was," he wrote, "in ever trying to
+change our happy relations together.  I have suffered for this--so have
+we all.  But it is now too late for regret.  My time has come.  Do not
+grieve yourself by imagining it has come the faster through any decision
+of yours, but by slow, inevitable disease, which the doctors have only
+lately discovered.  Nothing could have saved me.  Be satisfied that there
+is no cause for you to give yourself one moment's pain."  (How she sobbed
+over those shaky lines, more even than over the newspaper lines which she
+had read that sun-shiny morning on the shore!)  "Remember only that you
+made me very happy--me and all mine--for years; that I loved you, as even
+at my age a man can love; as I shall love you to the end, which can not
+be very far off now.  Would you dislike coming to see me just once again?
+My girls will so very glad, and nobody knows any thing.  Besides, what
+matter?  I am dying.  Come, if you can within a week or so; they tell me
+I may last thus long.  And I want to consult with you about my children.
+Therefore I will not say good-by now, only good-night, and God bless
+you."
+
+But it was good-by, after all.  Though she did not wait the week; indeed,
+she waited for nothing, considered nothing, except her gratitude to this
+good man--the only man who had loved her--and her affection for the two
+girls, who would soon be fatherless; though she sent a telegram from
+Brighton to say she was coming, and arrived within twenty-four hours,
+still--she came too late.
+
+When she reached the village she heard that his sufferings were all over;
+and a few yards from his garden wall, in the shade of the church-yard
+lime-tree, the old sexton was busy re-opening, after fourteen years, the
+family grave, where he was to be laid beside his wife the day after
+to-morrow.  His two daughters, sitting alone together in the melancholy
+house, heard Miss Williams enter, and ran to meet her.  With a feeling of
+nearness and tenderness such as she had scarcely ever felt for any human
+being, she clasped them close, and let them weep their hearts out in her
+motherly arms.
+
+Thus the current of her whole life was changed; for when Mr. Moseley's
+will was opened, it was found that, besides leaving Miss Williams a
+handsome legacy, carefully explained as being given "in gratitude for her
+care of his children," he had chosen her as their guardian, until they
+came of age or married, entreating her to reside with them, and desiring
+them to pay her all the respect due to "a near and dear relative."  The
+tenderness with which he had arranged every thing, down to the minutest
+points, for them and herself, even amidst all his bodily sufferings, and
+in face of the supreme hour--which he had met, his daughters said, with a
+marvelous calmness, even joy--touched Fortune as perhaps nothing had ever
+touched her in all her life before.  When she stood with her two poor
+orphans beside their father's grave, and returned with them to the
+desolate house, vowing within herself to be too them, all but in name,
+the mother he had wished her to be, this sense of duty--the strange new
+duty which had suddenly come to fill her empty life--was so strong, that
+she forgot every thing else--even Robert Roy.
+
+And for months afterward--months of anxious business, involving the
+leaving of the Rectory, and the taking of a temporary house in the
+village, until they could decide where finally to settle--Miss Williams
+had scarcely a moment or a thought to spare for any beyond the vivid
+present.  Past and future faded away together, except so far as concerned
+her girls.
+
+"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might," were words
+which had helped her through many a dark time.  Now, with all her might,
+she did her motherly duty to the orphan girls; and as she did so,
+by-and-by she began strangely to enjoy it, and to find also not a little
+of motherly pride and pleasure in them.  She had not time to think of
+herself at all, or of the great blow which had fallen, the great change
+which had come, rendering it impossible for her to let herself feel as
+she had used to feel, dream as she used to dream, for years and years
+past. That one pathetic line
+
+"I darena think o' Jamie, for that wad be a sin," burned itself into
+her heart, and needed nothing more.
+
+"My children!  I must only love my children now," was her continual
+thought, and she believed she did so.
+
+It was not until spring came, healing the girls' grief as naturally as it
+covered their father's grave with violets and primroses, and making them
+cling a little less to home and her, a little more to the returning
+pleasures of their youth, for they were two pretty girls, well-born, with
+tolerable fortunes, and likely to be much sought after--not until the
+spring days left her much alone, did Fortune's mind recur to an idea
+which had struck her once, and then been set aside--to write to Robert
+Roy.  Why should she not?  Just a few friendly lines, telling him how,
+after long years, she had seen his name in the papers; how sorry she was,
+and yet glad--glad to think he was alive and well, and married; how she
+sent all kindly wishes to his wife and himself, and so on.  In short the
+sort of letter that any body might write or receive, whatever had been
+the previous link between them. And she wrote it on an April day, one of
+those first days of spring which make young hearts throb with a vague
+delight, a nameless hope; and older ones--but is there any age when hope
+is quite dead?  I think not, even to those who know that the only spring
+that will ever come to them will dawn in the world everlasting.
+
+When her girls, entering, offered to post her letter, and Miss Williams
+answered gently that she would rather post it herself, as it required a
+foreign stamp, how little they guessed all that lay underneath, and how,
+over the first few lines, her hand had shaken so that she had to copy it
+three times.  But the address, "Robert Roy, Shanghai"--all she could put,
+but she had little doubt it would find him--was written with that firm,
+clear hand which he had so often admired, saying he wished she could
+teach his boys to write as well.  Would he recognize it?  Would he be
+glad or sorry, or only indifferent?  Had the world changed him? or, if
+she could look at him now, would he be the same Robert Roy--simple, true,
+sincere, and brave--every inch a man and a gentleman?
+
+For the instant the old misery came back; the sharp, sharp pain; but
+she smothered it down.  His dead child, his living, unknown wife, came
+between, with their soft ghostly hands.  He was still himself; she
+hoped absolutely unchanged; but he was hers no more.  Yet that strange
+yearning, the same which had impelled Mr. Moseley to write and say, "Come
+and see me before I die," seemed impelling her to stretch a hand out
+across the seas--"Have you forgotten me:  I have never forgotten you."
+As she passed through the church-yard on her way to the village, and saw
+the rector's grave lie smiling in the evening sunshine, Fortune thought
+what a strange lot hers had been.  The man who had loved her, the man
+whom she had loved, were equally lost to her; equally dead and buried.
+And yet she lived still--her busy, active, and not unhappy life.  It was
+God's will, all; and it was best.
+
+Another six months went by, and she still remained in the same place,
+though talking daily of leaving.  They began to go into society again,
+she and her girls, and to receive visitors now and then: among the rest,
+David Dalziel, who had preserved his affectionate fidelity even when he
+went back to college, and had begun to discover somehow that the direct
+road from Oxford to every where was through this secluded village.  I am
+afraid Miss Williams was not as alive as she ought to have been to this
+fact, and to the other fact that Helen and Janetta were not quite
+children now, but she let the young people be happy, and was happy with
+them, after her fashion.  Still, hers was less happiness than peace; the
+deep peace which a storm-tossed vessel finds when kindly fate has towed
+it into harbor; with torn sails and broken masts, maybe, but still safe,
+never needing to go to sea any more.
+
+She had come to that point in life when we cease to be "afraid of evil
+tidings," since nothing is likely to happen to us beyond what has
+happened.  She told herself that she did not look forward to the answer
+from Shanghai, if indeed any came; nevertheless, she had ascertained what
+time the return mail would be likely to bring it.  And, almost punctual
+to the day, a letter arrived with the postmark, "Shanghai."  Not his
+letter, nor his handwriting at all.  And, besides, it was addressed to
+"_Mrs._ Williams."
+
+A shudder of fear, the only fear which could strike her now--that he
+might be dead--made Fortune stand irresolute a moment, then go up to her
+own room before she opened it.
+
+"Madam,--I beg to apologize for having read nearly through your letter
+before comprehending that it was not meant for me, but probably for
+another Mr. Robert Roy, who left this place not long after I came here,
+and between whom and myself some confusion arose, till we became
+intimate, and discovered that we were most likely distant, very distant
+cousins.  He came from St. Andrews, and was head clerk in a firm here,
+doing a very good business in tea and silk, until they mixed themselves
+up in the opium trade, which Mr. Roy, with one or two more of our
+community here, thought so objectionable that at last he threw up his
+situation and determined to seek his fortunes in Australia.  It was a
+pity, for he was in a good way to get on rapidly, but everybody who knew
+him agreed it was just the sort of thing he was sure to do, and some
+respected him highly for doing it.  He was indeed what we Scotch call
+'weel respeckit' wherever he went.  But he was a reserved man; made few
+intimate friends, though those he did make were warmly attached to him.
+My family were; and though it is now five years since we have heard
+anything of or from him, we remember him still."
+
+Five years!  The letter dropped from her hands.  Lost and found, yet
+found and lost.  What might not have happened to him in five years?  But
+she read on, dry-eyed: women do not weep very much or very easily at her
+age.
+
+"I will do my utmost, madam, that your letter shall reach the hands for
+which I am sure it was intended; but that may take some time, my only
+clue to Mr. Roy's whereabouts being the branch house at Melbourne.  I can
+not think he is dead, because such tidings pass rapidly from one to
+another in our colonial communities, and he was too much beloved for his
+death to excite no concern.
+
+"I make this long explanation because it strikes me you may be a lady, a
+friend or relative of Mr. Roy's, concerning whom he employed me to make
+some inquiries, only you say so very little--absolutely nothing--of
+yourself in your letter, that I can not be at all certain if you are the
+same person.  She was a governess in a family named Dalziel, living at
+St. Andrews.  He said he had written to that family repeatedly, but got
+no answer, and then asked me, if any thing resulted from my inquiries, to
+write to him to the care of our Melbourne house.  But no news ever came,
+and I never wrote to him, for which my wife still blames me exceedingly.
+She thanks you, dear madam, for the kind things you say about our poor
+child, though meant for another person.  We have seven boys, but little
+Bell was our youngest, and our hearts' delight.  She died after six
+hours' illness.
+
+"Again begging you to pardon my unconscious offense in reading a
+stranger's letter, and the length of this one, I remain your very
+obedient servant,     R. Roy
+
+"P.S.--I ought to say that this Mr. Robert Roy seemed between thirty-five
+and forty, tall, dark-haired, walked with a slight stoop.  He had, I
+believe, no near relatives whatever, and I never heard of his having been
+married."
+
+Unquestionably Miss Williams did well in retiring to her chamber and
+locking the door before she opened the letter.  It is a mistake to
+suppose that at thirty-five or forty--or what age?--women cease to feel.
+I once was walking with an old maiden lady, talking of a character in a
+book. "He reminded me," she said, "of the very best man I ever knew, whom
+I saw a good deal of when I was a girl."  And to the natural question,
+was he alive, she answered, "No; he died while he was still young."  Her
+voice kept its ordinary tone, but there came a slight flush on the cheek,
+a sudden quiver over the whole withered face--she was some years past
+seventy--and I felt I could not say another word.
+
+Nor shall I say a word now of Fortune Williams, when she had read through
+and wholly taken in the contents of this letter.
+
+Life began for her again--life on a new and yet on the old basis; for it
+was still waiting, waiting--she seemed to be among those whose lot it is
+to "stand and wait" all their days.  But it was not now in the absolute
+darkness and silence which it used to be.  She knew that in all human
+probability Robert Roy was alive still some where, and hope never could
+wholly die out of the world so long as he was in it.  His career, too, if
+not prosperous in worldly things, had been one to make any heart that
+loved him content--content and proud.  For if he had failed in his
+fortunes, was it not from doing what she would most have wished him to
+do--the right, at all costs?  Nor had he quite forgotten her, since even
+so late as five years back he had been making inquiries about her.  Also,
+he was then unmarried.
+
+But human nature is weak, and human hearts are so hungry sometimes.
+
+"Oh, if he had only loved me, and told me so!" she said, sometimes, as
+piteously as fifteen years ago.  But the tears which followed were not,
+as then, a storm of passionate despair--only a quiet sorrowful rain.
+
+For what could she do?  Nothing.  Now as ever, her part seemed just to
+fold her hands and endure.  If alive, he might be found some day; but now
+she could not find him--oh, if she could!  Had she been the man and he
+the woman--nay, had she been still herself, a poor lonely governess,
+having to earn every crumb of her own bitter bread, yet knowing that he
+loved her, might not things have been different?  Had she belonged to
+him, they would never have lost one another.  She would have sought him,
+as Evangeline sought Gabriel, half the world over.
+
+And little did her two girls imagine, as they called her down stairs that
+night, secretly wondering what important business could make "Auntie"
+keep tea waiting fully five minutes, and set her after tea to read some
+"pretty poetry," especially Longfellow's, which they had a fancy
+for--little did they think, those two happy creatures, listening to their
+middle-aged governess, who read so well that sometimes her voice actually
+faltered over the line, how there was being transacted under their very
+eyes a story which in its "constant anguish of patience" was scarcely
+less pathetic than that of Acadia.
+
+For nearly a year after that letter came the little family of which Miss
+Williams was the head went on in its innocent quiet way, always planning,
+yet never making a change, until at last fate drove them to it.
+
+Neither Helen nor Janetta were very healthy girls, and at last a London
+doctor gave as his absolute fiat that they must cease to live in their
+warm inland village, and migrate, for some years at any rate, to a
+bracing sea-side place.
+
+Whereupon David Dalziel, who had somehow established himself as the one
+masculine adviser of the family, suggested St. Andrews.  Bracing enough
+it was, at any rate: he remembered the winds used almost cut his nose
+off.  And it was such a nice place too, so pretty, with such excellent
+society.  He was sure the young ladies would find it delightful.  Did
+Miss Williams remember the walk by the shore, and the golfing across the
+Links?
+
+"Quite as well as you could have done, at the early age of seven," she
+suggested, smiling.  "Why are you so very anxious we should go to live at
+St.  Andrews?"
+
+The young fellow blushed all over his kindly eager face, and then frankly
+owned he had a motive.  His grandmother's cottage, which she had left
+him, the youngest and her pet always, was now unlet.  He meant, perhaps,
+to go and live at it himself when--he was of age and could afford it; but
+in the mean time he was a poor solitary bachelor, and--and--
+
+"And you would like me to keep your nest warm for you till you can claim
+it?  You want us for your tenants, eh, Davie?"
+
+"Just that.  You've hit it.  Couldn't wish better.  In fact, I have
+already written to my trustees to drive the hardest bargain possible."
+
+Which was an ingenious modification of the truth, as she afterward found;
+but evidently the lad had set his heart upon the thing.  And she?
+
+At first she shrank back from the plan with a shiver almost of fear.  It
+was like having to meet face to face something--some one--long dead.  To
+walk among the old familiar places, to see the old familiar sea and
+shore, nay, to live in the very same house, haunted, as houses are
+sometimes, every room and every nook, with ghosts--yet with such innocent
+ghosts--Could she bear it?
+
+There are some people who have an actual terror of the past--who the
+moment a thing ceases to be pleasurable fly from it, would willingly bury
+it out of sight forever.  But others have no fear of their harmless
+dead--dead hopes, memories, loves--can sit by a grave-side, or look
+behind them at a dim spectral shape, without grief, without dread, only
+with tenderness.  This woman could.
+
+After a long wakeful night, spent in very serious thought for every one's
+good, not excluding her own--since there is a certain point beyond which
+one has no right to forget one's self, and perpetual martyrs rarely make
+very pleasant heads of families--she said to her girls next morning that
+she thought David Dalziel's brilliant idea had a great deal of sense in
+it; St. Andrews was a very nice place, and the cottage there would
+exactly suit their finances, while the tenure upon which he proposed they
+should hold it (from term to term) would also fit in with their undecided
+future; because, as all knew, wherever Helen or Janetta married, each
+would take her fortune and go, leaving Miss Williams with her little
+legacy, above want certainly, but not exactly a millionaire.
+
+These and other points she set before them in her practical fashion, just
+as if her heart did not leap--sometimes with pleasure, sometimes with
+pain--at the very thought of St. Andrews, and as if to see herself sit
+daily and hourly face to face with her old self, the ghost of her own
+youth, would be a quite easy thing.
+
+The girls were delighted.  They left all to Auntie, as was their habit to
+do.  Burdens naturally fall upon the shoulders fitted for them, and which
+seem even to have a faculty for drawing them down there.  Miss Williams's
+new duties had developed in her a whole range of new qualities, dormant
+during her governess life.  Nobody knew better than she how to manage a
+house and guide a family.  The girls soon felt that Auntie might have
+been a mother all her days, she was so thoroughly motherly and they gave
+up every thing into her hands.
+
+So the whole matter was settled, David rejoicing exceedingly, and
+considering it "jolly fun," and quite like a bit out of a play, that his
+former governess should come back as his tenant, and inhabit the old
+familiar cottage.
+
+"And I'll take a run over to see you as soon as the long vacation begins,
+just to teach the young ladies golfing.  Mr. Roy taught all us boys, you
+know; and we'll take that very walk he used to take us, across the Links
+and along the sands to the Eden.  Wasn't it the river Eden, Miss
+Williams?  I am sure I remember it.  I think I am very good at
+remembering."
+
+Other people were also "good at remembering."  During the first few
+weeks after they settled down at St. Andrews the girls noticed that
+Auntie became excessively pale, and was sometimes quite "distrait" and
+bewildered-looking, which was little wonder, considering all she had to
+do and arrange.  But she got better in time.  The cottage was so sweet,
+the sea so fresh, the whole place so charming.  Slowly, Miss Williams's
+ordinary looks returned--the "good" looks which her girls so
+energetically protested she had now, if never before.  They never allowed
+her to confess herself old by caps or shawls, or any of those pretty
+temporary hindrances to the march of Time.  She resisted not; she let
+them dress her as they please, in a reasonable way, for she felt they
+loved her; and as to her age, why, _she_ knew it, and knew that nothing
+could alter it, so what did it matter?  She smiled, and tried to look as
+nice and as young as she could for her girls' sake.
+
+I suppose there are such things as broken or breaking hearts, even at St.
+Andrews, but it is certainly not a likely place for them.  They have
+little chance against the fresh, exhilarating air, strong as new wine;
+the wild sea waves, the soothing sands, giving with health of body
+wholesomeness of mind.  By-and-by the busy world recovered its old face
+to Fortune Williams--not the world as she once dreamed of it, but the
+real world, as she had fought it through it all these years.
+
+"I was ever a fighter, so one fight more!" as she read sometimes in the
+"pretty" poetry her girls were always asking for--read steadily, even
+when she came to the last verse in that passionate "Prospice:"
+
+    "Till, sudden, the worst turns the best to the brave,
+            The black minute's at end:
+    And the elements rage, the fiend voices that rave
+            Shall dwindle, shall blend,
+    Shall change, shall become first a peace, then a joy,
+            Then a light--then thy breast,
+    O thou soul of my soul!  I shall clasp thee again,
+             And with God be the rest!"
+
+To that life to come, during all the burden and heat of the day (no, the
+afternoon, a time, faded, yet hot and busy still, which is often a very
+trying bit of woman's life) she now began yearningly to look.  To meet
+him again, even in old age, or with death between, was her only desire.
+Yet she did her duty still, and enjoyed all she could, knowing that one
+by one the years were hurrying onward, and the night coming, "in which no
+man can work."
+
+Faithful to his promise, about the middle of July David Dalziel appeared,
+in overflowing spirits, having done very well at college.  He was such a
+boy still, in character and behavior; though--as he carefully informed
+the family--now twenty-one and a man, expecting to be treated as such.
+He was their landlord too, and drew up the agreement in his own name,
+meaning to be a lawyer, and having enough to live on--something better
+than bread and salt--"till I can earn a fortune, as I certainly mean to
+do some day."
+
+And he looked at Janetta, who looked down on the parlor carpet--as young
+people will.  Alas!  I fear that the eyes of her anxious friend and
+governess were not half wide enough open to the fact that these young
+folk were no longer boy and girls, and that things might happen--in fact,
+were almost certain to happen--which had happened to herself in her
+youth--making life not quite easy to her, as it seemed to be to these two
+bright girls.
+
+Yet they were so bright, and their relations with David Dalziel were so
+frank and free--in fact, the young fellow himself was such a thoroughly
+good fellow, so very difficult to shut her door against, even if she had
+thought of so doing.  But she did not.  She let him come and go,
+"miserable bachelor" as he proclaimed himself, with all his kith and kin
+across the seas, and cast not a thought to the future, or to the sad
+necessity which sometimes occurs to parents and guardians--of shutting
+the stable door _after_ the steed is stolen.
+
+Especially, as not long after David appeared, there happened a certain
+thing to all but her, and yet to her it was, for the time being, utterly
+overwhelming.  It absorbed all her thoughts into one maddened channel,
+where they writhed and raved and dashed themselves blindly against
+inevitable fate.  For the first time in her life this patient woman felt
+as if endurance were _not_ the right thing; as if wild shrieks of pain,
+bitter outcries against Providence, would be somehow easier, better:
+might reach His throne, so that even now He might listen and hear.
+
+The thing was this.  One day, waiting for some one beside the laurel bush
+at her gate--the old familiar bush, though it had grown and grown till
+its branches, which used to drag on the gravel, now covered the path
+entirely--she overheard David explaining to Janetta how he and his
+brothers and Mr. Roy had made the wooden letter-box, which actually
+existed still, though in very ruinous condition.
+
+"And no wonder, after fifteen years and more.  It is fully that old,
+isn't it Miss Williams?  You will have to superannuate it shortly, and
+return to the old original letter-box--my letter-box, which I remember so
+well.  I do believe I could find it still."
+
+Kneeling down, he thrust his hand through the thick barricade of leaves
+into the very heart of the tree.
+
+"I've found it; I declare I've found it; the identical hole in the trunk
+where I used to put all my treasures--my 'magpie's nest,' as they called
+it, where I hid every thing I could find.  What a mischievous young scamp
+I was!"
+
+"Very," said Miss Williams, affectionately, laying a gentle hand on his
+curls--"pretty" still, though cropped down to the frightful modern
+fashion.  Secretly she was rather proud of him, this tall young fellow,
+whom she had had on her lap many a time.
+
+"Curious! It all comes back to me--even to the very last thing I hid
+here, the day before we left, which was a letter."
+
+"A letter!"--Miss Williams slightly started--"what letter?"
+
+"One I found lying under the laurel bush, quite hidden by its leaves.  It
+was all soaked with rain.  I dried it in the sun, and then put it in my
+letter-box, telling nobody, for I meant to deliver it myself at the hall
+door with a loud ring--an English postman's ring.  Our Scotch one used to
+blow his horn, you remember?"
+
+"Yes," said Miss Williams.  She was leaning against the fatal bush, pale
+to the very lips, but her veil was down--nobody saw.  "What sort of a
+letter was it, David?  Who was it to?  Did you notice the handwriting?"
+
+"Why, I was such a little fellow," and he looked up in wonder and
+slight concern, "how could I remember?  Some letter that somebody had
+dropped, perhaps, in taking the rest out of the box.  It could not
+matter--certainly not now.  You would not bring my youthful misdeeds up
+against me, would you?"  And he turned up a half-comical, half-pitiful
+face.
+
+Fortune's first impulse--what was it?  She hardly knew.  But her second
+was that safest, easiest thing--now grown into the habit and refuge of
+her whole life--silence. "No, it certainly does not matter now."
+
+A deadly sickness came over her.  What if this letter were Robert Roy's,
+asking her that question which he said no man ought ever to ask a woman
+twice?  And she had never seen it--never answered it.  So, of course, he
+went away.  Her whole life--nay, two whole lives--had been destroyed, and
+by a mere accident, the aimless mischief of a child's innocent hand.  She
+could never prove it, but it might have been so. And, alas! alas!  God,
+the merciful God, had allowed it to be so.
+
+Which is the worst, to wake up suddenly and find that our life has been
+wrecked by our own folly, mistake, or sin, or that it has been done for
+us either directly by the hand of Providence, or indirectly through some
+innocent--nay, possibly not innocent, but intentional--hand?  In both
+cases the agony is equally sharp--the sharper because irremediable.
+
+All these thoughts, vivid as lightning, and as rapid, darted through poor
+Fortune's brain during the few moments that she stood with her hand on
+David's shoulder, while he drew from his magpie's nest a heterogeneous
+mass of rubbish--pebbles, snail shells, bits of glass and china,
+fragments even of broken toys.
+
+"Just look there.  What ghosts of my childhood, as people would say! Dead
+and buried, though."  And he laughed merrily--he in the full tide and
+glory of his youth.
+
+Fortune Williams looked down on his happy face.  This lad that really
+loved her would not have hurt her for the world, and her determination
+was made.  He should never know any thing.  Nobody should ever know any
+thing.  The "dead and buried" of fifteen years ago must be dead and
+buried forever.
+
+"David," she said, "just out of curiosity, put your hand down to the very
+bottom of that hole, and see if you can fish up the mysterious letter."
+
+Then she waited, just as one would wait at the edge of some long-closed
+grave to see if the dead could possibly be claimed as our dead, even if
+but a handful of unhonored bones.
+
+No, it was not possible. Nobody could expect it after such a lapse of
+time.  Something David pulled out--it might be paper, it might be rags.
+It was too dry to be moss or earth, but no one could have recognized it
+as a letter.
+
+"Give it me," said Miss Williams, holding out her hand.
+
+David put the little heap of "rubbish" therein.  She regarded it a
+moment, and then scattered it on the gravel--"dust to dust," as we say in
+our funeral service.  But she said nothing.
+
+At the moment the young people they were waiting for came, to the other
+side of the gate, clubs in hand.  David and the two Miss Moseleys had by
+this time become perfectly mad for golf, as is the fashion of the place.
+The proceeded across the Links, Miss Williams accompanying them, as in
+duty bound.  But she said she was "rather tired," and leaving them in
+charge of another chaperon--if chaperons are ever wanted or needed in
+those merry Links of St. Andrews--came home alone.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 5
+
+   "Shall sharpest pathos blight us, doing no wrong?"
+
+So writes our greatest living poet, in one of the noblest poems he ever
+penned.  And he speaks truth.  The real canker of human existence is not
+misery, but sin.
+
+After the first cruel pang, the bitter wail; after her lost life--and we
+have here but one life to lose!--her lost happiness, for she knew now
+that though she might be very peaceful, very content, no real happiness
+ever had come, ever could come to her in this world, except Robert Roy's
+love--after this, Fortune sat down, folded her hands, and bowed her head
+to the waves of sorrow that kept sweeping over her, not for one day or
+two days, but for many days and weeks--the anguish, not of patience, but
+regret--sharp, stinging, helpless regret.  They came rolling in, those
+remorseless billows, just like the long breakers on the sands of St.
+Andrews.  Hopeless to resist, she could only crouch down and let them
+pass.  "All Thy waves have gone over me."
+
+Of course this is spoken metaphorically.  Outwardly, Miss Williams
+neither sat still nor folded her hands.  She was seen every where as
+usual, her own proper self, as the world knew it; but underneath all that
+was the self that she knew, and God knew.  No one else.  No one ever
+could have known, except Robert Roy, had things been different from what
+they were--from what God had apparently willed them to be.
+
+A sense of inevitable fate came over her.  It was now nearly two years
+since that letter from Mr. Roy of Shanghai, and no more tidings had
+reached her. She began to think none ever would reach her now.  She
+ceased to hope or to fear, but let herself drift on, accepting the small
+pale pleasures of every day, and never omitting one of its duties.  One
+only thought remained; which, contrasted with the darkness of all else,
+often gleamed out as an actual joy.
+
+If the lost letter really was Robert Roy's--and though she had no
+positive proof, she had the strongest conviction, remembering the thick
+fog of that Tuesday morning, how easily Archy might have dropped it out
+of his hand, and how, during those days of soaking rain, it might have
+lain, unobserved by any one, under the laurel branches, till the child
+picked it up and hid it as he said--if Robert Roy lad written to her,
+written in any way, he was at least not faithless.  And he might have
+loved her then.  Afterward, he might have married, or died; she might
+never find him again in this world, or if she found him, he might be
+totally changed: still, whatever happened, he had loved her.  The fact
+remained.  No power in earth or heaven could alter it.
+
+And sometimes, even yet, a half-superstitious feeling came over her that
+all this was not for nothing--the impulse which had impelled her to write
+to Shanghai, the other impulse, or concatenation of circumstances, which
+had floated her, after so many changes, back to the old place, the old
+life.  It looked like chance, but was it?  Is any thing chance?  Does not
+our own will, soon or late, accomplish for us what we desire?  That is,
+when we try to reconcile it to the will of God.
+
+She had accepted His will all these years, seeing no reason for it; often
+feeling it very hard and cruel, but still accepting it.  And now?
+
+I am writing no sensational story.  In it are no grand dramatic points;
+no _Deus ex machina_ appears to make all smooth; every event--if it can
+boast of aught so large as an event--follows the other in perfectly
+natural succession.  For I have always noticed that in life there are
+rarely any startling "effects," but gradual evolutions.  Nothing happens
+by accident; and, the premises once granted, nothing happens but what was
+quite sure to happen, following those premises.  We novelists do not
+"make up" our stories; they make themselves.  Nor do human beings invent
+their own lives; they do but use up the materials given to them--some
+well, some ill; some wisely, some foolishly; but, in the main, the dictum
+of the Preacher is not far from the truth, "All things come alike to
+all."
+
+A whole winter had passed by, and the spring twilights were beginning to
+lengthen, tempting Miss Williams and her girls to linger another half
+hour before they lit the lamp for the evening.  They were doing so,
+cozily chatting over the fire, after the fashion of a purely feminine
+household, when there was a sudden announcement that a gentleman, with
+two little boys, wanted to see Miss Williams.  He declined to give his
+name, and said he would not detain her more than a few minutes.
+
+"Let him come in here," Fortune was just about to say, when she reflected
+that it might be some law business which concerned her girls, whom she
+had grown so tenderly anxious to save from any trouble and protect from
+every care.  "No, I will go and speak to him myself."
+
+She rose and walked quietly into the parlor, already shadowed into
+twilight: a neat, compact little person, dressed in soft gray homespun,
+with a pale pink bow on her throat, and another in her cap--a pretty
+little fabric of lace and cambric, which, being now the fashion, her
+girls had at last condescended to let her wear.  She had on a black silk
+apron, with pockets, into one of which she had hastily thrust her work,
+and her thimble was yet on her finger.  This was the figure on which the
+eyes of the gentleman rested as he turned around.
+
+Miss Williams lifted her eyes inquiringly to his face--a bearded face,
+thin and dark.
+
+"I beg your pardon, I have not the pleasure of knowing you; I--"
+
+She suddenly stopped.  Something in the height, the turn of the head, the
+crisp dark hair, in which were not more than a few threads of gray, while
+hers had so many now, reminded her of--someone, the bare thought of whom
+made her feel dizzy and blind.
+
+"No," he said, "I did not expect you would know me; and indeed, until I
+saw you, I was not sure you were the right Miss Williams.  Possibly you
+may remember my name--Roy, Robert Roy."
+
+Faces alter, manners, gestures; but the one thing which never changes is
+a voice.  Had Fortune heard this one--ay, at her last dying hour, when
+all worldly sounds were fading away--she would have recognized it at
+once.
+
+The room being full of shadow, no one could see any thing distinctly; and
+it was as well.
+
+In another minute, she had risen, and held out her hand.
+
+"I am very glad to see you, Mr. Roy.  How long have you been in England?
+Are these your little boys?"
+
+Without answering, he took her hand--a quiet friendly grasp, just as it
+used to be.  And so, without another word, the gulf of fifteen--seventeen
+years was overleaped, and Robert Roy and Fortune Williams had met once
+more.
+
+If anybody had told her when she rose that morning what would happen
+before night, and happen so naturally, too, she would have said it was
+impossible.  That, after a very few minutes, she could have sat there,
+talking to him as to any ordinary acquaintance, seemed incredible, yet it
+was truly so.
+
+"I was in great doubts whether the Miss Williams who, they told me, lived
+here was yourself or some other lady; but I thought I would take the
+chance. Because, were it yourself, I thought, for the sake of old times,
+you might be willing to advise me concerning my two little boys, whom I
+have brought to St. Andrews for their education."
+
+"Your sons, are they?"
+
+"No.  I am not married."
+
+There was a pause, and then he told the little fellows to go and look out
+of the window, while he talked with Miss Williams.  He spoke to them in a
+fatherly tone; there was nothing whatever of the young man left in him
+now. His voice was sweet, his manner grave, his whole appearance
+unquestionably "middle-aged."
+
+"They are orphans.  Their name is Roy, though they are not my relatives,
+or so distant that it matters nothing.  But their father was a very good
+friend of mine, which matters a great deal.  He died suddenly, and his
+wife soon after, leaving their affairs in great confusion.  Hearing this,
+far up in the Australian bush, where I have been a sheep-farmer for some
+years, I came round by Shanghai, but too late to do more than take these
+younger boys and bring them home.  The rest of the family are disposed
+of.  These two will be henceforward mine.  That is all."
+
+A very little "all", and wholly about other people; scarcely a word about
+himself.  Yet he seemed to think it sufficient, and as if she had no
+possible interest in hearing more.
+
+Cursorily he mentioned having received her letter, which was "friendly
+and kind;" that it had followed him to Australia, and then back to
+Shanghai. But his return home seemed to have been entirely without
+reference to it--or to her.
+
+So she let all pass, and accepted things as they were.  It was enough.
+When a ship-wrecked man sees land--ever so barren a land, ever so
+desolate a shore--he does not argue within himself, "Is this my haven?"
+he simply puts into it, and lets himself be drifted ashore.
+
+It took but a few minutes more to explain further what Mr. Roy wanted--a
+home for his two "poor little fellows."
+
+"They are so young still--and they have lost their mother.  They would do
+very well in their classes here, if some kind woman would take them and
+look after them.  I felt, if the Miss Williams I heard of were really the
+Miss Williams I used to know, I could trust them to her, more than to any
+woman I ever knew."
+
+"Thank you."  And then she explained that she had already two girls in
+charge.  She could say nothing till she had consulted them.  In the mean
+time--
+
+Just then the bell sounded.  The world was going on just as usual--this
+strange, commonplace, busy, regardless world!
+
+"I beg your pardon for intruding on your time so long," said Mr. Roy,
+rising.  "I will leave you to consider the question, and you will let me
+know as soon as you can.  I am staying at the hotel here, and shall
+remain until I can leave my boys settled.  Good evening."
+
+Again she felt the grasp of the hand: that ghostly touch, so vivid in
+dreams for these years, and now a warm living reality.  It was too much.
+She could not bear it.
+
+"If you would care to stay," she said--and though it was too dark to see
+her, he must have heard the faint tremble in her voice--"our tea is
+ready.  Let me introduce you to my girls, and they can make friends with
+your little boys."
+
+The matter was soon settled, and the little party ushered into the
+bright warm parlor, glittering with all the appendages of that pleasant
+meal--essentially feminine--a "hungry" tea.  Robert Roy put his hand over
+his eyes as if the light dazzled him, and then sat down in the arm-chair
+which Miss Williams brought forward, turning as he did so to look up at
+her--right in her face--with his grave, soft, earnest eyes.
+
+"Thank you.  How like that was to your old ways!  How very little you are
+changed!"
+
+This was the only reference he made, in the slightest degree, to former
+times.
+
+And she?
+
+She went out of the room, ostensibly to get a pot of guava jelly for the
+boys--found it after some search, and then sat down.
+
+Only in her store closet, with her house-keeping things all about her.
+But it was a quiet place, and the door was shut.
+
+There is, in one of those infinitely pathetic Old Testament stories, a
+sentence--"And he sought where to weep: and he entered into his chamber
+and wept there."
+
+She did not weep, this woman, not a young woman now: she only tried
+during her few minutes of solitude to gather up her thoughts, to realize
+what had happened to her, and who it was that sat in the next room--under
+her roof--at her very fireside.  Then she clasped her hands with a sudden
+sob, wild as any of the emotions of her girlhood.
+
+"Oh, my love, my love, the love of all my life!  Thank God!"
+
+The evening passed, not very merrily, but peacefully; the girls, who had
+heard a good deal of Mr. Roy from David Dalziel, doing their best to be
+courteous to him, and to amuse his shy little boys.  He did not stay
+long, evidently having a morbid dread of "intruding," and his manner was
+exceedingly reserved, almost awkward sometimes, of which he seemed
+painfully conscious, apologizing for being "unaccustomed to civilization
+and to ladies' society," having during his life in the bush sometimes
+passed months at a time without ever seeing a woman's face.
+
+"And women are your only civilizers," said he.  "That is why I wish my
+motherless lads to be taken into this household of yours, Miss Williams,
+which looks so--so comfortable," and he glanced round the pretty parlor
+with something very like a sigh.  "I hope you will consider the matter,
+and let me know as soon as you have made up your mind."
+
+"Which I will do very soon," she answered.
+
+"Yes, I know you will.  And your decision once made, you never change."
+
+"Very seldom.  I am not one of those who are 'given to change.'"
+
+"Nor I."
+
+He stood a moment, lingering in the pleasant, lightsome warmth, as if
+loath to quit it, then took his little boys in either hand and went away.
+There was a grand consultation that night, for Miss Williams never did
+any thing without speaking to her girls; but still it was merely nominal.
+They always left the decision to her.  And her heart yearned over the two
+little Roys, orphans, yet children still; while Helen and Janetta were
+growing up and needing very little from her except a general motherly
+supervision. Besides, _he_ asked it.  He had said distinctly that she was
+the only woman to whom he could thoroughly trust his boys.  So--she took
+them.
+
+After a few days the new state of things grew so familiar that it seemed
+as if it had lasted for months, the young Roys going to and fro to their
+classes and their golf-playing, just as the young Dalziels had done; and
+Mr. Roy coming about the house, almost daily, exactly as Robert Roy had
+used to do of old.  Sometimes it was to Fortune Williams the strangest
+reflex of former times; only--with a difference.
+
+Unquestionably he was very much changed.  In outward appearance more even
+than the time accounted for.  No man can knock about the world, in
+different lands and climates, for seventeen years, without bearing
+the marks of it.  Though still under fifty, he had all the air of an
+"elderly" man, and had grown a little "peculiar" in his ways, his modes
+of thought and speech--except that he spoke so very little.  He
+accounted for this by his long lonely life in Australia, which had
+produced, he said, an almost unconquerable habit of silence.  Altogether,
+he was far more of an old bachelor than she was of an old maid, and
+Fortune felt this: felt, too, that in spite of her gray hairs she was in
+reality quite as young as he--nay, sometimes younger; for her innocent,
+simple, shut-up life had kept her young.
+
+And he, what had his life been, in so far as he gradually betrayed it?
+Restless, struggling; a perpetual battle with the world; having to hold
+his own, and fight his way inch by inch--he who was naturally a born
+student, to whom the whirl of a business career was especially obnoxious.
+What had made him choose it?  Once chosen, probably he could not help
+himself; besides, he was not one to put his shoulder to the wheel and
+then draw back.  Evidently, with the grain or against the grain, he had
+gone on with it; this sad, strange, wandering life, until he had "made
+his fortune," for he told her so.  But he said no more; whether he meant
+to stay at home and spend it, or go out again to the antipodes (and he
+spoke of those far lands without any distaste, even with a lingering
+kindliness, for indeed he seemed to have no unkindly thought of any place
+or person in all the world), his friend did not know.
+
+His friend.  That was the word.  No other.  After her first outburst of
+uncontrollable emotion, to call Robert Roy her "love," even in fancy, or
+to expect that he would deport himself in any lover-like way, became
+ridiculous, pathetically ridiculous.  She was sure of that.  Evidently no
+idea of the kind entered his mind.  She was Miss Williams, and he was Mr.
+Roy--two middle-aged people, each with their different responsibilities,
+their altogether separate lives; and, hard as her own had been, it seemed
+as if his had been the harder of the two--ay, though he was now a rich
+man, and she still little better than a poor governess.
+
+She did not think very much of worldly things, but still she was aware of
+this fact--that he was rich and she was poor.  She did not suffer herself
+to dwell upon it, but the consciousness was there, sustained with a
+certain feeling called "proper pride."  The conviction was forced upon
+her in the very first days of Mr. Roy's return--that to go back to the
+days of their youth was as impossible as to find primroses in September.
+
+If, indeed, there were any thing to go back to.  Sometimes she felt, if
+she could only have found out that, all the rest would be easy, painless.
+If she could only have said to him, "Did you write me the letter you
+promised? Did you _ever_ love me"?  But that one question was, of course,
+utterly impossible.  He made no reference whatever to old things, but
+seemed resolved to take up the present a very peaceful and happy present
+it soon grew to be--just as if there were no past at all.  So perforce
+did she.
+
+But, as I think I have said once before, human nature is weak, and there
+were days when the leaves were budding, and the birds singing in the
+trees, when the sun was shining and the waves rolling in upon the sands,
+just as they rolled in that morning over those two lines of foot-marks,
+which might have walked together through life; and who knows what mutual
+strength, help, and comfort this might have proved to both?--then it was,
+for one at least, rather hard.
+
+Especially when, bit by bit, strange ghostly fragments of his old self
+began to re-appear in Robert Roy: his keen delight in nature, his love
+of botanical or geological excursions.  Often he would go wandering down
+the familiar shore for hours in search of marine animals for the girls'
+aquarium, and then would come and sit down at their tea-table, reading or
+talking, so like the Robert Roy of old that one of the little group, who
+always crept in the background, felt dizzy and strange, as if all her
+later years had been a dream, and she were living her youth over again,
+only with the difference aforesaid: a difference sharp as that between
+death and life--yet with something of the peace of death in it.
+
+Sometimes, when they met at the innocent little tea parties which St.
+Andrews began to give--for of course in that small community every body
+knew every body, and all their affairs to boot, often a good deal better
+than they did themselves, so that there was great excitement and no end
+of speculation over Mr. Roy--sometimes meeting, as they were sure to do,
+and walking home together, with the moonlight shining down the empty
+streets, and the stars out by myriads over the silent distant sea, while
+the nearer tide came washing in upon the sands--all was so like, so
+frightfully like, old times that it was very sore to bear.
+
+But, as I have said, Miss Williams was Miss Williams, and Mr. Roy Mr.
+Roy, and there were her two girls always besides them; also his two boys,
+who soon took to "Auntie" as naturally as if they were really hers, or
+she theirs.
+
+"I think they had better call you so, as the others do," said Mr. Roy one
+day. "Are these young ladies really related to you?"
+
+"No; but I promised their father on his death-bed to take charge of them.
+That is all."
+
+"He is dead, then.  Was he a great friend of yours?"
+
+She felt the blood flashing all over her face, but she answered,
+steadily: "Not a very intimate friend, but I respected him exceedingly.
+He was a good man.  His daughters had a heavy loss when he died, and I
+am glad to be a comfort to them so long as they need me."
+
+"I have no doubt of it."
+
+This was the only question he ever asked her concerning her past life,
+though, by slow degrees, he told her a good deal of his own.  Enough to
+make her quite certain, even if her keen feminine instinct had not
+already divined the fact, that whatever there might have been in it of
+suffering, there was nothing in the smallest degree either to be ashamed
+of or to hide.  What Robert Roy of Shanghai had written about him had
+continued true.  As he said one day to her, "We never stand still.  We
+either grow better or worse. You have not grown worse."
+
+Nor had he.  All that was good in him had developed, all his little
+faults had toned down.  The Robert Roy of today was slightly different
+from, but in no wise inferior to, the Robert Roy of her youth.  She saw
+it, and rejoiced in the seeing.
+
+What he saw in her she could not tell.  He seemed determined to rest
+wholly in the present, and take out of it all the peace and pleasantness
+that he could.  In the old days, when the Dalziel boys were naughty, and
+Mrs. Dalziel tiresome; and work was hard, and holidays were few, and life
+was altogether the rough road that it often seems to the young, he had
+once called her "Pleasantness and Peace."  He never said so now; but
+sometimes he looked it.
+
+Many an evening he came and sat by her fireside, in the arm-chair, which
+seemed by right to have devolved upon him; never staying very long, for
+he was still nervously sensitive about being "in the way," but making
+himself and them all very cheerful and happy while he did stay.  Only
+sometimes, when Fortune's eyes stole to his face--not a young man's
+face now--she fancied she could trace, besides the wrinkles, a sadness,
+approaching to hardness, that never used to be.  But again, when
+interested in some book or other (he said it was delicious to take to
+reading again, after the long fast of years), he would look around to her
+for sympathy, or utter one of his dry drolleries, the old likeness, the
+old manner and tone would come back so vividly that she started, hardly
+knowing whether the feeling it gave her was pleasure or pain.
+
+But beneath both, lying so deep down that neither he nor any one could
+ever suspect its presence, was something else.  Can many waters quench
+love?  Can the deep sea drown it?  What years of silence can wither it?
+What frost of age can freeze it down?  God only knows.
+
+Hers was not like a girl's love.  Those two girls sitting by her day
+after day would have smiled at it, and at its object.  Between themselves
+they considered Mr. Roy somewhat of an "old fogy;" were very glad to make
+use of him now and then, in the great dearth of gentlemen at St. Andrews,
+and equally glad afterward to turn him over to Auntie, who was always
+kind to him.  Auntie was so kind to every body.
+
+Kind?  Of course she was, and above all when he looked worn and tired.
+He did so sometimes: as if life had ceased to be all pleasure, and the
+constant mirth of these young folks was just a little too much for him.
+Then she ingeniously used to save him from it and them for a while.  They
+never knew--there was no need for them to know--how tenfold deeper than
+all the passion of youth is the tenderness with which a woman cleaves to
+the man she loves when she sees him growing old.
+
+Thus the days went by till Easter came, announced by the sudden
+apparition, one evening, of David Dalziel.
+
+That young man, when, the very first day of his holidays, he walked in
+upon his friends at St. Andrews, and found sitting at their tea-table a
+strange gentleman, did not like it at all--scarcely even when he found
+out that the intruder was his old friend, Mr. Roy.
+
+"And you never told me a word about this," said he, reproachfully, to
+Miss Williams.  "Indeed, you have not written to me for weeks; you have
+forgotten all about me."
+
+She winced at the accusation, for it was true.  Beyond her daily domestic
+life, which she still carefully fulfilled, she had in truth forgotten
+every thing. Outside people were ceasing to affect her at all.  What _he_
+liked, what _he_ wanted to do, day by day--whether he looked ill or well,
+happy or unhappy, only he rarely looked either--this was slowly growing
+to be once more her whole world.  With a sting of compunction, and
+another, half of fear, save that there was nothing to dread, nothing that
+could affect any body beyond herself--Miss Williams roused herself to
+give young Dalziel an especially hearty welcome, and to make his little
+visit as happy as possible.
+
+Small need of that; he was bent on taking all things pleasantly.  Coming
+now near the end of a very creditable college career, being of age and
+independent, with the cozy little fortune that his old grandmother had
+left him, the young fellow was disposed to see every thing _couleur de
+rose_, and this feeling communicated itself to all his friends.
+
+It was a pleasant time.  Often in years to come did that little knot of
+friends, old and young, look back upon it as upon one of those rare
+bright bits in life when the outside current of things moves smoothly on,
+while underneath it there may or may not be, but generally there is, a
+secret or two which turns the most trivial events into sweet and dear
+remembrances forever.
+
+David's days being few enough, they took pains not to lose one, but
+planned excursions here, there, and every where--to Dundee, to Perth, to
+Elie, to Balcarras--all together, children, young folks, and elders: that
+admirable _melange_ which generally makes such expeditions "go off" well.
+Theirs did, especially the last one, to the old house of Balcarras, where
+they got admission to the lovely quaint garden, and Janetta sang "Auld
+Robin Gray" on the spot where it was written.
+
+She had a sweet voice, and there seemed to have come into it a pathos
+which Fortune had never remarked before.  The touching, ever old, ever
+new story made the young people quite quiet for a few minutes; and then
+they all wandered away together, Helen promising to look after the
+two wild young Roys, to see that they did not kill themselves in some
+unforeseen way, as, aided and abetted by David and Janetta, they went on
+a scramble up Balcarras Hill.
+
+"Will you go too?" said Fortune to Robert Roy.  "I have the provisions to
+see to; besides, I can not scramble as well as the rest.  I am not quite
+so young as I used to be."
+
+"Nor I," he answered, as, taking her basket, he walked silently on beside
+her.
+
+It was a curious feeling, and all to come out of a foolish song; but if
+ever she felt thankful to God from the bottom of her heart that she had
+said "No," at once and decisively, to the good man who slept at peace
+beneath the church-yard elms, it was at that moment.  But the feeling
+and the moment passed by immediately.  Mr. Roy took up the thread of
+conversation where he had left it off--it was some bookish or ethical
+argument, such as he would go on with for hours; so she listened to him
+in silence.  They walked on, the larks singing and the primroses blowing.
+All the world was saying to itself, "I am young; I am happy;" but she
+said nothing at all.
+
+People grow used to pain; it dies down at intervals, and becomes quite
+bearable, especially when no one see it or guesses at it.
+
+They had a very merry picnic on the hilltop, enjoying those mundane
+consolations of food and drink which Auntie was expected always to have
+forth-coming, and which those young people did by no means despise, nor
+Mr. Roy neither.  He made himself so very pleasant with them all, looking
+thoroughly happy, and baring his head to the spring breeze with the
+eagerness of a boy.
+
+"Oh, this is delicious!  It makes me feel young again.  There's nothing
+like home.  One thing I am determined upon: I will never quit bonnie
+Scotland more."
+
+It was the first clear intimation he had given of his intentions
+regarding the future, but it thrilled her with measureless content.  If
+only he would not go abroad again, if she might have him within reach for
+the rest of her days--able to see him, to talk to him, to know where he
+was and what he was doing, instead of being cut off from him by those
+terrible dividing seas--it was enough!  Nothing could be so bitter as
+what had been; and whatever was the mystery of their youth, which it was
+impossible to unravel now--whether he had ever loved, or loved her and
+crushed it down and forgotten it, or only felt very kindly and cordially
+to her, as he did now, the past was--well, only the past!--and the
+future lay still before her, not unsweet.  When we are young, we insist
+on having every thing or nothing; when we are older, we learn that "every
+thing" is an impossible and "nothing" a somewhat bitter word.  We are
+able to stoop meekly and pick up the fragments of the children's bread,
+without feeling ourselves to be altogether "dogs".
+
+Fortune went home that night with a not unhappy, almost a satisfied,
+heart. She sat back in the carriage, close beside that other heart which
+she believed to be the truest in all the world, though it had never been
+hers. There was a tremendous clatter of talking and laughing and fun of
+all sorts, between David Dalziel and the little Roys on the box, and the
+Misses Moseley sitting just below them, as they had insisted doing, no
+doubt finding the other two members of the party a little "slow."
+
+Nevertheless Mr. Roy and Miss Williams took their part in laughing with
+their young people, and trying to keep them in order; though after a
+while both relapsed into silence.  One did at least, for it had been a
+long day and she was tired, being, as she had said, "not so young as she
+had been."  But if any of these lively young people had asked her the
+question whether she was happy, or at least contented, she would have
+never hesitated about her reply.  Young, gay, and prosperous as they
+were, I doubt if Fortune Williams would have changed lots with any one of
+them all.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 6
+
+As it befell, that day at Balcarras was the last of the bright days, in
+every sense, for the time being.  Wet weather set in, as even the most
+partial witness must allow does occasionally happen in Scotland, and the
+domestic barometer seemed to go down accordingly.  The girls grumbled at
+being kept in-doors, and would willingly have gone out golfing under
+umbrellas, but Auntie was remorseless.  They were delicate girls at best,
+so that her watch over them was never-ceasing, and her patience
+inexhaustible.
+
+David Dalziel also was in a very trouble-some mood, quite unusual for
+him.  He came and went, complained bitterly that the girls were not
+allowed to go out with him; abused the place, the climate, and did all
+those sort of bearish things which young gentlemen are sometimes in the
+habit of doing, when--when that wicked little boy whom they read about at
+school and college makes himself known to them as a pleasant, or
+unpleasant, reality.
+
+Miss Williams, whom, I am afraid, was far too simple a woman for the new
+generation, which has become so extraordinarily wise and wide-awake,
+opened her eyes and wondered why David was so unlike his usual self.  Mr.
+Roy, too, to whom he behaved worse than to any one else, only the elder
+man quietly ignored it all, and was very patient and gentle with the
+restless, ill-tempered boy--Mr. Roy even remarked that he thought David
+would be happier at his work again; idling was a bad thing for young
+fellows at his age, or any age.
+
+At last it came out, the bitterness which rankled in the poor lad's
+breast; with another secret, which, foolish woman that she was, Miss
+Williams had never in the smallest degree suspected.  Very odd that she
+had not, but so it was.  We all find it difficult to realize the moment
+when our children cease to be children.  Still more difficult is it for
+very serious and earnest natures to recognize that there are other
+natures who take things in a totally different way, and yet it may be the
+right and natural way for them.  Such is the fact; we must learn it, and
+the sooner we learn it, the better.
+
+One day, when the rain had a little abated, David appeared, greatly
+disappointed to find the girls had gone out, down to the West Sands with
+Mr. Roy.
+
+"Always Mr. Roy!  I am sick of his very name," muttered David, and then
+caught Miss Williams by the dress as she was rising.  She had a gentle
+but rather dignified way with her of repressing bad manners in young
+people, either by perfect silence, or by putting the door between her
+and them.  "Don't go!  One never can get a quiet word with you, you are
+always so preternaturally busy."
+
+It was true.  To be always busy was her only shield against--certain
+things which the young man was never likely to know, and would not
+understand if he did know.
+
+"Do sit down, if you ever can sit down, for a minute," said he,
+imploringly; "I want to speak to you seriously, very seriously."
+
+She sat down, a little uneasy.  The young fellow was such a good fellow;
+and yet he might have got into a scrape of some sort.  Debt, perhaps,
+for he was a trifle extravagant; but then life had been all roses to
+him.  He had never known a want since he was born.
+
+"Speak, then, David; I am listening.  Nothing very wrong, I hope!" said
+she, with a smile.
+
+"Nothing at all wrong, only--When is Mr. Roy going away"?
+
+The question was so unexpected that she felt her color changing a little;
+not much, she was too old for that.
+
+"Mr. Roy leaving St. Andrews, you mean?  How can I tell?  He has never
+told me.  Why do you ask?"
+
+"Because until he gone, I stay," said the young man, doggedly.  "I'm not
+going back to Oxford leaving him master of the field.  I have stood him
+as long as I possibly can, and I'll not stand him any longer."
+
+"David! you forget yourself."
+
+"There--now you are offended; I know you are, when you draw yourself up
+in that way, my dear little auntie.  But just hear me.  You are such an
+innocent woman, you don't know the world as men do.  Can't you see--no,
+of course you can't--that very soon all St. Andrews will be talking about
+you?"
+
+"About me?"
+
+"Not about you exactly, but about the family.  A single man--a marrying
+man, as all the world says he is, or ought to be, with his money--can not
+go in and out, like a tame cat, in a household of women, without having,
+or being supposed to have--ahem!--intentions.  I assure you"--and he
+swung himself on the arm of her chair, and looked into her face with an
+angry earnestness quite unmistakable--"I assure you, I never go into the
+club without being asked, twenty times a day, which of the Miss Moseleys
+Mr. Roy is going to marry."
+
+"Which of the Miss Moseleys Mr. Roy is going to marry!"
+
+She repeated the words, as if to gain time and to be certain she heard
+them rightly.  No fear of her blushing now; every pulse in her heart
+stood dead still; and then she nerved herself to meet the necessity of
+the occasion.
+
+"David, you surely do not consider what you are saying.  This is a most
+extraordinary idea."
+
+"It is a most extraordinary idea; in fact, I call it ridiculous,
+monstrous: an old battered fellow like him, who has knocked about the
+world, Heaven knows where, all these years, to come home, and, because he
+has got a lot of money, think to go and marry one of these nice, pretty
+girls.  They wouldn't have him, I believe that; but nobody else believes
+it; and every body seems to think it the most natural thing possible.
+What do you say?"
+
+"I?"
+
+"Surely you don't think it right, or even possible?  But, Auntie, it
+might turn out a rather awkward affair, and you ought to take my advice,
+and stop it in time."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Why, by stepping him out of the house.  You and he are great friends: if
+he had any notion of marrying, I suppose he would mention it to you--he
+ought.  It would be a cowardly trick to come and steal one of your
+chickens from under your wing.  Wouldn't it?  Do say something, instead
+of merely echoing what I say.  It really is a serious matter, though you
+don't think so."
+
+"Yes, I do think so," said Miss Williams, at last; "and I would stop it
+if I thought I had any right.  But Mr. Roy is quite able to manage his
+own affairs; and he is not so very old--not more than five-and-twenty
+years older than--Helen."
+
+"Bother Helen!  I beg her pardon, she is a dear good girl.  But do you
+think any man would look at Helen when there was Janetta?"
+
+It was out now, out with a burning blush over all the lad's honest
+face, and the sudden crick-crack of a pretty Indian paper-cutter he
+unfortunately was twiddling in his fingers.  Miss Williams must have been
+blind indeed not to have guessed the state of the case.
+
+"What!  Janetta?  Oh, David!" was all she said.
+
+He nodded.  "Yes, that's it, just it.  I thought you must have found it
+out long ago: though I kept myself to myself pretty close, still you
+might have guessed."
+
+"I never did.  I had not the remotest idea.  Oh, how remiss I have been!
+It is all my fault."
+
+"Excuse me, I can not see that it is any body's fault, or any body's
+misfortune, either," said the young fellow, with a not unbecoming pride.
+"I hope I should not be a bad husband to any girl, when it comes to that.
+But it has not come; I have never said a single word to her.  I wanted to
+be quite clear of Oxford, and in a way to win my own position first.  And
+really we are so very jolly together as it is.  What are you smiling
+for?"
+
+She could not help it.  There was something so funny in the whole affair.
+They seemed such babies, playing at love; and their love-making, if such
+it was, had been carried on in such an exceedingly open and lively way,
+not a bit of tragedy about it, rather genteel comedy, bordering on farce.
+It was such a contrast to--certain other love stories that she had known,
+quite buried out of sight now.
+
+Gentle "Auntie"--the grave maiden lady, the old hen with all these young
+ducklings who would take to the water so soon--held out her hand to the
+impetuous David.
+
+"I don't know what to say to you, my boy: you really are little more than
+a boy, and to be taking upon yourself the responsibilities of life so
+soon! Still, I am glad you have said nothing to her about it yet.  She is
+a mere child, only eighteen."
+
+"Quite old enough to marry, and to marry Mr. Roy even, the St. Andrews
+folks think.  But I won't stand it.  I won't tamely sit by and see her
+sacrificed.  He might persuade her; he has a very winning way with him
+sometimes.  Auntie, I have not spoken, but I won't promise not to speak.
+It is all very well for you; you are old, and your blood runs cold, as
+you said to us one day--no, I don't mean that; you are a real brick
+still, and you'll never be old to us, but you are not in love, and you
+can't understand what it is to be a young fellow like me to see an old
+fellow like Roy coming in and just walking over the course.  But he
+sha'nt do it!  Long ago, when I was quite a lad, I made up my mind to
+get her; and get her I will, spite of Mr. Roy or any body."
+
+Fortune was touched.  That strong will which she too had had, able, like
+faith, to "remove mountains," sympathized involuntarily with the lad.  It
+was just what she would have said and done, had she been a man and loved
+a woman.  She gave David's hand a warm clasp, which he returned.
+
+"Forgive me," said he, affectionately.  "I did not mean to bother you;
+but as things stand, the matter is better out than in.  I hate
+underhandedness. I may have made an awful fool of myself, but at least I
+have not made a fool of her.  I have been as careful as possible not to
+compromise her in any way; for I know how people do talk, and a man has
+no right to let the girl he loves be talked about.  The more he loves
+her, the more he ought to take care of her.  Don't you think so?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'd cut myself up into little pieces for Janetta's sake," he went on,
+"and I'd do a deal for Helen too, the sisters are so fond of one another.
+She shall always have a home with us, when we are married."
+
+"Then," said Miss Williams, hardly able again to resist a smile, "you are
+quite certain you will be married?  You have no doubt about her caring
+for you?"
+
+David pulled his whiskers, not very voluminous yet, looked conscious, and
+yet humble.
+
+"Well, I don't exactly say that.  I know I'm not half good enough for
+her. Still, I thought, when I had taken my degree and fairly settled
+myself at the bar, I'd try.  I have a tolerably good income of my own
+too, though of course I am not as well off as that confounded Roy.  There
+he is at this minute meandering up and down the West Sands with those two
+girls, setting every body's tongue going!  I can't stand it.  I declare
+to you I won't stand it another day."
+
+"Stop a moment," and she caught hold of David as he started up.  "What
+are you going to do?"
+
+"I don't know and I don't care, only I won't have my girl talked
+about--my pretty, merry, innocent girl.  He ought to know better, a
+shrewd old fellow like him.  It is silly, selfish, mean."
+
+This was more than Miss Williams could bear.  She stood up, pale to the
+lips, but speaking strongly, almost fiercely:
+
+"You ought to know better, David Dalziel.  You ought to know that Mr. Roy
+had not an atom of selfishness or meanness in him--that he would be the
+last man in the world to compromise any girl.  If he chooses to marry
+Janetta, or any one else, he has a perfect right to do it, and I for one
+will not try to hinder him."
+
+"Then you will not stand by me any more?"
+
+"Not if you are blind and unfair.  You may die of love, though I don't
+think you will; people don't do it nowadays" (there was a slightly bitter
+jar in the voice): "but love ought to make you all the more honorable,
+clear-sighted, and just.  And as to Mr. Roy--"
+
+She might have talked to the winds, for David was not listening.  He had
+heard the click of the garden gate, and turned round with blazing eyes.
+
+"There he is again!  I can't stand it, Miss Williams.  I give you fair
+warning I can't stand it.  He has walked home with them, and is waiting
+about at the laurel bush, mooning after them.  Oh, hang him!"
+
+Before she had time to speak the young man was gone.  But she had no fear
+of any very tragic consequences when she saw the whole party standing
+together--David talking to Janetta, Mr. Roy to Helen, who looked so
+fresh, so young, so pretty, almost as pretty as Janetta.  Nor did Mr.
+Roy, pleased and animated, look so very old.
+
+That strange clear-sightedness, that absolute justice, of which Fortune
+had just spoken, were qualities she herself possessed to a remarkable,
+almost a painful, degree.  She could not deceive herself, even if she
+tried. The more cruel the sight, the clearer she saw it; even as now she
+perceived a certain naturalness in the fact that a middle-aged man so
+often chooses a young girl in preference to those of his own generation,
+for she brings him that which he has not; she reminds him of what he used
+to have; she is to him like the freshness of spring, the warmth of
+summer, in his cheerless autumn days.  Sometimes these marriages are not
+unhappy--far from it; and Robert Roy might ere long make such a marriage.
+Despite poor David's jealous contempt, he was neither old nor ugly, and
+then he was rich.
+
+The thing, either as regarded Helen, or some other girl of Helen's
+standing, appeared more than possible--probable; and if so, what then?
+
+Fortune looked out once, and saw that the little group at the laurel bush
+were still talking; then she slipped up stairs into her own room and
+bolted the door.
+
+The first thing that she did was to go straight up and look at her own
+face in the glass--her poor old face, which had never been beautiful,
+which she had never wished beautiful, except that it might be pleasant
+in one man's eyes.  Sweet it was still, but the sweetness lay in its
+expression, pure and placid, and innocent as a young girl's.  But she saw
+not that; she saw only its lost youth, its faded bloom.  She covered it
+over with both her hands, as if she would fain bury it out of sight;
+knelt down by her bedside, and prayed.
+
+"Mr. Roy is waiting below ma'am--has been waiting some time; but he says
+if you are busy he will not disturb you; he will come to-morrow instead."
+
+"Tell him I shall be very glad to see him to-morrow."
+
+She spoke through the locked door, too feeble to rise and open it; and
+then lying down on her bed and turning her face to the wall, from sheer
+exhaustion fell fast asleep.
+
+People dream strangely sometimes.  The dream she dreamt was so
+inexpressibly soothing and peaceful, so entirely out of keeping with the
+reality of things, that it almost seemed to have been what in ancient
+times would be called a vision.
+
+First, she thought that she and Robert Roy were little children--mere
+girl and boy together, as they might have been from the few years'
+difference in their ages--running hand in hand about the sands of St.
+Andrews, and so fond of one another--so very fond!  With that innocent
+love a big boy often has for a little girl, and a little girl returns
+with the tenderest fidelity.  So she did; and she was so happy--they were
+both so happy.  In the second part of the dream she was happy still, but
+somehow she knew she was dead--had been dead and in paradise for a long
+time, and was waiting for him to come there.  He was coming now; she felt
+him coming, and held out her hands, but he took and clasped her in his
+arms; and she heard a voice saying those mysterious words: "In heaven
+they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of
+God."
+
+It was very strange, all was very strange, but it comforted her.  She
+rose up, and in the twilight of the soft spring evening she washed her
+face and combed her hair, and went down, like King David after his child
+was dead, to "eat bread."
+
+Her young people were not there.  They had gone out again; she heard,
+with Mr. Dalziel, not Mr. Roy, who had sat reading in the parlor alone
+for upward of an hour.  They were supposed to be golfing, but they staid
+out till long after it was possible to see balls or holes; and Miss
+Williams was beginning to be a little uneasy, when they all three walked
+in, David and Janetta with a rather sheepish air, and Helen beaming all
+over with mysterious delight.
+
+How the young man had managed it--to propose to two sisters at once, at
+any rate to make love to one sister while the other was by--remained
+among the wonderful feats which David Dalziel, who had not too small an
+opinion of himself, was always ready for, and generally succeeded in; and
+if he did wear his heart somewhat "on his sleeve," why, it was a very
+honest heart, and they must have been ill-natured "daws" indeed who took
+pleasure in "pecking at it."
+
+"Wish me joy, Auntie!" he cried, coming forward, beaming all over, the
+instant the girls had disappeared to take their hats off.  "I've been and
+gone and done it, and it's all right.  I didn't intend it just yet, but
+he drove me to it, for which I'm rather obliged to him.  He can't get her
+now.  Janetta's mine!"
+
+There was a boyish triumph in his air; in fact, his whole conduct was
+exceedingly juvenile, but so simple, frank, and sincere as to be quite
+irresistible.
+
+I fear Miss Williams was a very weak-minded woman, or would be so
+considered by a great part of the world--the exceedingly wise and prudent
+and worldly-minded "world."  Here were two young people, one twenty-two,
+the other eighteen, with--it could hardly be said "not a half-penny,"
+but still a very small quantity of half-pennies, between them--and they
+had not only fallen in love, but engaged themselves to married! She ought
+to have been horrified, to have severely reproached them for their
+imprudence, used all her influence and, if needs be, her authority, to
+stop the whole thing; advising David not to bind himself to any girl till
+he was much older, and his prospects secured; and reasoning with Janetta
+on the extreme folly of a long engagement, and how very much better it
+would be for her to pause, and make some "good" marriage with a man of
+wealth and position, who could keep her comfortably.
+
+All this, no doubt, was what a prudent and far-seeing mother or friend
+ought to have said and done.  Miss Williams did no such thing, and said
+not a single word.  She only kissed her "children"--Helen too, whose
+innocent delight was the prettiest thing to behold--then sat down and
+made tea for them all, as if nothing had happened.
+
+But such events do not happen without making a slight stir in a family,
+especially such a quiet family as that at the cottage.  Besides, the
+lovers were too childishly happy to be at all reticent over their
+felicity.  Before David was turned away that night to the hotel which he
+and Mr. Roy both inhabited, every body in the house knew quite well that
+Mr. Dalziel and Miss Janetta were to be married.
+
+And every body had of course suspected it long ago, and was not in the
+least surprised, so that the mistress of the household herself was half
+ashamed to confess how very much surprised _she_ had been.  However, as
+every body seemed delighted, for most people have a "sneaking kindness"
+toward young lovers, she kept her own counsel; smiled blandly over her
+old cook's half-pathetic congratulations to the young couple, who were
+"like the young bears, with all their troubles before them," and laughed
+at the sympathetic forebodings of the girls' faithful maid, a rather
+elderly person, who was supposed to have been once "disappointed," and
+who "hoped Mr. Dalziel was not too young to know his own mind."  Still,
+in spite of all, the family were very much delighted, and not a little
+proud.
+
+David walked in, master of the position now, directly after breakfast,
+and took the sisters out for a walk, both of them, declaring he was as
+much encumbered as if he were going to marry two young ladies at once,
+but bearing his lot with great equanimity.  His love-making indeed was so
+extraordinarily open and undisguised that it did not much matter who was
+by.  And Helen was of that sweet negative nature that seemed made for the
+express purpose of playing "gooseberry."
+
+Directly they had departed, Mr. Roy came in.
+
+He might have been a far less acute observer than he was not to detect at
+once that "something had happened" in the little family.  Miss Williams
+kept him waiting several minutes, and when she did come in her manner
+was nervous and agitated.  They spoke about the weather and one or two
+trivial things, but more than once Fortune felt him looking at her with
+that keen, kindly observation which had been sometimes, during all these
+weeks now running into months, of almost daily meeting, and of the
+closest intimacy--a very difficult thing to bear.
+
+He was exceedingly kind to her always; there was no question of that.
+Without making any show of it, he seemed always to know where she was
+and what she was doing.  Nothing ever lessened his silent care of her.
+If ever she wanted help, there he was to give it.  And in all their
+excursions she had a quiet conviction that whoever forgot her or her
+comfort, he never would.  But then it was his way.  Some men have eyes
+and ears for only one woman, and that merely while they happen to be in
+love with her; whereas Robert Roy was courteous and considerate to every
+woman, even as he was kind to every weak or helpless creature that
+crossed his path.
+
+Evidently he perceived that all was not right; and, though he said
+nothing, there was a tenderness in his manner which went to her heart.
+
+"You are not looking well to-day; should you not go out?" he said.  "I
+met all your young people walking off to the sands: they seemed
+extraordinarily happy."
+
+Fortune was much perplexed.  She did not like not to tell him the
+news--him, who had so completely established himself as a friend of the
+family. And yet to tell him was not exactly her place; besides, he might
+not care to hear.  Old maid as she was, or thought herself, Miss Williams
+knew enough of men not to fall into the feminine error of fancying they
+feel as we do--that their world is our world, and their interest our
+interest. To most men, a leader in the _Times_, an article in the
+_Quarterly_, or a fall in the money market is of far more importance than
+any love affair in the world, unless it happens to be their own.
+
+Why should I tell him? she thought, convinced that he noticed the anxiety
+in her eyes, the weariness at her heart.  She had passed an almost
+sleepless night, pondering over the affairs of these young people, who
+never thought of any thing beyond their own new-born happiness.  And
+she had perplexed herself with wondering whether in consenting to this
+engagement she was really doing her duty by her girls, who had no one but
+her, and whom she was so tender of, for their dead father's sake.  But
+what good was it to say any thing?  She must bear her own burden.  And
+yet--
+
+Robert Roy looked at her with his kind, half-amused smile.
+
+"You had better tell me all about it; for, indeed, I know already."
+
+"What! did you guess it?"
+
+"Perhaps.  But Dalziel came to my room last night and poured out
+everything.  He is a candid youth.  Well, and am I to congratulate?"
+
+Greatly relieved, Fortune looked up.
+
+"That's right," he said; "I like to see you smile.  A minute or two ago
+you seemed as if you had the cares of all the world on your shoulders.
+No, that is not exactly the truth.  Always meet the truth face to face,
+and don't be frightened by it."
+
+Ah, no.  If she had had that strong heart to lean on, that tender hand to
+help her through the world, she never would have been "frightened" at any
+thing.
+
+"I know I am very foolish," she said; "but there are many things which
+these children of mine don't see, and I can't help seeing."
+
+"Certainly; they are young, and we are--well, never mind.  Sit down here,
+and let you and me talk the matter quietly over.  On the whole, are you
+glad or sorry?"
+
+"Both, I think.  David is able to take care of himself; but poor little
+Janetta--my Janetta--what if he should bring her to poverty?  He is a
+little reckless about money, and has only a very small certain income.
+Worse; suppose being so young, he should by-and-by get tired of her, and
+neglect her, and break her heart?"
+
+"Or twenty other things which may happen, or may not, and of which they
+must take the chance, like their neighbors.  You do not believe very much
+in men, I see, and perhaps you are right.  We are a bad lot--a bad lot.
+But David Dalziel is as good as most of us, that I can assure you."
+
+She could hardly tell whether he was in jest or earnest; but this was
+certain, he meant to cheer and comfort her, and she took the comfort,
+and was thankful.
+
+"Now to the point," continued Mr. Roy.  "You feel that, in a worldly
+point of view, these two have done a very foolish thing, and you have
+aided and abetted them in doing it?"
+
+"Not so," she cried, laughing; "I had no idea of such a thing till David
+told me yesterday morning of his intentions."
+
+"Yes, and he explained to me why he told you, and why he dared not wait
+any longer.  He blurts out every thing, the foolish boy!  But he has made
+friends with me now.  They do seem such children, do they not, compared
+with old folks like you and me?"
+
+What was it in the tone or the words which made her feel not in the least
+vexed, nor once attempt to rebut the charge of being "old?"
+
+"I'll tell you what it is," said Robert Roy, with one of his sage smiles,
+"you must not go and vex yourself needlessly about trifles.  We should
+not judge other people by ourselves.  Every body is so different.
+Dalziel may make his way all the better for having that pretty creature
+for a wife, not but what some other pretty creature might soon have done
+just as well.  Very few men have tenacity of nature enough, if they can
+not get the one woman they love, to do without any other to the end of
+their days.  But don't be disappointed yourself about your girl.  David
+will make her a very good husband.  They will be happy enough, even
+though not very rich."
+
+"Does that matter much?"
+
+"I used to think so.  I had so sore a lesson of poverty in my youth, that
+it gave me an almost morbid terror of it, not for myself, but for any
+woman I cared for.  Once I would not have done as Dalziel has for the
+world. Now I have changed my mind.  At any rate, David will not have one
+misfortune to contend with.  He has a thoroughly good opinion of himself,
+poor fellow!  He will not suffer from that horrible self-distrust which
+makes some men let themselves drift on and on with the tide, instead of
+taking the rudder into their own hands and steering straight on--direct
+for the haven where they would be.  Oh, that I had done it."
+
+He spoke passionately, and then sat silent.  At last, muttering something
+about "begging her pardon," and "taking a liberty," he changed the
+conversation into another channel, by asking whether this marriage, when
+it happened--which, of course could not be just immediately--would make
+any difference to her circumstances.
+
+Some difference, she explained, because the girls would receive their
+little fortunes whenever they came of age or married, and the sisters
+would not like to be parted; besides, Helen's money would help the
+establishment.  Probably, whenever David married, he would take them
+both away; indeed, he had said as much.
+
+"And then shall you stay on here?"
+
+"I may, for I have a small income of my own; besides, there are your two
+little boys, and I might find two or three more.  But I do not trouble
+myself much about the future.  One thing is certain, I need never work
+as hard as I have done all my life."
+
+"Have you worked so very hard, then, my poor--"
+
+He left the sentence unfinished; his hand, half extended, was drawn back,
+for the three young people were seen coming down the garden, followed by
+the two boys, returning from their classes.  It was nearly dinner-time,
+and people must dine, even though in love; and boys must be kept to
+their school work, and all the daily duties of life must be done.  Well,
+perhaps, for many of us, that such should be!  I think it was as well for
+poor Fortune Williams.
+
+The girls had come in wet through, with one of those sudden "haars" which
+are not uncommon at St. Andrews in spring, and it seemed likely to last
+all day.  Mr. Roy looked out of the window at it with a slightly dolorous
+air.
+
+"I suppose I am rather _de trop_ here, but really I wish you would not
+turn me out.  In weather like this our hotel coffee-room is just a trifle
+dull, isn't it, Dalziel?  And, Miss Williams, your parlor looks so
+comfortable.  Will you let me stay?"
+
+He made the request with a simplicity quite pathetic.  One of the most
+lovable things about this man--is it not in all men?--was, that with all
+his shrewdness and cleverness, and his having been knocked up and down
+the world for so many years, he still kept a directness and simpleness of
+character almost child-like.
+
+To refuse would have been unkind, impossible; so Miss Williams told him
+he should certainly stay if he could make himself comfortable.  And to
+that end she soon succeeded in turning off her two turtle-doves into a
+room by themselves, for the use of which they had already bargained,
+in order to "read together, and improve their minds."  Meanwhile she
+and Helen tried to help the two little boys to spend a dull holiday
+indoors--if they were ever dull beside Uncle Robert, who had not lost
+his old influence with boys, and to those boys was already a father in
+all but the name.
+
+Often Fortune watched them, sitting upon his chair, hanging about him as
+he walked, coming to him for sympathy in every thing.  Yes, every body
+loved him, for there was such an amount of love in him toward every
+mortal creature, except--
+
+She looked at him and his boys, then turned away.  What was to be had
+been, and always would be.  That which we fight against in our youth as
+being human will, human error, in our age we take humbly, knowing it to
+be the will of God.
+
+By-and-by in the little household the gas was lighted, the curtains
+drawn, and the two lovers fetched in for tea, to behave themselves as
+much as they could like ordinary mortals, in general society, for the
+rest of the evening.  A very pleasant evening it was, spite of this new
+element; which was got rid of as much as possible by means of the window
+recess, where Janetta and David encamped composedly, a little aloof from
+the rest.
+
+"I hope they don't mind me," said Mr. Roy, casting an amused glance in
+their direction, and then adroitly maneuvering with the back of his chair
+so as to interfere as little as possible with the young couple's
+felicity.
+
+"Oh no, they don't mind you at all," answered Helen, always affectionate,
+if not always wise.  "Besides, I dare say you yourself were young once,
+Mr. Roy."
+
+Evidently Helen had no idea of the plans for her future which were being
+talked about in St. Andrews.  Had he?  No one could even speculate with
+such an exceedingly reserved person.  He retired behind his newspaper,
+and said not a single word.
+
+Nevertheless, there was no cloud in the atmosphere.  Every body was used
+to Mr. Roy's silence in company.  And he never troubled any body, not
+even the children, with either a gloomy look or a harsh word.  He was so
+comfortable to live with, so unfailingly sweet and kind.
+
+Although there was a strange atmosphere of peace in the cottage that
+evening, though nobody seemed to do any thing or say very much.  Now and
+then Mr. Roy read aloud bits out of his endless newspapers--he had a
+truly masculine mania for newspapers, and used to draw one after another
+out of his pockets, as endless as a conjurer's pocket-handkerchiefs.  And
+he liked to share their contents with any body that would listen; though
+I am afraid nobody did listen much to-night except Miss Williams, who sat
+beside him at her sewing, in order to get the benefit of the same lamp.
+And between his readings he often turned and looked at her, her bent
+head, her smooth soft hair, her busy hands.
+
+Especially after one sentence, out of the "Varieties" of some Fife
+newspaper.  He had begun to read it, then stopped suddenly, but finished
+it.  It consisted only of a few words: _"'Young love is passionate, old
+love is faithful; but the very tenderest thing in all this world is a
+love revived.'_  That is true."
+
+He said only those three words, in a very low, quiet voice, but Fortune
+heard.  His look she did not see, but she felt it--even as a person long
+kept in darkness might feel a sunbeam strike along the wall, making it
+seem possible that there might be somewhere in the earth such a thing as
+day.
+
+About nine P.M. the lovers in the window recess discovered that the haar
+was all gone, and that it was a most beautiful moonlight night; full
+moon, the very night they had planned to go in a body to the top of St.
+Regulus tower.
+
+"I suppose they must," said Mr. Roy to Miss Williams; adding, "Let the
+young folks make the most of their youth; it never will come again."
+
+"No."
+
+"And you and I must go too.  It will be more _comme il faut_, as people
+say."
+
+So, with a half-regretful look at the cozy fire, Mr. Roy marshaled the
+lively party, Janetta and David, Helen and the two boys; engaging to get
+them the key of that silent garden of graves over which St. Regulus tower
+keeps stately watch.  How beautiful it looked, with the clear sky shining
+through its open arch, and the brilliant moonlight, bright as day almost,
+but softer, flooding every alley of that peaceful spot!  It quieted even
+the noisy party who were bent on climbing the tower, to catch a view,
+such as is rarely equaled, of the picturesque old city and its beautiful
+bay.
+
+"A 'comfortable place to sleep in,' as some one once said to me in a
+Melbourne church-yard.  But 'east or west, home is best.--I think, Bob,
+I shall leave it in my will that you are to bury me at St. Andrews.'"
+
+"Nonsense, Uncle Robert!  You are not to talk of dying.  And you are to
+come with us up to the top of the tower.  Miss Williams, will you come
+too?"
+
+"No, I think she had better not," said Uncle Robert, decisively.  "She
+will stay here, and I will keep her company."
+
+So the young people all vanished up the tower, and the two elders walked
+silently side by side the quiet graves--by the hearts which had ceased
+beating, the hands which, however close they lay, would never clasp one
+another any more.
+
+"Yes, St. Andrews is a pleasant place," said Robert Roy at last.  "I
+spoke in jest, but I meant in earnest; I have no wish to leave it again.
+And you," he added, seeing that she answered nothing--"what plans have
+you?  Shall you stay on at the cottage till these young people are
+married?"
+
+"Most likely.  We are all fond of the little house."
+
+"No wonder.  They say a wandering life after a certain number of years
+unsettles a man forever; he rests nowhere, but goes on wandering to the
+end.  But I feel just the contrary.  I think I shall stay permanently at
+St. Andrews.  You will let me come about your cottage, 'like a tame cat,'
+as that foolish fellow owned he had called me--will you not?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+But at the same time she felt there was a strain beyond which she could
+not bear.  To be so near, yet so far; so much to him, and yet so little.
+She was conscious of a wild desire to run away somewhere--run away and
+escape it all; of a longing to be dead and buried, deep in the sea, up
+away among the stars.
+
+"Will those young people be very long, do you think?"
+
+At the sound of her voice he turned to look at her, and saw that she was
+deadly pale, and shivering from head to foot.
+
+"This will never do.  You must 'come under my plaidie,' as the children
+say, and I will take you home at once.  Boys!" he called out to the
+figures now appearing like jackdaws at the top of the tower, "we are
+going straight home.  Follow us as soon as you like.  Yes, it must be
+so," he answered to the slight resistance she made.  "They must all take
+care of themselves.  I mean to take care of you."
+
+Which he did, wrapping her well in the half of his plaid, drawing her
+hand under his arm and holding it there--holding it close and warm at
+his heart all the way along the Scores and across the Links, scarcely
+speaking a single word until they reached the garden gate.  Even there
+he held it still.
+
+"I see your girls coming, so I shall leave you.  You are warm now, are
+you not?"
+
+"Quite warm."
+
+"Good-night, then.  Stay.  Tell me"--he spoke rapidly, and with much
+agitation--"tell me just one thing, and I will never trouble you again.
+Why did you not answer a letter I wrote to you seventeen years ago?"
+
+"I never got any letter.  I never had one word from you after the Sunday
+you bade me good-by, promising to write."
+
+"And I did write," cried he, passionately.  "I posted it with my own
+hands.  You should have got it on the Tuesday morning."
+
+She leaned against the laurel bush, that fatal laurel bush, and in a few
+breathless words told him what David had said about the hidden letter.
+
+"It must have been my letter.  Why did you not tell me this before?"
+
+"How could I?  I never knew you had written.  You never said a word.  In
+all these years you have never said a single word."
+
+Bitterly, bitterly he turned away.  The groan that escaped him--a man's
+groan over his lost life--lost, not wholly through fate alone--was such
+as she, the woman whose portion had been sorrow, passive sorrow only,
+never forgot in all her days.
+
+"Don't mind it," she whispered--"don't mind it.  It is so long past now."
+
+He made no immediate answer, then said,
+
+"Have you no idea what was in the letter?"
+
+"No."
+
+"It was to ask you a question, which I had determined not to ask just
+then, but I changed my mind.  The answer, I told you, I should wait for
+in Edinburgh seven days; after that, I should conclude you meant No, and
+sail.  No answer came, and I sailed."
+
+He was silent.  So was she.  A sense of cruel fatality came over her.
+Alas! those lost years, that might have been such happy years!  At length
+she said, faintly, "Forget it.  It was not your fault."
+
+"It was my fault.  If not mine, you were still yourself--I ought never to
+have let you go.  I ought to have asked again; to have sought through the
+whole world till I found you again.  And now that I have found you--"
+
+"Hush!  The girls are here."
+
+They came along laughing, that merry group--with whom life was at its
+spring--who had lost nothing, knew not what it was to lose!
+
+"Good-night," said Mr. Roy, hastily.  "But--to-morrow morning?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"There never is night to which comes no morn," says the proverb. Which
+is not always true, at least as to this world; but it is true sometimes.
+
+That April morning Fortune Williams rose with a sense of strange
+solemnity--neither sorrow nor joy.  Both had gone by; but they had left
+behind them a deep peace.
+
+After her young people had walked themselves off, which they did
+immediately after breakfast, she attended to all her household duties,
+neither few nor small, and then sat down with her needle-work beside the
+open window.  It was a lovely day; the birds were singing, the leaves
+budding, a few early flowers making all the air to smell like spring.
+And she--with her it was autumn now.  She knew it, but still she did not
+grieve.
+
+Presently, walking down the garden walk, almost with the same firm step
+of years ago--how well she remembered it!--Robert Roy came; but it was
+still a few minutes before she could go into the little parlor to meet
+him. At last she did, entering softly, her hand extended as usual.  He
+took it, also as usual, and then looked down into her face, as he had
+done that Sunday.  "Do you remember this?  I have kept it for seventeen
+years."
+
+It was her mother's ring.  She looked up with a dumb inquiry.
+
+"My love, did you think I did not love you?--you always, and only you?"
+
+So saying, he opened his arms; she felt them close round her, just as in
+her dream.  Only they were warm, living arms; and it was this world, not
+the next.  All those seventeen bitter years seemed swept away,
+annihilated in a moment; she laid her head on his shoulder and wept out
+her happy heart there.
+
+         *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+The little world of St. Andrews was very much astonished when it
+learned that Mr. Roy was going to marry, not one of the pretty Miss
+Moseleys, but their friend and former governess, a lady, not by any
+means young, and remarkable for nothing except great sweetness and
+good sense, which made every body respect and like her; though nobody
+was much excited concerning her.  Now people had been excited about
+Mr. Roy, and some were rather sorry for him; thought perhaps he had
+been taken in, till some story got wind of its having been an "old
+attachment,"  which interested them of course; still, the good folks were
+half angry with him.  To go and marry an old maid when he might have
+had his choice of half a dozen young ones! when, with his fortune and
+character, he might, as people say--as they had said of that other good
+man, Mr. Moseley--"have married any body!"
+
+They forgot that Mr. Roy happened to be one of those men who have no
+particular desire to marry "any body;"  to whom _the_ woman, whether
+found early or late--alas! in this case found early and won late--is the
+one woman in the world forever.  Poor Fortune--rich Fortune! she need not
+be afraid of her fading cheek, her silvering hair; he would never see
+either.  The things he loved her for were quite apart from any thing that
+youth could either give or take away.  As he said one, when she lamented
+hers, "Never mind, let it go.  You will always be yourself--and mine."
+
+This was enough.  He loved her.  He had always loved her: she had no
+fear but that he would love her faithfully to the end.
+
+Theirs was a very quiet wedding, and a speedy one.  "Why should they
+wait? they had waited too long already," he said, with some bitterness.
+But she felt none.  With her all was peace.
+
+Mr. Roy did another very foolish thing which I can not conscientiously
+recommend to any middle-aged bachelor.  Besides marrying his wife, he
+married her whole family.  There was no other way out of the difficulty,
+and neither of them was inclined to be content with happiness, leaving
+duty unfulfilled.  So he took the largest house in St. Andrews, and
+brought to it Janetta and Helen, till David Dalziel could claim them;
+likewise his own two orphan boys, until they went to Oxford; for he
+meant to send them there, and bring them up in every way like his own
+sons.
+
+Meantime, it was rather a heterogeneous family; but the two heads of it
+bore their burden with great equanimity, nay, cheerfulness; saying
+sometimes, with a smile which had the faintest shadow of pathos in it,
+"that they liked to have young life about them."
+
+And by degrees they grew younger themselves; less of the old bachelor
+and old maid, and more of the happy middle-aged couple to whom
+Heaven gave, in their decline, a St. Martin's summer almost as sweet as
+spring.  They were both too wise to poison the present by regretting the
+past--a past which, if not wholly, was partly, at least, owing to that
+strange fatality which governs so many lives, only some have the will to
+conquer it, others not.  And there are two sides to every thing:  Robert
+Roy, who alone knew how hard his own life had been, sometimes felt a
+stern joy in thinking no one had shared it.
+
+Still, for a long time there lay at the bottom of that strong, gentle
+heart of his a kind of remorseful tenderness, which showed itself in
+heaping his wife with every luxury that his wealth could bring; better
+than all, in surrounding her with that unceasing care which love alone
+teaches, never allowing the wind to blow on her too roughly--his "poor
+lamb," as he sometime called her, who had suffered so much.
+
+They are sure, humanly speaking, to "live very happy to the end of their
+days."  And I almost fancy sometimes, if I were to go to St. Andrews, as
+I hope to do many a time, for I am as fond of the Aged City as they are,
+that I should see those two, made one at last after all those cruel
+divided years, wandering together along the sunshiny sands, or standing
+to watch the gay golfing parties; nay, I am not sure that Robert Roy
+would not be visible sometimes in his red coat, club in hand, crossing
+the Links, a victim to the universal insanity of St. Andrews, yet
+enjoying himself, as golfers always seem to do, with the enjoyment of a
+very boy.
+
+She is not a girl, far from it; but there will always be a girlish
+sweetness in her faded face till its last smile.  And to see her sitting
+beside her husband on the green slopes of the pretty garden--knitting,
+perhaps while he reads his eternal newspapers--is a perfect picture.
+They do not talk very much; indeed, they were neither of them ever great
+talkers.  But each knows the other is close at hand, ready for any
+needful word, and always ready with that silent sympathy which is so
+mysterious a thing, the rarest thing to find in all human lives.  These
+have found it, and are satisfied.  And day by day truer grows the truth
+of that sentence which Mrs. Roy once discovered in her husband's
+pocket-book, cut out of a newspaper--she read and replaced it without a
+word, but with something between a smile and tear--_"Young love is
+passionate, old love is faithful; but the very tenderest thing in all
+this world is a love revived."_
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14708 ***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #14708 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14708)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Laurel Bush, by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Laurel Bush
+
+Author: Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
+
+Release Date: January 17, 2005  [eBook #14708]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAUREL BUSH***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Robin Eugene Escovado
+
+
+
+THE LAUREL BUSH
+
+An Old-Fashioned Love Story
+
+by
+
+DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK
+
+Author of _John Halifax, Gentleman_,
+&c., &c., &c.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 1.
+
+It was a very ugly bush indeed; that is, so far as any thing in nature
+can be really ugly.  It was lopsided--having on the one hand a stunted
+stump or two, while on the other a huge heavy branch swept down to the
+gravel-walk.  It had a crooked gnarled trunk or stem, hollow enough to
+entice any weak-minded bird to build a nest there--only it was so near
+to the ground, and also to the garden gate. Besides, the owners of
+the garden, evidently of practical mind, had made use of it to place
+between a fork in its branches a sort of letter-box--not the government
+regulation one, for twenty years ago this had not been thought of; but a
+rough receptacle, where, the house being a good way off, letters might be
+deposited, instead of; as hitherto, in a hole in the trunk--near the foot
+of the tree, and under shelter of its mass of evergreen leaves.
+
+This letter-box; made by the boys of the family at the instigation and
+with the assistance of their tutor, had proved so attractive to some
+exceedingly incautious sparrow that during the intervals of the post she
+had begun a nest there, which was found by the boys.  Exceedingly wild
+boys they were, and a great trouble to their old grandmother, with whom
+they were staying the summer, and their young governess--"Misfortune,"
+as they called her, her real name being Miss Williams--Fortune Williams.
+The nickname was a little too near the truth, as a keener observer than
+mischievous boys would have read in her quiet, sometimes sad, face; and
+it had been stopped rather severely by the tutor of the elder boys, a
+young man whom the grandmother had been forced to get, to "keep them in
+order!" He was a Mr. Robert Roy, once a student, now a teacher of the
+"humanities," from the neighboring town--I beg its pardon--city; and a
+lovely old city it is!--of St. Andrews. Thence he was in the habit of
+coming to them three and often four days in the week, teaching of
+mornings and walking of afternoons.  They had expected him this
+afternoon, but their grandmother had carried them off on some pleasure
+excursion; and being a lady of inexact habits--one, too, to whom tutors
+were tutors and nothing more--she had merely said to Miss Williams, as
+the carriage drove away, "When Mr. Roy comes, tell him he is not wanted
+till tomorrow."
+
+And so Miss Williams had waited at the gate, not wishing him to have the
+additional trouble of walking up to the house, for she knew every minute
+of his time was precious. The poor and the hard-working can understand
+and sympathize with one another. Only a tutor and only a governess: Mrs.
+Dalziel drove away and never thought of them again. They were mere
+machines--servants to whom she paid their wages, and so that they did
+sufficient service to deserve these wages, she never interfered with
+them, nor, indeed, wasted a moment's consideration upon them or their
+concerns.
+
+Consequently they were in the somewhat rare and peculiar position of
+a young man and young woman (perhaps Mrs. Dalziel would have taken
+exception to the words "young lady and young gentleman") thrown together
+day after day, week after week--nay, it had now become month after
+month--to all intents and purposes quite alone, except for the children.
+They taught together, there being but one school-room; walked out
+together, for the two younger boys refused to be separated from their
+older brothers; and, in short, spent two-thirds of their existence
+together, without let or hindrance, comment or observation, from any
+mortal soul.
+
+I do not wish to make any mystery in this story.  A young woman of
+twenty-five and a young man of thirty, both perfectly alone in the
+world--orphans, without brother or sister--having to earn their own
+bread, and earn it hardly, and being placed in circumstances where they
+had every opportunity of intimate friendship, sympathy, whatever you like
+to call it: who could doubt what would happen?  The more so, as there was
+no one to suggest that it might happen; no one to watch them or warn
+them, or waken them with worldly-minded hints; or else to rise up, after
+the fashion of so many wise parents and guardians and well-intentioned
+friends, and indignantly shut the stable door _after_ the steed is
+stolen.
+
+No.  That something which was so sure to happen had happened; you might
+have seen it in their eyes, have heard it in the very tone of their
+voices, though they still talked in a very commonplace way, and still
+called each other "Miss Williams" and "Mr. Roy."  In fact, their whole
+demeanor to one another was characterized by the grave and even formal
+decorum which was natural to very reserved people, just trembling on the
+verge of that discovery which will unlock the heart of each to the other,
+and annihilate reserve forever between the two whom Heaven has designed
+and meant to become one; a completed existence.  If by any mischance this
+does not come about, each may lead a very creditable and not unhappy
+life; but it will be a locked-up life, one to which no third person is
+ever likely to find the key.
+
+Whether such natures are to envied or pitied is more than I can say; but
+at least they are more to be respected than the people who wear their
+hearts upon their sleeves for daws to peck at, and very often are all the
+prouder the more they are pecked at, and the more elegantly they bleed;
+which was not likely to be the case with either of these young folks,
+young as they were.
+
+They were young, and youth is always interesting and even comely; but
+beyond that there was nothing remarkable about either.  He was Scotch;
+she English, or rather Welsh.  She had the clear blue Welsh eye, the
+funny _retrousee_ Welsh nose; but with the prettiest little mouth
+underneath it--firm, close, and sweet; full of sensitiveness, but a
+sensitiveness that was controlled and guided by that best possession to
+either man or woman, a good strong will.  No one could doubt that the
+young governess had, what was a very useful thing to a governess, "a will
+of her own;" but not a domineering or obnoxious will, which indeed is
+seldom will at all, but merely obstinacy.
+
+For the rest, Miss Williams was a little woman, or gave the impression of
+being so, from her slight figure and delicate hands and feet.  I doubt if
+any one would have called her pretty, until he or she had learned to love
+her. For there are two distinct kinds of love, one in which the eye
+instructs the heart, and the other in which the heart informs and guides
+the eye.  There have been men who, seeing an unknown beautiful face, have
+felt sure it implied the most beautiful soul in the world, pursued it,
+worshiped it, wooed and won it, found the fancy true, and loved the woman
+forever. Other men there are who would simply say, "I don't know if such
+a one is handsome or not; I only know she is herself--and mine."  Both
+loves are good; nay, it is difficult to say which is best.  But the
+latter would be the most likely to any one who became attached to Fortune
+Williams.
+
+Also, perhaps to Robert Roy, though no one expects good looks in his sex;
+indeed, they are mostly rather objectionable.  Women do not usually care
+for a very handsome man; and men are prone to set him down as conceited.
+No one could lay either charge to Mr. Roy.  He was only an honest-looking
+Scotchman, tall and strong and manly.  Not "red," in spite of his name,
+but dark-skinned and dark-haired; in no way resembling his great
+namesake, Rob Roy Macgregor, as the boys sometimes called him behind
+his back--never to his face.  Gentle as the young man was, there was
+something about him which effectually prevented any one's taking the
+smallest liberty with him.  Though he had been a teacher of boys ever
+since he was seventeen--and I have heard one of the fraternity confess
+that it is almost impossible to be a school-master for ten years without
+becoming a tyrant--still it was a pleasant and sweet-tempered face.  Very
+far from a weak face, though; when Mr. Roy said a thing must be done,
+every one of his boys knew it _must_ be done, and there was no use saying
+any more about it.
+
+He had unquestionably that rare gift, the power of authority; though this
+did not necessarily imply self-control; for some people can rule every
+body except themselves.  But Robert Roy's clear, calm, rather sad eye,
+and a certain patient expression about the mouth, implied that he too had
+enough of the hard training of life to be able to govern himself.  And
+that is more difficult to a man than to a woman.
+
+   "all thy passions, matched with mine,
+   Are as moonlight unto sunlight,
+   and as water unto wine."
+
+A truth which even Fortune's tender heart did not fully take in, deep as
+was her sympathy for him; for his toilsome, lonely life, lived more in
+shadow than in sunshine, and with every temptation to the selfishness
+which is so apt to follow self-dependence, and the bitterness that to a
+proud spirit so often makes the sting of poverty.  Yet he was neither
+selfish nor bitter; only a little reserved, silent, and--except with
+children--rather grave.
+
+She stood watching him now, for she could see him a long way off across
+the level Links, and noticed that he stopped more than once to look at
+the golf-players.  He was a capital golfer himself, but had never any
+time to play.  Between his own studies and the teaching by which he
+earned the money to prosecute them, every hour was filled up.  So he
+turned his back on the pleasant pastime, which seems to have such an
+extraordinary fascination for those who pursue it, and came on to his
+daily work, with that resolute deliberate step, bent on going direct to
+his point and turning aside for nothing.
+
+Fortune knew it well by this time; had learned to distinguish it from all
+others in the world.  There are some footsteps which, by a pardonable
+poetical license, we say "we should hear in our graves," and though this
+girl did not think of that, for death looked far off, and she was
+scarcely a poetical person, still, many a morning, when, sitting at
+her school-room window, she heard Mr. Roy coming steadily down the
+gravel-walk, she was conscious of--something that people can not feel
+twice in a life-time.
+
+And now, when he approached with that kind smile of his, which brightened
+into double pleasure when he saw who was waiting for him, she was aware
+of a wild heartbeat, a sense of exceeding joy, and then of relief and
+rest.  He was "comfortable" to her.  She could express it in no other
+way.  At sight of his face and at sound of his voice all worldly cares
+and troubles, of which she had a good many, seemed to fall off.  To be
+with him was like having an arm to lean on, a light to walk by; and she
+had walked alone so long.
+
+"Good-afternoon, Miss Williams."
+
+"Good-afternoon, Mr. Roy."
+
+They said no more than that, but the stupidest person in the world might
+have seen that they were glad to meet, glad to be together.  Though
+neither they nor any one else could have explained the mysterious fact,
+the foundation of all love stories in books or in life--and which the
+present author owns, after having written many books and seen a great
+deal of life, is to her also as great a mystery as ever--Why do certain
+people like to be together?  What is the inexplicable attraction which
+makes them seek one another, suit one another, put up with one another's
+weaknesses, condone one another's faults (when neither are too great to
+lessen love), and to the last day of life find a charm in one another's
+society which extends to no other human being.  Happy love or lost love,
+a full world or an empty world, life with joy or life without it--that is
+all the difference.  Which some people think very small, and that does
+not matter; and perhaps it does not--to many people.  But it does to
+some, and I incline to put in that category Miss Williams and Mr. Roy.
+
+They stood by the laurel bush, having just shaken hands more hastily than
+they usually did; but the absence of the children, and the very unusual
+fact of their being quite alone, gave to both a certain shyness, and she
+had drawn her hand away, saying, with a slight blush:
+
+"Mrs. Dalziel desired me to meet you and tell you that you might have a
+holiday today.  She has taken her boys with her to Elie.  I dare say you
+will not be sorry to gain an hour or two for yourself; though I am sorry
+you should have the trouble of the walk for nothing."
+
+"For nothing?"--with the least shadow of a smile, not of annoyance,
+certainly.
+
+"Indeed, I would have let you know if I could, but she decided at the
+very last minute; and if I had proposed that a messenger should have been
+sent to stop you, I am afraid--it would not have been answered."
+
+"Of course not;" and they interchanged an amused look--these
+fellow-victims to the well-known ways of the household--which, however,
+neither grumbled at; it was merely an outside thing, this treatment of
+both as mere tutor and governess.  After all (as he sometimes said, when
+some special rudeness--not himself, but to her--vexed him), they were
+tutor and governess; but they were something else besides; something
+which, the instant their chains were lifted off, made them feel free and
+young and strong, and comforted them with comfort unspeakable.
+
+"She bade me apologize.  No, I am afraid, if I tell the absolute truth,
+she did not bid me, but I do apologize."
+
+"What for, Miss Williams?"
+
+"For your having been brought out all this way just to go back again."
+
+"I do not mind it, I assure you."
+
+"And as for the lost lesson--"
+
+"The boys will not mourn over it, I dare say.  In fact, their term with
+me is so soon coming to an end that it does not signify much.  They told
+me they are going back to England to school next week.  Do you go back
+too?"
+
+"Not just yet--not till next Christmas.  Mrs. Dalziel talks of wintering
+in London; but she is so vague in her plans that I am never sure from one
+week to another what she will do."
+
+"And what are your plans?  _You_ always know what you intend to do."
+
+"Yes, I think so," answered Miss Williams, smiling.  "One of the few
+things I remember of my mother was hearing her say of me, that 'her
+little girl was a little girl who always knew her own mind.'  I think I
+do.  I may not be always able to carry it out, but I think I know it."
+
+"Of course," said Mr. Roy, absently and somewhat vaguely, as he stood
+beside the laurel bush, pulling one of its shiny leaves to pieces, and
+looking right ahead, across the sunshiny Links, the long shore of
+yellow sands, where the mermaids might well delight to come and "take
+hands"--to the smooth, dazzling, far-away sea.  No sea is more beautiful
+than that at St. Andrews.
+
+Its sleepy glitter seemed to have lulled Robert Roy into a sudden
+meditation, of which no word of his companion came to rouse him.  In
+truth, she, never given much to talking, simply stood, as she often did,
+silently beside him, quite satisfied with the mere comfort of his
+presence.
+
+I am afraid that this Fortune Williams will be considered a very
+weak-minded young woman.  She was not a bit a coquette, she had not the
+slightest wish to flirt with any man.  Nor was she a proud beauty
+desirous to subjugate the other sex; and drag them triumphantly at her
+chariot wheels.  She did not see the credit, or the use, or the pleasure
+of any such proceeding.  She was a self-contained, self-dependent woman.
+Thoroughly a woman; not indifferent at all to womanhood's best blessing;
+still she could live without it if necessary, as she could have lived
+without anything which it had pleased God to deny her.  She was not a
+creature likely to die for love, or do wrong for love, which some people
+think the only test of love's strength, instead of its utmost weakness;
+but that she was capable of love, for all her composure and quietness,
+capable of it, and ready for it, in its intensest, most passionate, and
+most enduring form, the God who made her knew, if no one else did.
+
+Her time would come; indeed, had come already.  She had too much
+self-respect to let him guess it, but I am afraid she was very fond
+of--or, if that is a foolish phrase, deeply attached to--Robert Roy.
+He had been so good to her, at once strong and tender, chivalrous,
+respectful, and kind; and she had no father, no brother, no other man
+at all to judge him by, except the accidental men whom she had met in
+society, creatures on two legs who wore coats and trousers, who had been
+civil to her, as she to them, but who had never interested her in the
+smallest degree, perhaps because she knew so little of them.  But no; it
+would have been just the same had she known them a thousand years.  She
+was not "a man's woman," that is, one of those women who feel interested
+in any thing in the shape of a man, and make men interested in them
+accordingly, for the root of much masculine affection is pure vanity.
+That celebrated Scottish song,
+
+   "Come deaf, or come blind, or come cripple,
+   O come, ony ane o' them a'!
+   Far better be married to something,
+   Than no to be married ava,"
+
+was a rhyme that would never have touched the stony heart of Fortune
+Williams.  And yet, let me own it once more, she was very, very fond of
+Robert Roy.  He had never spoken to her one word of love, actual love, no
+more than he spoke now, as they stood side by side, looking with the same
+eyes on the same scene.  I say the same eyes, for they were exceedingly
+alike in their tastes.  There was no need ever to go into long
+explanations about this or that; a glance sufficed, or a word, to show
+each what the other enjoyed; and both had the quiet conviction that they
+were enjoying it together.  Now as that sweet, still, sunshiny view met
+their mutual gaze, they fell into no poetical raptures, but just stood
+and looked, taking it all in with exceeding pleasure, as they had done
+many and many a time, but never, it seemed, so perfectly as now.
+
+"What a lovely afternoon!" she said at last.
+
+"Yes.  It is a pity to waste it.  Have you any thing special to do?  What
+did you mean to employ yourself with, now your birds are flown?"
+
+"Oh, I can always find something to do."
+
+"But need you find it?  We both work so hard.  If we could only now and
+then have a little bit of pleasure!"
+
+He put it so simply, yet almost with a sigh.  This poor girl's heart
+responded to it suddenly, wildly.  She was only twenty-five, yet
+sometimes she felt quite old, or rather as if she had never been young.
+The constant teaching, teaching of rough boys too--for she had had the
+whole four till Mr. Roy took the two elder off her hands--the necessity
+of grinding hard out of school hours to keep herself up in Latin, Euclid,
+and other branches which do not usually form a part of a feminine
+education, only having a great natural love of work, she had taught
+herself--all these things combined to make her life a dull life, a hard
+life, till Robert Roy came into it.  And sometimes even now the desperate
+craving to enjoy--not only to endure, but to enjoy--to take a little of
+the natural pleasures of her age--came to the poor governess very sorely,
+especially on days such as this, when all the outward world looked so
+gay, so idle, and she worked so hard.
+
+So did Robert Roy.  Life was not easier to him than to herself; she knew
+that; and when he said, half joking, as if he wanted to feel his way,
+"Let us imitate our boys, and take a half holiday," she only laughed, but
+did not refuse.
+
+How could she refuse?  There were the long smooth sands on either side
+the Eden, stretching away into indefinite distance, with not a human
+being upon them to break their loneliness, or, if there was, he or she
+looked a mere dot, not human at all.  Even if these two had been afraid
+of being seen walking together--which they hardly were, being too
+unimportant for any one to care whether they were friends or lovers, or
+what not--there was nobody to see them, except in the character of two
+black dots on the yellow sands.
+
+"It is low water; suppose we go and look for sea-anemones.  One of my
+pupils wants some, and I promised to try and find one the first spare
+hour I had."
+
+"But we shall not find anemones on the sands."
+
+"Shells, then, you practical woman!  We'll gather shells.  It will be
+all the same to that poor invalid boy--and to me," added he, with that
+involuntary sigh which she had noticed more than once, and which had
+begun to strike on her ears not quite painfully.  Sighs, when we are
+young, mean differently to what they do in after-years.  "I don't care
+very much where I go, or what I do; I only want--well, to be happy for
+an hour, if Providence will let me."
+
+"Why should not Providence let you?" said Fortune, gently.  "Few people
+deserve it more."
+
+"You are kind to think so; but you are always kind to every body."
+
+By this time they had left their position by the laurel bush, and were
+walking along side by side, according as he had suggested.  This silent,
+instinctive acquiescence in what he wished done--it had happened once or
+twice before, startling her a little at herself; for, as I have said,
+Miss Williams was not at all the kind of person to do every thing that
+every body asked her, without considering whether it was right or wrong.
+She could obey, but it would depend entirely upon whom she had to obey,
+which, indeed, makes the sole difference between loving disciples and
+slavish fools.
+
+It was a lovely day, one of those serene autumn days peculiar to
+Scotland--I was going to say Saint Andrews; and any one who knows the
+ancient city will know exactly how it looks in the still, strongly
+spiritualized light of such an afternoon, with the ruins, the castle,
+cathedral, and St. Regulus's tower standing out sharply against the
+intensely blue sky, and on the other side--on both sides--the yellow
+sweep of sand curving away into the distance, and melting into the
+sunshiny sea.
+
+Many a time, in their prescribed walks with their young tribe, Miss
+Williams and Mr. Roy had taken this stroll across the Links and round by
+the sands to the mouth of the Eden, leaving behind them a long and
+sinuous track of many footsteps, little and large, but now there were
+only two lines--"foot-prints on the sands of Time," as he jestingly
+called them, turning round and pointing to the marks of the dainty feet
+that walked so steadily and straightly beside his own.
+
+"They seem made to go together, those two tracks," said he.
+
+Why did he say it?  Was he the kind of man to talk thus without meaning
+it?  If so, alas! she was not exactly the woman to be thus talked to.
+Nothing fell on her lightly.  Perhaps it was her misfortune, perhaps even
+her fault, but so it was.
+
+Robert Roy did not "make love;" not at all.  Possibly he never could
+have done it in the ordinary way.  Sweet things, polite things were very
+difficult to him either to do or to say.  Even the tenderness that was in
+him came out as if by accident; but, oh! how infinitely tender he could
+be!  Enough to make any one who loved him die easily, quietly, if only
+just holding his hand.
+
+There is an incident in Dickens's touching _Tale of two Cities_, where a
+young man going innocent to the guillotine, and riding on the death-cart
+with a young girl whom he had never before seen, is able to sustain and
+comfort her, even to the last awful moment, by the look of his face and
+the clasp of his hand.  That man, I have often thought, must have been
+something not unlike Robert Roy.
+
+Such men are rare, but they do exist; and it was Fortune's lot, or she
+believed it was, to have found one.  That was enough.  She went along
+the shining sands in a dream of perfect content, perfect happiness,
+thinking--and was it strange or wrong that she should so think?--that if
+it were God's will she should thus walk through life, the thorniest path
+would seem smooth, the hardest road easy.  She had no fear of life, if
+lived beside him; or of death--love is stronger than death; at least this
+sort of love, of which only strong natures are capable, and out of which
+are made, not the lyrics, perhaps, but the epics, the psalms, or the
+tragedies of our mortal existence.
+
+I have explained thus much about these two friends--lovers that may be,
+or might have been--because they never would have done it themselves.
+Neither was given to much speaking.  Indeed, I fear their conversation
+this day, if recorded, would have been of the most feeble kind--brief,
+fragmentary, mere comments on the things about them, or abstract remarks
+not particularly clever or brilliant.  They were neither of them what you
+would call brilliant people; yet they were happy, and the hours flew by
+like a few minutes, until they found themselves back again beside the
+laurel bush at the gate, when Mr. Roy suddenly said:
+
+"Do not go in yet.  I mean, need you go in?  It is scarcely past sunset;
+the boys will not be home for an hour yet; they don't want you, and I--I
+want you so.  In your English sense," he added, with a laugh, referring
+to one of their many arguments, scholastic or otherwise, wherein she had
+insisted that to want meant _Anglice_, to wish or to crave, whereas in
+Scotland it was always used like the French _manquer_, to miss or to
+need.
+
+"Shall we begin that fight over again?" asked she, smiling; for every
+thing, even fighting, seemed pleasant today.
+
+"No, I have no wish to fight; I want to consult you seriously on a purely
+personal matter, if you would not mind taking that trouble."
+
+Fortune looked sorry.  That was one of the bad things in him (the best
+man alive have their bad things), the pride which apes humility, the
+self-distrust which often wounds another so keenly.  Her answer was given
+with a grave and simple sincerity that ought to have been reproach
+enough.
+
+"Mr. Roy, I would not mind any amount of trouble if I could be of use to
+you; you know that."
+
+"Forgive me! Yes, I do know it.  I believe in you and your goodness to
+the very bottom of my heart."
+
+She tried to say "Thank you," but her lips refused to utter a word.  It
+was so difficult to go on talking like ordinary friends, when she knew,
+and he must know she knew, that one more word would make them--not
+friends at all--something infinitely better, closer, dearer; but that
+word was his to speak, not hers.  There are women who will "help a man
+on"--propose to him, marry him indeed--while he is under the pleasing
+delusion that he does it all himself; but Fortune Williams was not one of
+these.  She remained silent and passive, waiting for the next thing he
+should say.  It came: something the shock of which she never forgot as
+long as she lived; and he said it with his eyes on her face, so that, if
+it killed her, she must keep quiet and composed, as she did.
+
+"You know the boys' lessons end next week.  The week after I go--that is,
+I have almost decided to go--to India."
+
+"To India!"
+
+"Yes,  For which, no doubt, you think me very changeable, having said so
+often that I meant to keep to a scholar's life, and be a professor one
+day, perhaps, if by any means I could get salt to my porridge.  Well, now
+I am not satisfied with salt to my porridge; I wish to get rich."
+
+She did not say, "Why?"  She thought she had not looked it; but he
+answered: "Never mind why.  I do wish it, and I will be rich yet, if I
+can. Are you very much surprised?"
+
+Surprised she certainly was; but she answered, honestly, "Indeed, you are
+the last person I should suspect of being worldly-minded."
+
+"Thank you; that is kind.  No, just; merely just.  One ought to have
+faith in people; I am afraid my own deficiency is want of faith.  It
+takes so much to make me believe for a moment that any one cares for me."
+
+How hard it was to be silent--harder still to speak!  But she did not
+speak.
+
+"I can understand that; I have often felt the same.  It is the natural
+consequence of a very lonely life.  If you and I had had fathers and
+mothers and brothers and sisters, we might have been different."
+
+"Perhaps so.  But about India.  For a long time--that is, for many
+weeks--I have been casting about in my mind how to change my way of life,
+to look out for something that would help me to earn money, and quickly,
+but there seemed no chance whatever.  Until suddenly one has opened."
+
+And then he explained how the father of one of one of his pupils,
+grateful for certain benefits, which Mr. Roy did not specify, and
+noticing certain business qualities in him--"which I suppose I have,
+though I didn't know it," added he, with a smile--had offered him a
+situation in a merchant's office at Calcutta: a position of great trust
+and responsibility, for three years certain, with the option of then
+giving it up or continuing it.
+
+"And continuing means making a fortune.  Even three years means making
+something, with my 'stingy' habits.  Only I must go at once.  Nor is
+there any time left me for my decision; it must be yes or no.  Which
+shall it be?"
+
+The sudden appeal--made, too, as if though it was nothing--that terrible
+yes or no, which to her made all the difference of living or only half
+living, of feeling the sun in or out of the world.  What could she
+answer? What could she answer?  Trembling violently, she yet answered,
+in a steady voice, "You must decide for yourself.  A woman can not
+understand a man."
+
+"Nor a man a woman, thoroughly.  There is only one thing which helps both
+to comprehend one another."
+
+One thing! she knew what it was.  Surely so did he.  But that strange
+distrustfulness of which he had spoken, or the hesitation which the
+strongest and bravest men have at times, came between.
+
+   "Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
+   Oh, the little less, and what worlds away!"
+
+If, instead of looking vaguely out upon the sea, he had looked into this
+poor girl's face; if, instead of keeping silence, he had only spoken one
+word!  But he neither looked nor spoke, and the moment passed by.  And
+there are some moments which people would sometimes give a whole lifetime
+to recall and use differently; but in vain.
+
+"My engagement is only for three years," he resumed; "and, if alive, I
+mean to come back.  Dead or alive, I was going to say, but you would not
+care to see my ghost, I presume?  I beg your pardon: I ought not to make
+a joke of such serious things."
+
+"No, you ought not."
+
+She felt herself almost speechless, that in another minute she might
+burst into sobs.  He saw it--at least he saw a very little of it, and
+misinterpreted the rest.
+
+"I have tired you.  Take my arm.  You will soon be at home now."  Then,
+after a pause, "You will not be displeased at any thing I have said?  We
+part friends?  No, we do not part; I shall see you every day for a week,
+and be able to tell you all particulars of my journey, if you care to
+hear."
+
+"Thank you, yes--I do care."
+
+They stood together, arm in arm.  The dews were falling; a sweet, soft
+lilac haze had begun to creep over the sea--the solemn; far-away sea that
+he was so soon to cross.  Involuntarily she clung to his arm.  So near,
+yet so apart!  Why must it be?  She could have borne his going away, if
+it was for his good, if he wished it; and something whispered to her that
+this sudden desire to get rich was not for himself alone.  But, oh! If he
+would only speak!  One word--one little word!  After that, any thing
+might come--the separation of life, the bitterness of death.  To the two
+hearts that had once opened each to each, in the full recognition of
+mutual love, there could never more be any real parting.
+
+But that one word he did not say.  He only took the little hand that lay
+on his arm and pressed it, and held it--years after, the feeling of that
+clasp was as fresh on her fingers as yesterday--the hearing the foot of
+some accidental passer-by, he let it go, and did not take it again.
+
+Just at this moment the sound of distant carriage wheels was heard.
+
+"That must be Mrs. Dalziel and the boys."
+
+"Then I had better go.  Good-by"
+
+The daydream was over.  It had all come back again--the forlorn, dreary,
+hard-working world.
+
+"Good-by, Mr. Roy."  And they shook hands.
+
+"One word," he said hastily.  "I shall write to you--you will allow
+me?--and I shall see you several times, a good many times before I go?"
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"Then, for the present, good-by.  That means," he added, earnestly,
+"'God be with you!'  And I know he always will."
+
+In another minute Fortune found herself standing beside the laurel
+bush, alone, listening to the sound of Mr. Roy's footsteps down the
+road--listening, listening, as if, with the exceeding tension, her
+brain would burst.
+
+The carriage came, passed by; it was not Mrs. Dalziel's after all.  She
+thought he might discover this, and come back again; so she waited a
+little--five minutes, ten--beside the laurel bush.  But he did not come.
+No footstep, no voice; nothing but the faint, far-away sound of the long
+waves washing in upon the sands.
+
+It was not the brain that felt like to burst now, but the heart.  She
+clasped her hands above her head.  It did not matter; there was no
+creature to see or hear that appeal--was it to man or God?--that wild,
+broken sob, so contrary to her usual self-controlled and self-contained
+nature.  And then she learned her forehead against the gate, just where
+Robert Roy had accidentally laid his hand in opening it, and wept
+bitterly.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 2.
+
+The "every day" on which Mr. Roy had reckoned for seeing his friend, or
+whatsoever else he considered Miss Williams to be, proved a failure. Her
+youngest pupil fell ill, and she was kept beside him, and away from the
+school-room, until the doctor could decide whether the illness was
+infectious or not.  It turned out to be very trifling--a most trivial
+thing altogether, yet weighted with a pain most difficult to bear, a
+sense of fatality that almost overwhelmed one person at least.  What the
+other felt she did not know.  He came daily as usual; she watched him
+come and go, and sometimes he turned and they exchanged a greeting from
+the window.  But beyond that, she had to take all passively.  What could
+she, only a woman, do or say or plan?  Nothing.  Women's business is to
+sit down and endure.
+
+She had counted these days--Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
+Saturday--as if they had been years.  And now they were all gone, had
+fled like minutes, fled emptily away.  A few fragmentary facts she had
+had to feed on, communicated by the boys in their rough talk.
+
+"Mr. Roy was rather cross today."
+
+"Not cross, Dick--only dull."
+
+"Mr. Roy asked why David did not come in to lessons, and said he hoped he
+would be better by Saturday."
+
+"Mr. Roy said good-by to us all, and gave us each something to remember
+him by when he was out in India.  Did Miss Williams know he was going out
+to India?  Oh, how jolly!"
+
+"Yes, and he sails next week, and the name of his ship is the _Queen of
+the South_, and he goes by Liverpool instead of Southampton, because it
+costs less; and he leaves St. Andrews on Monday morning."
+
+"Are you sure he said Monday morning?"  For that was Saturday night.
+
+"Certain, because he has to get his outfit still.  Oh, what fun it must
+be!"
+
+And the boys went on, greatly excited, and repeating everything Mr. Roy
+had told them--for he had made them fond of him, even in those few
+months--expatiating with delight on his future career, as a merchant or
+something, they did not quite know what; but no doubt it would be far
+nicer and more amusing than stopping at home and grinding forever on
+horrid books.  Didn't Miss Williams think so?
+
+Miss Williams only smiled.  She knew how all his life he had loved "those
+horrid books," preferring them to pleasure, recreation, almost to daily
+bread; how he had lived on the hope that one day he--born only a farmer's
+son--might do something, write something.  "I also am of Arcadia."  He
+might have done it or not--the genius may or may not have been there; but
+the ambition certainly was.  Could he have thrown it all aside?  And Why?
+
+Not for mere love of money; she knew him too well for that.  He was a
+thorough book-worm, simple in all his tastes and habits--simple almost to
+penuriousness; but it was a penuriousness born of hard fortunes, and he
+never allowed it to affect any body but himself.  Still, there was no
+doubt he did not care for money, or luxury, or worldly position--any of
+the things that lesser men count large enough to work and struggle and
+die for.  To give up the pursuits he loved, deliberately to choose
+others, to change his whole life thus, and expatriate himself, as it
+were, for years--perhaps for always--why did he do it, or for whom?
+
+Was it for a woman?  Was it for her?  If ever, in those long empty days
+and wakeful nights, this last thought entered Fortune's mind, she stifled
+it as something which, once to have fully believed and then disbelieved
+would have killed her.
+
+That she should have done the like for him--that or any thing else
+involving any amount of heroism or self-sacrifice--well, it was natural,
+right; but that he should do it for her?  That he should change his whole
+purpose of life that he might be able to marry quickly, to shelter in his
+bosom a poor girl who was not able to fight the world as a man could,
+the thing--not so very impossible, after all--seemed to her almost
+incredible!  And yet (I am telling a mere love story, remember--a
+foolish, innocent love story, without apologizing for either the folly or
+the innocence) sometimes she was so far "left to herself," as the Scotch
+say, that she did believe it: in the still twilights, in the wakeful
+nights, in the one solitary half hour of intense relief, when, all her
+boys being safe in bed, she rushed out into the garden under the silent
+stars to sob, to moan, to speak out loud words which nobody could
+possibly hear.
+
+"He is going away, and I shall never see him again.  And I love him
+better than any thing in all this world.  I couldn't help it--he couldn't
+help it.  But, oh! It's hard--hard!"
+
+And then, altogether breaking down, she would begin to cry like a child.
+She missed him so, even this week, after having for weeks and months been
+with him every day; but it was less like a girl missing her lover--who
+was, after all, not her lover--than a child mourning helplessly for
+the familiar voice, the guiding, helpful hand.  With all the rest of
+the world Fortune Williams was an independent, energetic woman,
+self-contained, brave, and strong, as a solitary governess had need to
+be; but beside Robert Roy she felt like a child, and she cried for him
+like a child,
+
+   "And with no language but a cry."
+
+So the week ended and Sunday came, kept at Mrs. Dalziel's like the Scotch
+Sundays of twenty years ago.  No visitor ever entered the house, wherein
+all the meals were cold and the blinds drawn down, as if for a funeral.
+The family went to church for the entire day, St. Andrews being too far
+off for any return home "between sermons."  Usually one servant was left
+in charge, turn and turn about; but this Sunday Mrs. Dalziel, having put
+the governess in the nurse's place beside the ailing child, thought
+shrewdly she might as well put her in the servant's place too, and let
+her take charge of the kitchen fire as well as of little David. Being
+English,  Miss Williams was not so exact about "ordinances" as a Scotch
+woman would have been; so Mrs. Dalziel had no hesitation in asking her to
+remain at home alone the whole day in charge of her pupil.
+
+Thus faded, Fortune thought, her last hope of seeing Robert Roy again,
+either at church--where he usually sat in the Dalziel pew, by the old
+lady's request, to make the boys "behave"--or walking down the street,
+where he sometimes took the two eldest to eat their "piece" at his
+lodgings.  All was now ended; yet on the hope--or dread--of this last
+Sunday she had hung, she now felt with what intensity, till it was gone.
+
+Fortune was the kind of woman who, were it given her to fight, could
+fight to the death, against fate or circumstances; but when her part was
+simply passive, she could also endure.  Not, as some do, with angry grief
+or futile resistance, but with a quiet patience so complete that only a
+very quick eye would have found out she was suffering at all.
+
+Little David did not, certainly.  When hour after hour, she sat by his
+sofa, interesting him as best she could in the dull "good" books which
+alone were allowed of Sundays, and then passing into word-of-mouth
+stories--the beautiful Bible stories over which her own voice trembled
+while she told them--Ruth, with her piteous cry, "Whither thou goest, I
+will go; where thou diest, I will die, and there will I be buried;"
+Jonathan, whose soul "clave to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him
+as his own soul"--all these histories of passionate fidelity and agonized
+parting--for every sort of love is essentially the same--how they went to
+her heart.
+
+Oh, the awful quietness of that Sunday, that Sabbath which was not rest,
+in which the hours crawled on in sunshiny stillness, neither voices nor
+steps nor sounds of any kind breaking the death-like hush of everything.
+At length the boy fell asleep; and then Fortune seemed to wake up for the
+first time to the full consciousness of what was and what was about to
+be.
+
+All of a sudden she heard steps on the gravel below; then the hall bell
+rang through the silent house.  She knew who it was even before she
+opened the door and saw him standing there.
+
+"May I come in?  They told me you were keeping house alone, and I said I
+should just walk over to bid you and Davie good-by."
+
+Roy's manner was grave and matter-of-fact--a little constrained, perhaps,
+but not much--and he looked so exceedingly pale and tired that; without
+any hesitation, she took him into the school-room, where they were
+sitting, and gave him the arm-chair by Davie's sofa.
+
+"Yes, I own to being rather overdone; I have had so much to arrange, for
+I must leave here tomorrow, as I think you know."
+
+"The boys told me."
+
+"I thought they would.  I should have done it myself, but every day I
+hoped to see you.  It was this fellow's fault, I suppose," patting
+Davie's head.  "He seems quite well now, and as jolly as possible.  You
+don't know what it is to say 'Good-by,' David, my son." Mr. Roy, who
+always got on well with children, had a trick of calling his younger
+pupils "My Son."
+
+"Why do you say 'good-by' at all, then!" asked the child, a mischievous
+but winning young scamp of six or seven, who had as many tricks as a
+monkey or a magpie.  In fact, in chattering and hiding things he was
+nearly as bad as a magpie, and the torment of his governess's life; yet
+she was fond of him.  "Why do you bid us good-by, Mr. Roy?  Why don't you
+stay always with Miss Williams and me?"
+
+"I wish to God I could."
+
+She heard that, heard it distinctly, though it was spoken beneath his
+breath; and she felt the look, turned for one moment upon her as she
+stood by the window.  She never forgot either--never, as long as she
+lived.  Some words, some looks, can deceive, perhaps quite unconsciously,
+by being either more demonstrative than was meant, or the exaggeration of
+coldness to hide its opposite; but sometimes a glance, a tone, betrays,
+or rather reveals, the real truth in a manner that nothing afterward can
+ever falsify.  For one instant, one instant only, Fortune felt sure,
+quite sure, that in some way or other she was very dear to Robert Roy.
+If the next minute he had taken her into his arms, and said or looked the
+words which, to an earnest-minded, sincere man like him, constitute a
+pledge for life, never to be disannulled or denied, she could have hardly
+have felt more completely his own.
+
+But he did not say them; he said nothing at all; sat leaning his head on
+his hand, with an expression so weary, so sad, that all the coaxing ways
+of little Davie could hardly win from him more than a faint smile.  He
+looked so old, too, and he was but just thirty.  Only thirty--only
+twenty-five; and yet these two were bearing, seemed to have borne for
+years, the burden of life, feeling all its hardships and none of its
+sweetnesses. Would things ever change?  Would he have the courage (it was
+his part, not hers) to make them change, at least in one way, by bringing
+about that heart-union which to all pure and true natures is consolation
+for every human woe?
+
+"I wonder," he said, sitting down and taking David on his knee--"I
+wonder if it is best to bear things one's self, or to let another share
+the burden?"
+
+Easily--oh, how easily!--could Fortune have answered this--have told him
+that, whether he wished it or not, two did really bear his burdens, and
+perhaps the  one who bore it secretly and silently had not the lightest
+share.  But she did not speak: it was not possible.
+
+"How shall I hear of you Miss Williams?" he said, after a long silence.
+"You are not likely to leave the Dalziel family?"
+
+"No," she answered; "and if I did, I could always be heard of, the
+Dalziels are so well known hereabouts.  Still, a poor wandering governess
+easily drops out of people's memory."
+
+"And a poor wandering tutor too.  But I am not a tutor any more, and I
+hope I shall not be poor long.  Friends can not lose one another; such
+friends as you and I have been.  I will take care we shall not do it,
+that is, if--but never mind that.  You have been very good to me, and I
+have often bothered you very much, I fear.  You will be almost glad to
+get rid of me."
+
+She might have turned upon him eyes swimming with tears--woman's
+tears--that engine of power which they say no man can ever resist; but I
+think, if so, a woman like Fortune would have scorned to use it.  Those
+poor weary eyes, which could weep oceans alone under the stars, were
+perfectly dry now--dry and fastened on the ground, as she replied, in a
+grave steady voice,
+
+"You do not believe that, else you would never have said it."
+
+Her composure must have surprised him, for he looked suddenly up, then
+begged her pardon.  "I did not hurt you, surely?  We must not part with
+the least shadow of unkindness between us."
+
+"No."  She offered her hand, and he took it--gently, affectionately, but
+only affectionately.  The one step beyond affection, which leads into
+another world, another life, he seemed determined not to pass.
+
+For at least half an hour he sat there with David on his knee, or rising
+up restlessly to pace the room with David on his shoulder; but apparently
+not desiring the child's absence, rather wishing to keep him as a sort of
+barrier.  Against what?--himself?  And so minute after minute slipped by;
+and Miss Williams, sitting in her place by the window, already saw,
+dotting the Links, group after group of the afternoon church-goers
+wandering quietly home--so quietly, so happily, fathers and mothers and
+children, companions and friends--for whom was no parting and no pain.
+
+Mr. Roy suddenly took out his watch.  "I must go now; I see I have spent
+all but my last five minutes.  Good-by, David, my lad; you'll be a big
+man, maybe, when I see you again.  Miss Williams" (standing before her
+with an expression on his face such as she had never seen before),
+"before I go there was a question I had determined to ask you--a purely
+ethical question which a friend of mine has been putting to me, and I
+could not answer; that is, I could from the man's side, the worldly side.
+A woman might think differently."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Simply this.  If a man has not a half-penny, ought he to ask a woman to
+share it?  Rather an Irish way of putting the matter," with a laugh, not
+without bitterness, "but you understand.  Ought he not to wait till he
+has at least something to offer besides himself:  Is it not mean,
+selfish, cowardly, to bind a woman to all the chances or mischances of
+his lot, instead of fighting it out alone like a man:  My friend  thinks
+so, and I--I agree with him."
+
+"Then why did you ask me."
+
+The words, though low and clear, were cold and sharp--sharp with almost
+unbearable pain.  Every atom of pride in her was roused. Whether he loved
+her and would not tell her so, or loved some other woman and wished her
+know it, it was all the same.  He was evidently determined to go away
+free and leave her free; and perhaps many sensible men or women would say
+he was right in so doing.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said, almost humbly.  "I ought not to have spoken
+of this at all.  I ought just to have said 'Good-by,' and nothing more."
+And he took her hand.
+
+There was on it one ring, not very valuable, but she always liked to wear
+it, as it had belonged to her mother.  Robert Roy drew it off, and put it
+deliberately into his pocket.
+
+"Give me this; you shall have it back again when I am dead, or you are
+married, whichever happens first.  Do you understand?"
+
+Putting David aside (indeed, he seemed for the first time to forget the
+boy's presence), he took her by the two hands and looked down into her
+face.  Apparently he read something there, something which startled him,
+almost shocked him.
+
+Irresolute, alas!  Too late; for just then all the three Dalziel boys
+rushed into the house and the school-room, followed by their grandmother.
+The old lady looked a good deal surprised, perhaps a little displeased,
+fro on to the other.
+
+Mr. Roy perceived it, and recovered himself in an instant, letting go
+Fortune's hands and placing himself in front of her, between her and Mrs.
+Dalziel.  Long afterward she remembered that trivial act--remembered it
+with the tender gratitude of the protected toward the protector, if
+nothing more.
+
+"You see, I came, as I told you I should, if possible, to bid Miss
+Williams good-by, and wee Davie.  They both kindly admitted me, and we
+have had half an hour's merry chat, have we not Davie?  Now, my man,
+good-by."  He took up the little fellow and kissed him, and then
+extended his hand.  "Good-by, Miss Williams.  I hope your little pupils
+will value you as you deserve."
+
+Then, with a courteous and formal farewell to the old lady, and a most
+uproarious one from the boys, he went to the door, but turned round,
+saying to the eldest boy, distinctly and clearly--though she was at the
+farther end of the room, she heard, and was sure he meant her to hear
+every word:
+
+"By-the-by, Archy, there is something I was about to explain to Miss
+Williams.  Tell her I will write it.  She is quite sure to have a letter
+from me tomorrow--no, on Tuesday morning."
+
+And so he went away, bravely and cheerily, the boys accompanying him to
+the gate, and shouting and waving their hats to him as he crossed the
+Links, until their grandmother reprovingly suggested that it was Sunday.
+
+"But Mr. Roy does not go off to India every Sunday.  Hurrah!  I wish we
+were all going too.  Three cheers for Mr. Roy." "Mr. Roy is a very fine
+fellow, and I hope he will do well," said Mrs. Dalziel, touched by their
+enthusiasm; also by some old memories, for, like many St. Andrews folk,
+she was strongly linked with India, and had sent off one-half of her
+numerous family to live or die there.  There was something like a tear in
+her old eyes, though not for the young tutor; but it effectually kept her
+from either looking at or thinking of the governess. And she forgot them
+both immediately.  They were merely the tutor and the governess.
+
+As for the boys, they chattered vehemently all tea-time about Mr. Roy,
+and their envy of the "jolly" life he was going to; then their minds
+turned to their own affairs, and there was silence.
+
+The kind of silence, most of us know it, when any one belonging to a
+household, or very familiar there, goes away on a long indefinite
+absence.  At first there is little consciousness of absence at all; we
+are so constantly expecting the door to be opened for the customary
+presence that we scarcely even miss the known voice, or face, or hand.
+By-and-by, however, we do miss it, and there comes a general, loud,
+shallow lamentation which soon cures itself, and implies an easy and
+comfortable forgetfulness before long.  Except with some, or possibly
+only one, who is, most likely the one who has never been heard to utter a
+word of regret, or seen to shed a single tear.
+
+Miss Williams, now left sole mistress in the school room, gave her
+lessons as usual there that Monday morning, and walked with all four boys
+on the Links all afternoon.  It was a very bright day, as beautiful as
+Sunday had been, and they communicated to her the interesting facts,
+learned at golfing that morning, that Mr. Roy and his portmanteau had
+been seen at Leuchars on the way to Burntisland, and he would likely have
+a good crossing, as the sea was very calm.  There had lately been some
+equinoctial gales, which had interested the boys amazingly, and they
+calculated with ingenious pertinacity whether such gales were likely to
+occur again when Mr. Roy was in the Bay of Biscay, and, if his ship were
+wrecked, what he would be supposed to do.  They were quite sure that he
+would conduct himself with great heroism, perhaps escape on a single
+plank, or a raft made by his own hands, and they consulted Miss Williams,
+who of course was peripatetic cyclopedia of all scholastic information,
+as to which port in France of Spain he was likely to be drifted to,
+supposing this exciting event did happen.
+
+She answered their questions with her usual ready kindliness.  She felt
+like a person in a dream, yet a not unhappy dream, for she still heard
+the voice, still felt the clasp of the strong, tender, sustaining hands.
+And tomorrow would be Tuesday.
+
+Tuesday was a wet morning.  The bright days were done.  Soon after dawn
+Fortune had woke up and watched the sunrise, till a chill fog crept over
+the sea and blotted it out; then gradually blotted out the land also, the
+Links, the town, every thing.  A regular St. Andrews "haar;" and St.
+Andrews people know what that is.  Miss Williams had seen it once or
+twice before, but never so bad as this--blighting, penetrating, and so
+dense that you could hardly see your hand before you.
+
+But Fortune scarcely felt it.  She said to herself, "Today is Tuesday,"
+which meant nothing to any one else, every thing to her.  For she knew
+the absolute faithfulness, the careful accuracy, in great things and
+small, with which she had to do.  If Robert Roy said, "I will write on
+such a day," he was as sure to write as that the day would dawn; that is,
+so far as his own will went; and will, not circumstance, is the strongest
+agent in this world.
+
+Therefore she waited quietly for the postman's horn.  It sounded at last.
+
+"I'll go," cried Archy.  "Just look at the haar!  I shall have to grope
+my way to the gate."
+
+He came back, after what seemed an almost endless time, rubbing his head
+and declaring he had nearly blinded himself by running right into the
+laurel bush.
+
+"I couldn't see for the fog.  I only hope I've left none of the letters
+behind.  No, no; all right.  Such a lot!  It's the Indian mail.  There's
+for you, and you, boys."  He dealt them out with a merry, careless hand.
+
+There was no letter for Miss Williams--a circumstance so usual that
+nobody noticed it or her, as she sat silent in her corner, while the
+children read noisily and gaily the letters from their far-away parents.
+
+_Her_ letter--what had befallen it?  Had he forgotten to write?  But
+Robert Roy never forgot any thing.  Nor did he delay any thing that he
+could possibly do at the time he promised.  He was one of the very few
+people in this world who in small things as in great are absolutely
+reliable.  It seemed so impossible to believe he had not written, when he
+said he would, that as a last hope, she stole out with a plaid over her
+head and crept through the sidewalks of the garden, almost groping her
+way through the fog, and, like Archy, stumbling over the low boughs of
+the laurel bush to the letter-box it held.  Her trembling hands felt in
+every corner, but no letter was there.
+
+She went wearily back; weary at heart, but patient still.  A love like
+hers, self-existent and sufficient to itself, is very patient, quite
+unlike the other and more common form of the passion; not love, but a
+diseased craving to be loved, which causes a thousand imaginary miseries
+and wrongs. Sharp was her pain, poor girl; but she was not angry, and
+after her first stab of disappointment her courage rose.  All was well
+with him; he had been seen cheerily starting for Edinburgh; and her own
+temporary suffering was a comparatively a small thing.  It could not
+last: the letter would come tomorrow.
+
+But it did not, nor the next day, nor the next.  On the fourth day her
+heart felt like to break.
+
+I think, of all pains not mortal, few are worse than this small silent
+agony of waiting for the post; letting all the day's hope climax upon a
+single minute, which passes by, and the hope with it, and then comes
+another day of dumb endurance, if not despair.  This even with ordinary
+letters upon which any thing of moment depends.  With others, such as
+this letter of Robert Roy's--let us not speak of it.  Some may imagine,
+others may have known, a similar suspense.  They will understand why,
+long years afterward, Fortune Williams was heard to say, with a quiver of
+the lip that could have told its bitter tale, "No; when I have a letter
+to write, I never put off writing it for single day."
+
+As these days wore on--these cruel days, never remembered without a
+shiver of pain, and of wonder that she could have lived through them at
+all--the whole fabric of reasons, arguments, excuses, that she had built
+up, for him and herself, gradually crumbled away.  Had she altogether
+misapprehended the purport of his promised letter?  Was it just some
+ordinary note, about her boys and their studies perhaps, which, after
+all, he had not thought it worthwhile to write?  Yet surely it was worth
+while, if only to send a kindly and courteous farewell to a friend, after
+so close an intimacy and in face of so indefinite a separation.
+
+A friend?  Only a friend?  Words may deceive, eyes seldom can.  And there
+had been love in his eyes.  Not mere liking, but actual love.  She had
+seen it, felt it, with that almost unerring instinct that women have,
+whether they return the love or not.  In the latter case, they seldom
+doubt it; in the former, they often do.
+
+"Could I have been mistaken?" she thought, with a burning pang of shame.
+"Oh, why did he not speak--just one word?  After that, I could have borne
+any thing."
+
+But he had not spoken, had not written.  He had let himself drop out of
+her life as completely as a falling star drops out of the sky, a ship
+sinks down in mid-ocean, or--any other poetical simile, used under such
+circumstances by romantic people.
+
+Fortune Williams was not romantic; at least, what romance was in her lay
+deep down, and came out in act rather than word.  She neither wept nor
+raved nor cultivated any external signs of a breaking heart.  A little
+paler she grew, a little quieter, but nobody observed this: indeed, it
+came to be one of her deepest causes of thankfulness that there was
+nobody to observe any thing--that she had no living soul belonging to
+her, neither father, mother, brother, nor sister, to pity her or to blame
+him; since to think him either blamable or blamed would have been the
+sharpest torture she could have known.
+
+She was saved that and some few other things by being only a governess,
+instead of one of Fate's cherished darlings, nestled in a family home.
+She had no time to grieve, except in the dead of night, when "the rain
+was on the roof."  It so happened that, after the haar, there set in a
+season of continuous, sullen, depressing rain.  But at night-time, and
+for the ten minutes between post hour and lesson hour--which she
+generally passed in her own room--if her mother, who died when she was
+ten-years old, could have seen her, she would have said, "My poor child."
+
+Robert Roy had once involuntarily called her so, when by accident one of
+her rough boys hurt her hand, and he himself bound it up, with the
+indescribable tenderness which the strong only know how to show or feel.
+Well she remembered this; indeed, almost every thing he had said or done
+came back upon her now--vividly, as we recall the words and looks of the
+dead--mingled with such a hungering pain, such a cruel "miss" of him,
+daily and hourly, his companionship, help, counsel, every thing she had
+lacked all her life, and never found but with him and from him.  And he
+was gone, had broken his promise, had left her without a single farewell
+word.
+
+That he had cared for her, in some sort of way, she was certain; for he
+was one of those who never say a word too large--nay, he usually said
+much less than he felt.  Whatever he had felt for her--whether
+friendship, affection, love--must have been true.  There was in his
+nature intense reserve, but no falseness, no insincerity, not an atom of
+pretense of any kind.
+
+If he did not love her, why not tell her so?  What was there to hinder
+him?  Nothing, except that strange notion of the "dishonorableness" of
+asking a woman's love when one has nothing but love to give her in
+return.  This, even, he had seemed at the last to have set aside, as if
+he could not go away without speaking.  And yet he did it.
+
+Perhaps he thought she did not care for him?  He had once said a man
+ought to feel quite sure of a woman before he asked her.  Also, that he
+should never ask twice, since, if she did not know her own mind then, she
+never would know it, and such a woman was the worst possible bargain a
+man could make in marriage.
+
+Not know her own mind!  Alas, poor soul, Fortune knew it only too well.
+In that dreadful fortnight it was "borne in upon her," as pious people
+say, that though she felt kindly to all human beings, the one human being
+who was necessary to her--without whom her life might be busy, indeed,
+and useful, but never perfect, an endurance instead of joy--was this
+young man, as solitary as herself, as poor, as hard-working; good,
+gentle, brave Robert Roy.
+
+Oh why had they not come together, heart to heart--just they two, so
+alone in the world--and ever after belonged to one another, even though
+it had been years and years before they were married?
+
+"If only he had love me, and told me so!" was her bitter cry.  "I could
+have waited ever so hardly, and quite alone, if only I might have had a
+right to him, and been his comfort, as he was mine.  But now--now--"
+
+Yet still she waited, looking forward daily to that dreadful post hour;
+and when it had gone by, nerving herself to endure until tomorrow.  At
+last hope, slowly dying, was killed outright.
+
+One day at tea-time the boys blurted out, with happy carelessness, their
+short-lived regrets for him being quite over, the news that Mr. Roy had
+sailed.
+
+"Not for Calcutta, but Shanghai, a much longer voyage.  He can't be heard
+of for a year at least, and it will be many years before he comes back.
+I wonder if he will come back rich.  They say he will: quite a nabob,
+perhaps, and take a place in the Highlands, and invite us all--you too,
+Miss Williams.  I once asked him, and he said, 'Of course.'  Stop, you
+are pouring my tea over into the saucer."
+
+This was the only error she made, but went on filling the cups with a
+steady hand, smiling and speaking mechanically, as people can sometimes.
+When the tea was quite over, she slipped away into her room, and was
+missing for a long time.
+
+So all was over.  No more waiting for that vague "something to happen."
+Nothing could happen now.  He was far away across the seas, and she must
+just go back to her old monotonous life, as if it had never been any
+different--as if she had never seen his face nor heard his voice, never
+known the blessing of his companionship, friendship, love, whatever it
+was, or whatever he had meant it to be.  No, he could not have loved her;
+or to have gone away would have been--she did not realize whether right
+or wrong--but simply impossible.
+
+Once, wearying herself with helpless conjectures, a thought, sudden and
+sharp as steel, went through her heart.  He was nearly thirty; few lives
+are thus long without some sort of love in them.  Perhaps he was already
+bound to some other woman, and finding himself drifting into too pleasant
+intimacy with herself, wished to draw back in time.  Such things had
+happened, sometimes almost blamelessly, though most miserably to all
+parties.  But with him it was not likely to happen.  He was too clear
+sighted, strong, and honest.  He would never "drift" into anything.  What
+he did would be done with a calm deliberate will, incapable of the
+slightest deception either toward others or himself.  Besides, he had at
+different times told her the whole story of his life, and there was no
+love in it; only work, hard work, poverty, courage, and endurance, like
+her own.
+
+"No, he could never have deceived me, neither me nor any one else," she
+often said to herself, almost joyfully, though the tears were running
+down.  "What ever it was, it was not that.  I am glad--glad.  I had far
+rather believe he never loved me than that he had been false to another
+woman for my sake.  And I believe in him still; I shall always believe in
+him.  He is perfectly good, perfectly true.  And so it does not much
+matter about me."
+
+I am afraid those young ladies who like plenty of lovers, who expect to
+be adored, and are vexed when they are not adored, and most nobly
+indignant when forsaken, will think very meanly of my poor Fortune
+Williams.  They may console themselves by thinking she was not a young
+lady at all--only a woman.  Such women are not too common, but they exist
+occasionally.  And they bear their cross and dree their weird (i.e.,
+endure); but their lot, at any rate, only concerns themselves, and has
+one advantage, that it in no way injures the happiness of other people.
+
+Humble as she was, she had her pride.  If she wept, it was out of sight.
+If she wished herself dead, and a happy ghost, that by any means she
+might get near him, know where he was, and what he was doing, these
+dreams came only when her work was done, her boys asleep.  Day never
+betrayed the secrets of the night.  She set to work every morning at her
+daily labors with a dogged persistence, never allowing herself a minute's
+idleness wherein to sit down and mourn.  And when, despite her will, she
+could not conquer the fits of nervous irritability that came over her at
+times--when the children's innocent voices used to pierce her like
+needles, and their incessant questions and perpetual company were almost
+more than she could bear--still, even then, all she did was to run away
+and hide herself for a little, coming back with a pleasant face and a
+smooth temper.  Why should she scold them, poor lambs?  They were all she
+had to love, or that loved her.  And they did love her, with all their
+boyish hearts.
+
+One day, however--the day before they all left St. Andrews for England,
+the two elder to go to school, and the younger ones to return with her to
+their maternal grand-mother in London--David said something which wounded
+her, vexed her, made her almost thankful to be going away.
+
+She was standing by the laurel bush, which somehow had for her a strange
+fascination, and her hand was on the letter-box which the boys and Mr.
+Roy had made.  There was a childish pleasure in touching it or any thing
+he had touched.
+
+"I hope grandmamma won't take away that box," said Archy.  "She ought to
+keep it in memory of us and Mr. Roy.  How cleverly he made it! Wasn't he
+clever now, Miss Williams?"
+
+"Yes," she answered and no more.
+
+"I've got a better letter-box than yours," said little Davie,
+mysteriously. "Shall I show it to you, Miss Williams?  And perhaps,"
+with a knowing look--the mischievous lad! and yet he was more loving and
+lovable than all the rest, Mr. Roy's favorite, and hers--"perhaps you
+might even find a letter in it.  Cook says she has seen you many a time
+watching for a letter from your sweetheart.  Who is he?"
+
+"I have none.  Tell cook she should not talk such nonsense to little
+boys," said the governess, gravely.  But she felt hot from head to foot,
+and turning, walked slowly in-doors.  She did not go near the laurel bush
+again.
+
+After that, she was almost glad to get away, among strange people and
+strange places, where Robert Roy's name had never been heard.  The
+familiar places--hallowed as no other spot in this world, could ever
+be--passed out of sight, and in another week her six months' happy life
+at St. Andrews had vanished, "like a dream when one awaketh."
+
+Had she awaked?  Or was her daily, outside life to be henceforth the
+dream, and this the reality?
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 3.
+
+What is a "wrecked" life?  One which the waves of inexorable fate have
+beaten to pieces, or one that, like an unseaworthy ship, is ready to go
+down in any waters?  What most destroy us? the things we might well blame
+ourselves for, only we seldom do, our follies, blunders, errors, not
+counting actual sins? or the things for which we can blame nobody but
+Providence--if we dared--such as our losses and griefs, our sicknesses of
+body and mind, all those afflictions which we call "the visitation of
+God?"  Ay, and so they are, but not sent in wrath, or for ultimate evil.
+No amount of sorrow need make any human life harmful to man or unholy
+before God, as a discontented, unhappy life must needs be unholy in the
+sight of Him who in the mysterious economy of the universe seems to have
+one absolute law--He wastes nothing.  He modifies, transmutes,
+substitutes, re-applies material to new uses; but apparently by Him
+nothing is ever really lost, nothing thrown away.
+
+Therefore, I incline to believe, when I hear people talking of a
+"wrecked" existence, that whosoever is to blame, it is not Providence.
+
+Nobody could have applied the term to Fortune Williams, looking at
+her as she sat in the drawing-room window of a house at Brighton, just
+where the gray of the Esplanade meets the green of the Downs--a ladies'
+boarding-school, where she had in her charge two pupils, left behind
+for the holidays, while the mistress took a few weeks' repose.  She sat
+watching the sea, which was very beautiful, as even the Brighton sea can
+be sometimes.  Her eyes were soft and calm; her hands were folded on her
+black silk dress, her pretty little tender-looking hands, unringed, for
+she was still Miss Williams, still a governess.
+
+But even at thirty-five--she had now reached that age, nay, passed
+it--she was not what you would call "old-maidish."  Perhaps because the
+motherly instinct, naturally very strong in her, had developed more and
+more.  She was one of those governesses--the only sort who ought ever to
+attempt to be governesses--who really love children, ay, despite their
+naughtinesses and mischievousnesses and worrying ways; who feel that,
+after all, these little ones are "of the kingdom of heaven," and that the
+task of educating them for that kingdom somehow often brings us nearer to
+it ourselves.
+
+Her heart, always tender to children, had gone out to them more and more
+every year, especially after that fatal year when a man took it and broke
+it.  No, not broke it, but threw it carelessly away, wounding it so
+sorely that it never could be quite itself again.  But it was a true and
+warm and womanly heart still.
+
+She had never heard of him--Robert Roy--never once, in any way, since
+that Sunday afternoon when he said, "I will write tomorrow," and did not
+write, but let her drop from him altogether like a worthless thing.
+Cruel, somewhat, even to a mere acquaintance--but to her?
+
+Well, all was past and gone, and the tide of years had flowed over it.
+Whatever it was, a mistake, a misfortune, or a wrong, nobody knew any
+thing about it.  And the wound even was healed, in a sort of a way, and
+chiefly by the unconscious hands of these little "ministering angels,"
+who were angels that never hurt her, except by blotting their copy-books
+or not learning their lessons.
+
+I know it may sound a ridiculous thing that a forlorn governess should
+be comforted for a lost love by the love of children; but it is true to
+nature. Women's lives have successive phases, each following the other in
+natural gradation--maidenhood, wifehood, motherhood: in not one of which,
+ordinarily, we regret the one before it, to which it is nevertheless
+impossible to go back.  But Fortune's life had had none of these,
+excepting, perhaps, her one six months' dream of love and spring.  That
+being over, she fell back upon autumn days and autumn pleasures--which
+are very real pleasures, after all.
+
+As she sat with the two little girls leaning against her lap--they were
+Indian children, unaccustomed to tenderness, and had already grown very
+fond of her--there was a look in her face, not at all like an ancient
+maiden or a governess, but almost motherly.  You see the like in the
+faces of the Virgin Mary, as the old monks used to paint her, quaint, and
+not always lovely, but never common or coarse, and spiritualized by a
+look of mingled tenderness and sorrow into something beyond all beauty.
+
+This woman's face had it, so that people who had known Miss Williams as
+a girl were astonished to find her, as a middle-aged woman, grown "so
+good-looking."  To which one of her pupils once answered, naively, "It
+is because she looks so good."
+
+But this was after ten years and more.  Of the first half of those years
+the less that is said, the better.  She did not live; she merely endured
+life. Monotony without, a constant aching within--a restless gnawing
+want, a perpetual expectation, half hope, half fear; no human being could
+bear all this without being the worse for it, or the better.  But the
+betterness came afterward, not first.
+
+Sometimes her cravings to hear the smallest tidings of him, only if he
+were alive or dead, grew into such an agony that, had it not been for
+her entire helplessness in the matter, she might have tried some means
+of gaining information.  But from his sudden change of plans, she was
+ignorant even of the name of the ship he had sailed by, the firm he had
+gone to.  She could do absolutely nothing, and learn nothing.  Here was
+something like the "Affliction of Margaret," that poem of Wordsworth's
+which, when her little pupils recited it--as they often did--made her
+ready to sob out loud from the pang of its piteous reality:
+
+   "I look for ghosts, but none will force
+       Their way to me: 'tis falsely said
+   That there was ever intercourse
+       Betwixt the living and the dead:
+   For surely then I should have sight
+      Of him I wait for day and night
+   With love and longings infinite."
+
+Still, in the depth of her heart she did not believe Robert Roy was dead;
+for her finger was still empty of that ring--her mother's ring--which he
+had drawn off, promising its return "when he was dead or she was
+married."  This implied that he never meant to lose sight of her.  Nor,
+indeed, had he wished it, would it have been very difficult to find her,
+these ten years having been spent entirely in one place, an obscure
+village in the south of England, where she had lived as governess--first
+in the squire's family, then the rector's.
+
+From the Dalziel family, where, as she had said to Mr. Roy, she hoped to
+remain for years, she had drifted away almost immediately; within a few
+months.  At Christmas old Mrs. Dalziel had suddenly died; her son had
+returned home, sent his four boys to school in Germany, and gone back
+again to India.  There was now, for the first time for half a century,
+not a single Dalziel left in St. Andrews.
+
+But though all ties were broken connecting her with the dear old city,
+her boys still wrote to her now and then, and she to them, with a
+persistency for which her conscience smote her sometimes, knowing it was
+not wholly for their sakes.  But they had never been near her, and she
+had little expectation of seeing any of them ever again, since by this
+time she had lived long enough to find out how easily people do drift
+asunder, and lose all clue to one another, unless some strong firm will
+or unconquerable habit of fidelity exists on one side or the other.
+
+Since the Dalziels she had only lived in the two families before named,
+and had been lately driven from the last one by a catastrophe, if it may
+be called so, which had been the bitterest drop in her cup since the time
+she left St. Andrews.
+
+The rector--a widower, and a feeble, gentle invalid, to whom naturally
+she had been kind and tender, regarding him with much the same sort of
+motherly feeling as she had regarded his children--suddenly asked her to
+become their mother in reality.
+
+It was a great shock and a pang: almost a temptation; for they all loved
+her, and wished to keep her.  She would have been such a blessing, such
+a brightness, in that dreary home.  And to a woman no longer young, who
+had seen her youth pass without any brightness in it, God knows what
+an allurement it is to feel she has still the power of brightening
+other lives.  If Fortune had yielded--if she had said yes, and married
+the rector--it would have been hardly wonderful, scarcely blamable.
+Nor would it have been the first time that a good, conscientious,
+tender-hearted woman has married a man for pure tenderness.
+
+But she did not do it; not even when they clung around her--those
+forlorn, half-educated, but affectionate girls--entreating her to "marry
+papa, and make us all happy."  She could not--how could she?  She felt
+very kindly to him.  He had her sincere respect, almost affection; but
+when she looked into her own heart, she found there was not in it one
+atom of love, never had been, for any man alive except Robert Roy. While
+he was unmarried, for her to marry would be impossible.
+
+And so she had the wisdom and courage to say to herself, and to them all,
+"This can not be;" to put aside the cup of attainable happiness, which
+might never have proved real happiness, because founded on an
+insincerity.
+
+But the pain this cost was so great, the wrench of parting from her poor
+girls so cruel, that after it Miss Williams had a sharp illness, the
+first serious illness of her life.  She struggled through it, quietly and
+alone, in one of those excellent "Governesses' Homes," where every body
+was very kind to her--some more than kind, affectionate.  It was strange,
+she often thought, what an endless amount of affection followed her
+wherever she went.  She was by no means one of those women who go about
+the world moaning that nobody loves them.  Every body loved her, and she
+knew it--every body whose love was worth having--except Robert Roy.
+
+Still her mind never changed; not even when, in the weakness of illness,
+there would come vague dreams of that peaceful rectory, with its quiet
+rooms and green garden; of the gentle, kindly hearted father, and the two
+loving girls whom she could have made so happy, and perhaps won happiness
+herself in the doing of it.
+
+"I am a great fool, some people would say," thought she, with a sad
+smile; "perhaps rather worse.  Perhaps I am acting absolutely wrong in
+throwing away my chance of doing good.  But I can not help it--I can not
+help it."
+
+So she kept to her resolution, writing the occasional notes she had
+promised to write to her poor forsaken girls, without saying a word of
+her illness; and when she grew better, though not strong enough to
+undertake a new situation, finding her money slipping away--though, with
+her good salaries and small wants, she was not poor, and had already
+begun to lay up for a lonely old age--she accepted this temporary
+home at Miss Maclachlan's, at Brighton.  Was it--so strange are the
+under-currents which guide one's outward life--was it because she had
+found a curious charm in the old lady's Scotch tongue, unheard for years?
+That the two little pupils were Indian children, and that the house was
+at the seaside?--and she had never seen the sea since she left St.
+Andrews.
+
+It was going back to the days of her youth to sit, as now, watching the
+sunshine glitter on the far-away ocean.  The very smell of the sea-weed,
+the lap-lap of the little waves, brought back old recollections so
+vividly--old thoughts, some bitter, some sweet, but the sweetness
+generally over-coming the bitterness.
+
+   "I have had all the joy that the world could bestow;
+   I have lived--I have loved."
+
+So sings the poet, and truly.  Though to this woman love had brought not
+joy, but sorrow, still she had loved, and it had been the main-stay and
+stronghold of her life, even though to outsiders it might have appeared
+little better than a delusion, a dream.  Once, and by one only, her whole
+nature had been drawn out, her ideal of moral right entirely satisfied.
+And nothing had ever shattered this ideal.  She clung to it, as we cling
+to the memory of our dead children, who are children forever.
+
+With a passionate fidelity she remembered all Robert Roy's goodness, his
+rare and noble qualities, resolutely shutting her eyes to what she might
+have judged severely, had it happened to another person--his total,
+unexplained, and inexplicable desertion of herself.  It was utterly
+irreconcilable with all she had ever known of him; and being powerless to
+unravel it, she left it, just as we have to leave many a mystery in
+heaven and earth, with the humble cry, "I can not understand--I love."
+
+She loved him, that was all; and sometimes even yet, across that desert
+of despair, stretching before and behind her, came a wild hope, almost a
+conviction, that she would meet him again, somewhere, somehow.  This day,
+even, when, after an hour's delicious idleness, she roused herself to
+take her little girls down to the beach, and sat on the shingle while
+they played, the sound and sights of the sea brought old times so vividly
+back that she could almost have fancied coming behind her the familiar
+step, the pleasant voice, as when Mr. Roy and his boys used to overtake
+her on the St. Andrews shore--Robert Roy, a young man, with his life all
+before him, as was hers.  Now she was middle-aged, and he--he must be
+over forty by this time.  How strange!
+
+Stranger still that there had never occurred to her one possibility--that
+he "was not," that God had taken him.  But this her heart absolutely
+refused to accept.  So long as he was in it, the world would never be
+quite empty to her.  Afterward--But, as I said, there are some things
+which can not be faced and this was one of them.
+
+All else she had faced long ago.  She did not grieve now.  As she walked
+with her children, listening to their endless talk with that patient
+sympathy which made all children love her, and which she often found was
+a better help to their education than dozens of lessons, there was on her
+face that peaceful expression which is the greatest preservative of
+youth, the greatest antidote to change.  And so it was no wonder that a
+tall lad, passing and re-passing on the Esplanade with another youth,
+looked at her more than once with great curiosity, and advanced with
+hesitating politeness.
+
+"I beg your pardon, ma'am, if I mistake; but you are so like a lady I
+once knew, and am now looking for.  Are you Miss Williams?"
+
+"My name is Williams, certainly; and you"--something in the curly light
+hair, the mischievous twinkle of the eye, struck her--"you can not be,
+it is scarcely possible--David Dalziel?"
+
+"But, I am, though," cried the lad, shaking her hand as if he would shake
+it off.  "And I call myself very clever to have remembered you, though I
+was such a little fellow when you left us, and I have only seen your
+photograph since.  But you are not a bit altered--not one bit.  And as I
+knew by your last letter to Archy that you were at Brighton, I thought
+I'd risk it and speak.  Hurra! How very jolly!"
+
+He had grown a handsome lad, the pretty wee Davie, an honest-looking lad
+too, apparently, and she was glad to see him.  From the dignity of his
+eighteen years and five feet ten of height, he looked down upon the
+governess, and patronized her quite tenderly--dismissing his friend and
+walking home with her, telling her on the way all his affairs and that of
+his family with the volubility of little David Dalziel at St. Andrews.
+
+"No, I've not forgotten St. Andrews one bit, though I was so small.  I
+remember poor old grannie, and her cottage, and the garden, and the
+Links, and the golfing, and Mr. Roy.  By-the-by, what has become of Mr.
+Roy?"
+
+The suddenness of the question, nay, the very sound of a name totally
+silent for so many years, made Fortune's heart throb till its beating
+was actual pain.  Then came a sudden desperate hope, as she answered:
+
+"I can not tell.  I have never heard any thing of him.  Have you?"
+
+"No--yet, let me see.  I think Archy once got a letter from him, a year
+or so after he went away; but we lost it somehow, and never answered it.
+We have never heard any thing since."
+
+Miss Williams sat down on one of the benches facing the sea, with a
+murmured excuse of being "tired."  One of her little girls crept beside
+her, stealing a hand in hers.  She held it fast, her own shook so; but
+gradually she grew quite herself again.  "I have been ill," she
+explained, "and can not walk far.  Let us sit down here a little.  You
+were speaking about Mr. Roy, David?"
+
+"Yes.  What a good fellow he was!  We called him Rob Roy, I remember, but
+only behind his back.  He was strict, but he was a jolly old soul for all
+that.  I believe I should know him again any day, as I did you.  But
+perhaps he is dead; people die pretty fast abroad, and ten years is a
+long time, isn't it?"
+
+"A long time.  And you never got any more letters?"
+
+"No; or if they did come, they were lost, being directed probably to the
+care of poor old grannie, as ours was.  We thought it so odd, after she
+was dead, you know."
+
+Thus the boy chattered on--his tongue had not shortened with his
+increasing inches--and every idle word sank down deep in his old
+governess's heart.
+
+Then it was only her whom Robert Roy had forsaken.  He had written to his
+boys, probably would have gone on writing had they answered his letter.
+He was neither faithless nor forgetful.  With an ingenuity that might
+have brought to any listener a smile or a tear, Miss Williams led the
+conversation round again till she could easily ask more concerning that
+one letter; but David, remembered little or nothing, except that it was
+dated from Shanghai, for his brothers had had a discussion whether
+Shanghai was in China or Japan.  Then, boy-like, they had forgotten the
+whole matter.
+
+"Yes, by this time every body had forgotten him," thought Fortune to
+herself, when having bidden David good-by at her door and arranged to
+meet him again--he was on a visit at Brighton before matriculating at
+Oxford next term--she sat down in own room, with a strangely bewildered
+feeling.  "Mine, all mine," she said, and her heart closed itself over
+him, her old friend at least, if nothing more, with a tenacity of
+tenderness as silent as it was strong.
+
+From that day, though she saw, and was determined henceforward to see, as
+much as she could of young David Dalziel, she never once spoke to him of
+Mr. Roy.
+
+Still, to have the lad coming about her was a pleasure, a fond link with
+the past, and to talk to him about his future was a pleasure too.  He was
+the one of all the four--Mr. Roy always said so--who had "brains" enough
+to become a real student; and instead of following the others to India,
+he was to go to Oxford, and do his best there.  His German education had
+left him few English friends.  He was an affectionate, simple-hearted
+lad, and now that his mischievous days were done, was taking to thorough
+hard work.  He attached himself to his old governess with an enthusiasm
+that a lad in his teens often conceives for a woman still young enough to
+be sympathetic, and intelligent enough to guide without ruling the errant
+fancy of that age.  She, too, soon grew very fond of him.  It made her
+strangely happy, this sudden rift of sunshine out of the never-forgotten
+heaven of her youth, now almost as far off as heaven itself.
+
+I have said she never spoke to David about Mr. Roy, nor did she; but
+sometimes he spoke, and then she listened.  It seemed to cheer her for
+hours, only to hear that name.  She grew stronger, gayer, younger.  Every
+body said how much good the sea was doing her, and so it was; but not
+exactly in the way people thought.  The spell of silence upon her life
+had been broken, and though she knew all sensible persons would esteem
+her in this, as in that other matter, a great "fool," still she could not
+stifle a vague hope that some time or other her blank life might change.
+Every little wave that swept in from the mysterious ocean, the ocean that
+lay between them two, seemed to carry a whispering message and lay it at
+her feet, "Wait and be patient, wait and be patient."
+
+She did wait, and the message came at last.
+
+One day David Dalziel called, on one of his favorite daily rides, and
+threw a newspaper down at her door, where she was standing.
+
+"An Indian paper my mother has just sent.  There's something in it that
+will interest you, and--"
+
+His horse galloped off with the unfinished sentence; and supposing it was
+something concerning his family, she put the paper in her pocket to read
+at leisure while she sat on the beach.  She had almost forgotten it, as
+she watched the waves, full of that pleasant idleness and dreamy peace so
+new in her life, and which the sound of the sea so often brings to
+peaceful hearts, who have no dislike to its monotony, no dread of those
+solemn thoughts of infinitude, time and eternity, God and death and love,
+which it unconsciously gives, and which I think is the secret why some
+people say they have "such a horror of the sea-side."
+
+She had none; she loved it, for its sights and sounds were mixed up with
+all the happiness of her young days.  She could have sat all this
+sunshiny morning on the beach doing absolutely nothing, had she not
+remembered David's newspaper; which, just to please him, she must look
+through. She did so, and in the corner, among the brief list of names in
+the obituary, she saw that of "Roy."  Not himself, as she soon found, as
+soon as she could see to read, in the sudden blindness that came over
+her.  Not himself.  Only his child.
+
+"On Christmas-day, at Shanghai, aged three and a half years, Isabella,
+the only and beloved daughter of Robert and Isabella Roy."
+
+He was alive, then.  That was her first thought, almost a joyful one,
+showing how deep had been her secret dread of the contrary.  And he was
+married.  His "only and beloved daughter?"  Oh! how beloved she could
+well understand.  Married, and a father; and his child was dead.
+
+Many would think it strange (it would be in most women, but it was not in
+this woman) that the torrent of tears which burst forth, after her first
+few minutes of dry-eyed anguish, was less for herself, because he was
+married and he had lost him, than for him, because he had had a child and
+lost it--he who was so tender of heart, so fond of children.  The thought
+of his grief brought such a consecration with it, that her grief--the
+grief most women might be expected to feel on reading suddenly in a
+newspaper that the man they loved was married to another--did not come.
+At least not at once.  It did not burst upon her, as sorrow does
+sometimes, like a wild beast out of a jungle, slaying and devouring.  She
+was not slain, not even stunned.  After a few minutes it seemed to her as
+if it had happened long ago--as if she had always known it must happen,
+and was not astonished.
+
+His "only and beloved daughter!"  The words sung themselves in and out of
+her brain, to the murmur of the sea.  How he must have loved the child!
+She could almost see him with the little one in his arms, or watching
+over her bed, or standing beside her small coffin.  Three years and a
+half old!  Then he must have been married a good while--long and long
+after she had gone on thinking of him as no righteous woman ever can go
+on thinking of another woman's husband.
+
+One burning blush, one shiver from head to foot, one cry of piteous
+despair, which nobody heard but God--and she was not afraid of His
+hearing--and the struggle was over.  She saw Robert Roy, with his child
+in his arms with his wife by his side, the same and yet a totally
+different man.
+
+She, too, when she rose up, and tried to walk, tried to feel that it was
+the same sea, the same shore, the same earth and sky, was a totally
+different woman.  Something was lost, something never to be retrieved on
+this side the grave, but also something was found.
+
+"He is alive," she said to herself, with the same strange joy; for now
+she knew where he was, and what had happened to him.  The silence of all
+these years was broken, the dead had come to life again, and the lost, in
+a sense, was found.
+
+Fortune Williams rose up and walked, in more senses than one; went round
+to fetch her little girls, as she had promised, from that newly opened
+delight of children, the Brighton Aquarium; staid a little with them,
+admiring the fishes; and when she reached home, and found David Dalziel
+in the drawing-room, met him and thanked him for bringing her the
+newspaper. "I suppose it was on account of that obituary notice of Mr.
+Roy's child," said she, calmly naming the name now.  "What a sad thing!
+But still I am glad to know he is alive and well.  So will you be.  Shall
+you write to him?"
+
+"Well, I don't know," answered the lad, carelessly crumpling up the
+newspaper and throwing it on the fire.  Miss Williams made a faint
+movement to snatch it out, then disguised the gesture in some way, and
+silently watched it burn.  "I don't quite see the use of writing.  He's a
+family man now, and must have forgotten all about his old friends. Don't
+you think so?"
+
+"Perhaps; only he was not the sort of person easily to forget."
+
+She could defend him now; she could speak of him, and did speak more than
+once afterward, when David referred to the matter.  And then the lad
+quitted Brighton for Oxford, and she was left in her old loneliness.
+
+A loneliness which I will not speak of.  She herself never referred to
+that time.  After it, she roused herself to begin her life anew in a
+fresh home, to work hard, not only for daily bread but for that humble
+independence which she was determined to win before the dark hour when
+the most helpful become helpless, and the most independent are driven
+to fall a piteous burden into the charitable hands of friends or
+strangers--a thing to her so terrible that to save herself from the
+possibility of it, she who had never leaned upon any body, never had any
+body to lean on, became her one almost morbid desire.
+
+She had no dread of a solitary old age but an old age beholden to either
+public or private charity was to her intolerable; and she had now few
+years left her to work in--a governess's life wears women out very fast.
+She determined to begin to work again immediately, laying by as much as
+possible yearly against the days when she could work no more; consulted
+Miss Maclachlan, who was most kind; and then sought and was just about
+going to another situation, with the highest salary she had yet earned,
+when an utterly unexpected change altered every thing.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 4.
+
+The fly was already at the door, and Miss Williams, with her small
+luggage, would in five minutes have departed, followed by the good wishes
+of all the household, from Miss Maclachlan's school to her new situation,
+when the postman passed and left a letter for her.
+
+"I will put it in my pocket and read it in the train," she said, with a
+slight change of color.  For she recognized the handwriting of that good
+man who had loved her, and whom she could not love.
+
+"Better read it now.  No time like the present," observed Miss
+Maclachlan.
+
+Miss Williams did so.  As soon as she was fairly started and alone in the
+fly, she opened it, with hands slightly trembling, for she was touched by
+the persistence of the good rector, and his faithfulness to her, a poor
+governess, when he might have married, as they said in his neighborhood,
+"anybody."  He would never marry any body now--he was dying.
+
+"I have come to feel how wrong I was," he wrote, "in ever trying to
+change our happy relations together.  I have suffered for this--so have
+we all.  But it is now too late for regret.  My time has come.  Do not
+grieve yourself by imagining it has come the faster through any decision
+of yours, but by slow, inevitable disease, which the doctors have only
+lately discovered.  Nothing could have saved me.  Be satisfied that there
+is no cause for you to give yourself one moment's pain."  (How she sobbed
+over those shaky lines, more even than over the newspaper lines which she
+had read that sun-shiny morning on the shore!)  "Remember only that you
+made me very happy--me and all mine--for years; that I loved you, as even
+at my age a man can love; as I shall love you to the end, which can not
+be very far off now.  Would you dislike coming to see me just once again?
+My girls will so very glad, and nobody knows any thing.  Besides, what
+matter?  I am dying.  Come, if you can within a week or so; they tell me
+I may last thus long.  And I want to consult with you about my children.
+Therefore I will not say good-by now, only good-night, and God bless
+you."
+
+But it was good-by, after all.  Though she did not wait the week; indeed,
+she waited for nothing, considered nothing, except her gratitude to this
+good man--the only man who had loved her--and her affection for the two
+girls, who would soon be fatherless; though she sent a telegram from
+Brighton to say she was coming, and arrived within twenty-four hours,
+still--she came too late.
+
+When she reached the village she heard that his sufferings were all over;
+and a few yards from his garden wall, in the shade of the church-yard
+lime-tree, the old sexton was busy re-opening, after fourteen years, the
+family grave, where he was to be laid beside his wife the day after
+to-morrow.  His two daughters, sitting alone together in the melancholy
+house, heard Miss Williams enter, and ran to meet her.  With a feeling of
+nearness and tenderness such as she had scarcely ever felt for any human
+being, she clasped them close, and let them weep their hearts out in her
+motherly arms.
+
+Thus the current of her whole life was changed; for when Mr. Moseley's
+will was opened, it was found that, besides leaving Miss Williams a
+handsome legacy, carefully explained as being given "in gratitude for her
+care of his children," he had chosen her as their guardian, until they
+came of age or married, entreating her to reside with them, and desiring
+them to pay her all the respect due to "a near and dear relative."  The
+tenderness with which he had arranged every thing, down to the minutest
+points, for them and herself, even amidst all his bodily sufferings, and
+in face of the supreme hour--which he had met, his daughters said, with a
+marvelous calmness, even joy--touched Fortune as perhaps nothing had ever
+touched her in all her life before.  When she stood with her two poor
+orphans beside their father's grave, and returned with them to the
+desolate house, vowing within herself to be too them, all but in name,
+the mother he had wished her to be, this sense of duty--the strange new
+duty which had suddenly come to fill her empty life--was so strong, that
+she forgot every thing else--even Robert Roy.
+
+And for months afterward--months of anxious business, involving the
+leaving of the Rectory, and the taking of a temporary house in the
+village, until they could decide where finally to settle--Miss Williams
+had scarcely a moment or a thought to spare for any beyond the vivid
+present.  Past and future faded away together, except so far as concerned
+her girls.
+
+"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might," were words
+which had helped her through many a dark time.  Now, with all her might,
+she did her motherly duty to the orphan girls; and as she did so,
+by-and-by she began strangely to enjoy it, and to find also not a little
+of motherly pride and pleasure in them.  She had not time to think of
+herself at all, or of the great blow which had fallen, the great change
+which had come, rendering it impossible for her to let herself feel as
+she had used to feel, dream as she used to dream, for years and years
+past. That one pathetic line
+
+"I darena think o' Jamie, for that wad be a sin," burned itself into
+her heart, and needed nothing more.
+
+"My children!  I must only love my children now," was her continual
+thought, and she believed she did so.
+
+It was not until spring came, healing the girls' grief as naturally as it
+covered their father's grave with violets and primroses, and making them
+cling a little less to home and her, a little more to the returning
+pleasures of their youth, for they were two pretty girls, well-born, with
+tolerable fortunes, and likely to be much sought after--not until the
+spring days left her much alone, did Fortune's mind recur to an idea
+which had struck her once, and then been set aside--to write to Robert
+Roy.  Why should she not?  Just a few friendly lines, telling him how,
+after long years, she had seen his name in the papers; how sorry she was,
+and yet glad--glad to think he was alive and well, and married; how she
+sent all kindly wishes to his wife and himself, and so on.  In short the
+sort of letter that any body might write or receive, whatever had been
+the previous link between them. And she wrote it on an April day, one of
+those first days of spring which make young hearts throb with a vague
+delight, a nameless hope; and older ones--but is there any age when hope
+is quite dead?  I think not, even to those who know that the only spring
+that will ever come to them will dawn in the world everlasting.
+
+When her girls, entering, offered to post her letter, and Miss Williams
+answered gently that she would rather post it herself, as it required a
+foreign stamp, how little they guessed all that lay underneath, and how,
+over the first few lines, her hand had shaken so that she had to copy it
+three times.  But the address, "Robert Roy, Shanghai"--all she could put,
+but she had little doubt it would find him--was written with that firm,
+clear hand which he had so often admired, saying he wished she could
+teach his boys to write as well.  Would he recognize it?  Would he be
+glad or sorry, or only indifferent?  Had the world changed him? or, if
+she could look at him now, would he be the same Robert Roy--simple, true,
+sincere, and brave--every inch a man and a gentleman?
+
+For the instant the old misery came back; the sharp, sharp pain; but
+she smothered it down.  His dead child, his living, unknown wife, came
+between, with their soft ghostly hands.  He was still himself; she
+hoped absolutely unchanged; but he was hers no more.  Yet that strange
+yearning, the same which had impelled Mr. Moseley to write and say, "Come
+and see me before I die," seemed impelling her to stretch a hand out
+across the seas--"Have you forgotten me:  I have never forgotten you."
+As she passed through the church-yard on her way to the village, and saw
+the rector's grave lie smiling in the evening sunshine, Fortune thought
+what a strange lot hers had been.  The man who had loved her, the man
+whom she had loved, were equally lost to her; equally dead and buried.
+And yet she lived still--her busy, active, and not unhappy life.  It was
+God's will, all; and it was best.
+
+Another six months went by, and she still remained in the same place,
+though talking daily of leaving.  They began to go into society again,
+she and her girls, and to receive visitors now and then: among the rest,
+David Dalziel, who had preserved his affectionate fidelity even when he
+went back to college, and had begun to discover somehow that the direct
+road from Oxford to every where was through this secluded village.  I am
+afraid Miss Williams was not as alive as she ought to have been to this
+fact, and to the other fact that Helen and Janetta were not quite
+children now, but she let the young people be happy, and was happy with
+them, after her fashion.  Still, hers was less happiness than peace; the
+deep peace which a storm-tossed vessel finds when kindly fate has towed
+it into harbor; with torn sails and broken masts, maybe, but still safe,
+never needing to go to sea any more.
+
+She had come to that point in life when we cease to be "afraid of evil
+tidings," since nothing is likely to happen to us beyond what has
+happened.  She told herself that she did not look forward to the answer
+from Shanghai, if indeed any came; nevertheless, she had ascertained what
+time the return mail would be likely to bring it.  And, almost punctual
+to the day, a letter arrived with the postmark, "Shanghai."  Not his
+letter, nor his handwriting at all.  And, besides, it was addressed to
+"_Mrs._ Williams."
+
+A shudder of fear, the only fear which could strike her now--that he
+might be dead--made Fortune stand irresolute a moment, then go up to her
+own room before she opened it.
+
+"Madam,--I beg to apologize for having read nearly through your letter
+before comprehending that it was not meant for me, but probably for
+another Mr. Robert Roy, who left this place not long after I came here,
+and between whom and myself some confusion arose, till we became
+intimate, and discovered that we were most likely distant, very distant
+cousins.  He came from St. Andrews, and was head clerk in a firm here,
+doing a very good business in tea and silk, until they mixed themselves
+up in the opium trade, which Mr. Roy, with one or two more of our
+community here, thought so objectionable that at last he threw up his
+situation and determined to seek his fortunes in Australia.  It was a
+pity, for he was in a good way to get on rapidly, but everybody who knew
+him agreed it was just the sort of thing he was sure to do, and some
+respected him highly for doing it.  He was indeed what we Scotch call
+'weel respeckit' wherever he went.  But he was a reserved man; made few
+intimate friends, though those he did make were warmly attached to him.
+My family were; and though it is now five years since we have heard
+anything of or from him, we remember him still."
+
+Five years!  The letter dropped from her hands.  Lost and found, yet
+found and lost.  What might not have happened to him in five years?  But
+she read on, dry-eyed: women do not weep very much or very easily at her
+age.
+
+"I will do my utmost, madam, that your letter shall reach the hands for
+which I am sure it was intended; but that may take some time, my only
+clue to Mr. Roy's whereabouts being the branch house at Melbourne.  I can
+not think he is dead, because such tidings pass rapidly from one to
+another in our colonial communities, and he was too much beloved for his
+death to excite no concern.
+
+"I make this long explanation because it strikes me you may be a lady, a
+friend or relative of Mr. Roy's, concerning whom he employed me to make
+some inquiries, only you say so very little--absolutely nothing--of
+yourself in your letter, that I can not be at all certain if you are the
+same person.  She was a governess in a family named Dalziel, living at
+St. Andrews.  He said he had written to that family repeatedly, but got
+no answer, and then asked me, if any thing resulted from my inquiries, to
+write to him to the care of our Melbourne house.  But no news ever came,
+and I never wrote to him, for which my wife still blames me exceedingly.
+She thanks you, dear madam, for the kind things you say about our poor
+child, though meant for another person.  We have seven boys, but little
+Bell was our youngest, and our hearts' delight.  She died after six
+hours' illness.
+
+"Again begging you to pardon my unconscious offense in reading a
+stranger's letter, and the length of this one, I remain your very
+obedient servant,     R. Roy
+
+"P.S.--I ought to say that this Mr. Robert Roy seemed between thirty-five
+and forty, tall, dark-haired, walked with a slight stoop.  He had, I
+believe, no near relatives whatever, and I never heard of his having been
+married."
+
+Unquestionably Miss Williams did well in retiring to her chamber and
+locking the door before she opened the letter.  It is a mistake to
+suppose that at thirty-five or forty--or what age?--women cease to feel.
+I once was walking with an old maiden lady, talking of a character in a
+book. "He reminded me," she said, "of the very best man I ever knew, whom
+I saw a good deal of when I was a girl."  And to the natural question,
+was he alive, she answered, "No; he died while he was still young."  Her
+voice kept its ordinary tone, but there came a slight flush on the cheek,
+a sudden quiver over the whole withered face--she was some years past
+seventy--and I felt I could not say another word.
+
+Nor shall I say a word now of Fortune Williams, when she had read through
+and wholly taken in the contents of this letter.
+
+Life began for her again--life on a new and yet on the old basis; for it
+was still waiting, waiting--she seemed to be among those whose lot it is
+to "stand and wait" all their days.  But it was not now in the absolute
+darkness and silence which it used to be.  She knew that in all human
+probability Robert Roy was alive still some where, and hope never could
+wholly die out of the world so long as he was in it.  His career, too, if
+not prosperous in worldly things, had been one to make any heart that
+loved him content--content and proud.  For if he had failed in his
+fortunes, was it not from doing what she would most have wished him to
+do--the right, at all costs?  Nor had he quite forgotten her, since even
+so late as five years back he had been making inquiries about her.  Also,
+he was then unmarried.
+
+But human nature is weak, and human hearts are so hungry sometimes.
+
+"Oh, if he had only loved me, and told me so!" she said, sometimes, as
+piteously as fifteen years ago.  But the tears which followed were not,
+as then, a storm of passionate despair--only a quiet sorrowful rain.
+
+For what could she do?  Nothing.  Now as ever, her part seemed just to
+fold her hands and endure.  If alive, he might be found some day; but now
+she could not find him--oh, if she could!  Had she been the man and he
+the woman--nay, had she been still herself, a poor lonely governess,
+having to earn every crumb of her own bitter bread, yet knowing that he
+loved her, might not things have been different?  Had she belonged to
+him, they would never have lost one another.  She would have sought him,
+as Evangeline sought Gabriel, half the world over.
+
+And little did her two girls imagine, as they called her down stairs that
+night, secretly wondering what important business could make "Auntie"
+keep tea waiting fully five minutes, and set her after tea to read some
+"pretty poetry," especially Longfellow's, which they had a fancy
+for--little did they think, those two happy creatures, listening to their
+middle-aged governess, who read so well that sometimes her voice actually
+faltered over the line, how there was being transacted under their very
+eyes a story which in its "constant anguish of patience" was scarcely
+less pathetic than that of Acadia.
+
+For nearly a year after that letter came the little family of which Miss
+Williams was the head went on in its innocent quiet way, always planning,
+yet never making a change, until at last fate drove them to it.
+
+Neither Helen nor Janetta were very healthy girls, and at last a London
+doctor gave as his absolute fiat that they must cease to live in their
+warm inland village, and migrate, for some years at any rate, to a
+bracing sea-side place.
+
+Whereupon David Dalziel, who had somehow established himself as the one
+masculine adviser of the family, suggested St. Andrews.  Bracing enough
+it was, at any rate: he remembered the winds used almost cut his nose
+off.  And it was such a nice place too, so pretty, with such excellent
+society.  He was sure the young ladies would find it delightful.  Did
+Miss Williams remember the walk by the shore, and the golfing across the
+Links?
+
+"Quite as well as you could have done, at the early age of seven," she
+suggested, smiling.  "Why are you so very anxious we should go to live at
+St.  Andrews?"
+
+The young fellow blushed all over his kindly eager face, and then frankly
+owned he had a motive.  His grandmother's cottage, which she had left
+him, the youngest and her pet always, was now unlet.  He meant, perhaps,
+to go and live at it himself when--he was of age and could afford it; but
+in the mean time he was a poor solitary bachelor, and--and--
+
+"And you would like me to keep your nest warm for you till you can claim
+it?  You want us for your tenants, eh, Davie?"
+
+"Just that.  You've hit it.  Couldn't wish better.  In fact, I have
+already written to my trustees to drive the hardest bargain possible."
+
+Which was an ingenious modification of the truth, as she afterward found;
+but evidently the lad had set his heart upon the thing.  And she?
+
+At first she shrank back from the plan with a shiver almost of fear.  It
+was like having to meet face to face something--some one--long dead.  To
+walk among the old familiar places, to see the old familiar sea and
+shore, nay, to live in the very same house, haunted, as houses are
+sometimes, every room and every nook, with ghosts--yet with such innocent
+ghosts--Could she bear it?
+
+There are some people who have an actual terror of the past--who the
+moment a thing ceases to be pleasurable fly from it, would willingly bury
+it out of sight forever.  But others have no fear of their harmless
+dead--dead hopes, memories, loves--can sit by a grave-side, or look
+behind them at a dim spectral shape, without grief, without dread, only
+with tenderness.  This woman could.
+
+After a long wakeful night, spent in very serious thought for every one's
+good, not excluding her own--since there is a certain point beyond which
+one has no right to forget one's self, and perpetual martyrs rarely make
+very pleasant heads of families--she said to her girls next morning that
+she thought David Dalziel's brilliant idea had a great deal of sense in
+it; St. Andrews was a very nice place, and the cottage there would
+exactly suit their finances, while the tenure upon which he proposed they
+should hold it (from term to term) would also fit in with their undecided
+future; because, as all knew, wherever Helen or Janetta married, each
+would take her fortune and go, leaving Miss Williams with her little
+legacy, above want certainly, but not exactly a millionaire.
+
+These and other points she set before them in her practical fashion, just
+as if her heart did not leap--sometimes with pleasure, sometimes with
+pain--at the very thought of St. Andrews, and as if to see herself sit
+daily and hourly face to face with her old self, the ghost of her own
+youth, would be a quite easy thing.
+
+The girls were delighted.  They left all to Auntie, as was their habit to
+do.  Burdens naturally fall upon the shoulders fitted for them, and which
+seem even to have a faculty for drawing them down there.  Miss Williams's
+new duties had developed in her a whole range of new qualities, dormant
+during her governess life.  Nobody knew better than she how to manage a
+house and guide a family.  The girls soon felt that Auntie might have
+been a mother all her days, she was so thoroughly motherly and they gave
+up every thing into her hands.
+
+So the whole matter was settled, David rejoicing exceedingly, and
+considering it "jolly fun," and quite like a bit out of a play, that his
+former governess should come back as his tenant, and inhabit the old
+familiar cottage.
+
+"And I'll take a run over to see you as soon as the long vacation begins,
+just to teach the young ladies golfing.  Mr. Roy taught all us boys, you
+know; and we'll take that very walk he used to take us, across the Links
+and along the sands to the Eden.  Wasn't it the river Eden, Miss
+Williams?  I am sure I remember it.  I think I am very good at
+remembering."
+
+Other people were also "good at remembering."  During the first few
+weeks after they settled down at St. Andrews the girls noticed that
+Auntie became excessively pale, and was sometimes quite "distrait" and
+bewildered-looking, which was little wonder, considering all she had to
+do and arrange.  But she got better in time.  The cottage was so sweet,
+the sea so fresh, the whole place so charming.  Slowly, Miss Williams's
+ordinary looks returned--the "good" looks which her girls so
+energetically protested she had now, if never before.  They never allowed
+her to confess herself old by caps or shawls, or any of those pretty
+temporary hindrances to the march of Time.  She resisted not; she let
+them dress her as they please, in a reasonable way, for she felt they
+loved her; and as to her age, why, _she_ knew it, and knew that nothing
+could alter it, so what did it matter?  She smiled, and tried to look as
+nice and as young as she could for her girls' sake.
+
+I suppose there are such things as broken or breaking hearts, even at St.
+Andrews, but it is certainly not a likely place for them.  They have
+little chance against the fresh, exhilarating air, strong as new wine;
+the wild sea waves, the soothing sands, giving with health of body
+wholesomeness of mind.  By-and-by the busy world recovered its old face
+to Fortune Williams--not the world as she once dreamed of it, but the
+real world, as she had fought it through it all these years.
+
+"I was ever a fighter, so one fight more!" as she read sometimes in the
+"pretty" poetry her girls were always asking for--read steadily, even
+when she came to the last verse in that passionate "Prospice:"
+
+    "Till, sudden, the worst turns the best to the brave,
+            The black minute's at end:
+    And the elements rage, the fiend voices that rave
+            Shall dwindle, shall blend,
+    Shall change, shall become first a peace, then a joy,
+            Then a light--then thy breast,
+    O thou soul of my soul!  I shall clasp thee again,
+             And with God be the rest!"
+
+To that life to come, during all the burden and heat of the day (no, the
+afternoon, a time, faded, yet hot and busy still, which is often a very
+trying bit of woman's life) she now began yearningly to look.  To meet
+him again, even in old age, or with death between, was her only desire.
+Yet she did her duty still, and enjoyed all she could, knowing that one
+by one the years were hurrying onward, and the night coming, "in which no
+man can work."
+
+Faithful to his promise, about the middle of July David Dalziel appeared,
+in overflowing spirits, having done very well at college.  He was such a
+boy still, in character and behavior; though--as he carefully informed
+the family--now twenty-one and a man, expecting to be treated as such.
+He was their landlord too, and drew up the agreement in his own name,
+meaning to be a lawyer, and having enough to live on--something better
+than bread and salt--"till I can earn a fortune, as I certainly mean to
+do some day."
+
+And he looked at Janetta, who looked down on the parlor carpet--as young
+people will.  Alas!  I fear that the eyes of her anxious friend and
+governess were not half wide enough open to the fact that these young
+folk were no longer boy and girls, and that things might happen--in fact,
+were almost certain to happen--which had happened to herself in her
+youth--making life not quite easy to her, as it seemed to be to these two
+bright girls.
+
+Yet they were so bright, and their relations with David Dalziel were so
+frank and free--in fact, the young fellow himself was such a thoroughly
+good fellow, so very difficult to shut her door against, even if she had
+thought of so doing.  But she did not.  She let him come and go,
+"miserable bachelor" as he proclaimed himself, with all his kith and kin
+across the seas, and cast not a thought to the future, or to the sad
+necessity which sometimes occurs to parents and guardians--of shutting
+the stable door _after_ the steed is stolen.
+
+Especially, as not long after David appeared, there happened a certain
+thing to all but her, and yet to her it was, for the time being, utterly
+overwhelming.  It absorbed all her thoughts into one maddened channel,
+where they writhed and raved and dashed themselves blindly against
+inevitable fate.  For the first time in her life this patient woman felt
+as if endurance were _not_ the right thing; as if wild shrieks of pain,
+bitter outcries against Providence, would be somehow easier, better:
+might reach His throne, so that even now He might listen and hear.
+
+The thing was this.  One day, waiting for some one beside the laurel bush
+at her gate--the old familiar bush, though it had grown and grown till
+its branches, which used to drag on the gravel, now covered the path
+entirely--she overheard David explaining to Janetta how he and his
+brothers and Mr. Roy had made the wooden letter-box, which actually
+existed still, though in very ruinous condition.
+
+"And no wonder, after fifteen years and more.  It is fully that old,
+isn't it Miss Williams?  You will have to superannuate it shortly, and
+return to the old original letter-box--my letter-box, which I remember so
+well.  I do believe I could find it still."
+
+Kneeling down, he thrust his hand through the thick barricade of leaves
+into the very heart of the tree.
+
+"I've found it; I declare I've found it; the identical hole in the trunk
+where I used to put all my treasures--my 'magpie's nest,' as they called
+it, where I hid every thing I could find.  What a mischievous young scamp
+I was!"
+
+"Very," said Miss Williams, affectionately, laying a gentle hand on his
+curls--"pretty" still, though cropped down to the frightful modern
+fashion.  Secretly she was rather proud of him, this tall young fellow,
+whom she had had on her lap many a time.
+
+"Curious! It all comes back to me--even to the very last thing I hid
+here, the day before we left, which was a letter."
+
+"A letter!"--Miss Williams slightly started--"what letter?"
+
+"One I found lying under the laurel bush, quite hidden by its leaves.  It
+was all soaked with rain.  I dried it in the sun, and then put it in my
+letter-box, telling nobody, for I meant to deliver it myself at the hall
+door with a loud ring--an English postman's ring.  Our Scotch one used to
+blow his horn, you remember?"
+
+"Yes," said Miss Williams.  She was leaning against the fatal bush, pale
+to the very lips, but her veil was down--nobody saw.  "What sort of a
+letter was it, David?  Who was it to?  Did you notice the handwriting?"
+
+"Why, I was such a little fellow," and he looked up in wonder and
+slight concern, "how could I remember?  Some letter that somebody had
+dropped, perhaps, in taking the rest out of the box.  It could not
+matter--certainly not now.  You would not bring my youthful misdeeds up
+against me, would you?"  And he turned up a half-comical, half-pitiful
+face.
+
+Fortune's first impulse--what was it?  She hardly knew.  But her second
+was that safest, easiest thing--now grown into the habit and refuge of
+her whole life--silence. "No, it certainly does not matter now."
+
+A deadly sickness came over her.  What if this letter were Robert Roy's,
+asking her that question which he said no man ought ever to ask a woman
+twice?  And she had never seen it--never answered it.  So, of course, he
+went away.  Her whole life--nay, two whole lives--had been destroyed, and
+by a mere accident, the aimless mischief of a child's innocent hand.  She
+could never prove it, but it might have been so. And, alas! alas!  God,
+the merciful God, had allowed it to be so.
+
+Which is the worst, to wake up suddenly and find that our life has been
+wrecked by our own folly, mistake, or sin, or that it has been done for
+us either directly by the hand of Providence, or indirectly through some
+innocent--nay, possibly not innocent, but intentional--hand?  In both
+cases the agony is equally sharp--the sharper because irremediable.
+
+All these thoughts, vivid as lightning, and as rapid, darted through poor
+Fortune's brain during the few moments that she stood with her hand on
+David's shoulder, while he drew from his magpie's nest a heterogeneous
+mass of rubbish--pebbles, snail shells, bits of glass and china,
+fragments even of broken toys.
+
+"Just look there.  What ghosts of my childhood, as people would say! Dead
+and buried, though."  And he laughed merrily--he in the full tide and
+glory of his youth.
+
+Fortune Williams looked down on his happy face.  This lad that really
+loved her would not have hurt her for the world, and her determination
+was made.  He should never know any thing.  Nobody should ever know any
+thing.  The "dead and buried" of fifteen years ago must be dead and
+buried forever.
+
+"David," she said, "just out of curiosity, put your hand down to the very
+bottom of that hole, and see if you can fish up the mysterious letter."
+
+Then she waited, just as one would wait at the edge of some long-closed
+grave to see if the dead could possibly be claimed as our dead, even if
+but a handful of unhonored bones.
+
+No, it was not possible. Nobody could expect it after such a lapse of
+time.  Something David pulled out--it might be paper, it might be rags.
+It was too dry to be moss or earth, but no one could have recognized it
+as a letter.
+
+"Give it me," said Miss Williams, holding out her hand.
+
+David put the little heap of "rubbish" therein.  She regarded it a
+moment, and then scattered it on the gravel--"dust to dust," as we say in
+our funeral service.  But she said nothing.
+
+At the moment the young people they were waiting for came, to the other
+side of the gate, clubs in hand.  David and the two Miss Moseleys had by
+this time become perfectly mad for golf, as is the fashion of the place.
+The proceeded across the Links, Miss Williams accompanying them, as in
+duty bound.  But she said she was "rather tired," and leaving them in
+charge of another chaperon--if chaperons are ever wanted or needed in
+those merry Links of St. Andrews--came home alone.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 5
+
+   "Shall sharpest pathos blight us, doing no wrong?"
+
+So writes our greatest living poet, in one of the noblest poems he ever
+penned.  And he speaks truth.  The real canker of human existence is not
+misery, but sin.
+
+After the first cruel pang, the bitter wail; after her lost life--and we
+have here but one life to lose!--her lost happiness, for she knew now
+that though she might be very peaceful, very content, no real happiness
+ever had come, ever could come to her in this world, except Robert Roy's
+love--after this, Fortune sat down, folded her hands, and bowed her head
+to the waves of sorrow that kept sweeping over her, not for one day or
+two days, but for many days and weeks--the anguish, not of patience, but
+regret--sharp, stinging, helpless regret.  They came rolling in, those
+remorseless billows, just like the long breakers on the sands of St.
+Andrews.  Hopeless to resist, she could only crouch down and let them
+pass.  "All Thy waves have gone over me."
+
+Of course this is spoken metaphorically.  Outwardly, Miss Williams
+neither sat still nor folded her hands.  She was seen every where as
+usual, her own proper self, as the world knew it; but underneath all that
+was the self that she knew, and God knew.  No one else.  No one ever
+could have known, except Robert Roy, had things been different from what
+they were--from what God had apparently willed them to be.
+
+A sense of inevitable fate came over her.  It was now nearly two years
+since that letter from Mr. Roy of Shanghai, and no more tidings had
+reached her. She began to think none ever would reach her now.  She
+ceased to hope or to fear, but let herself drift on, accepting the small
+pale pleasures of every day, and never omitting one of its duties.  One
+only thought remained; which, contrasted with the darkness of all else,
+often gleamed out as an actual joy.
+
+If the lost letter really was Robert Roy's--and though she had no
+positive proof, she had the strongest conviction, remembering the thick
+fog of that Tuesday morning, how easily Archy might have dropped it out
+of his hand, and how, during those days of soaking rain, it might have
+lain, unobserved by any one, under the laurel branches, till the child
+picked it up and hid it as he said--if Robert Roy lad written to her,
+written in any way, he was at least not faithless.  And he might have
+loved her then.  Afterward, he might have married, or died; she might
+never find him again in this world, or if she found him, he might be
+totally changed: still, whatever happened, he had loved her.  The fact
+remained.  No power in earth or heaven could alter it.
+
+And sometimes, even yet, a half-superstitious feeling came over her that
+all this was not for nothing--the impulse which had impelled her to write
+to Shanghai, the other impulse, or concatenation of circumstances, which
+had floated her, after so many changes, back to the old place, the old
+life.  It looked like chance, but was it?  Is any thing chance?  Does not
+our own will, soon or late, accomplish for us what we desire?  That is,
+when we try to reconcile it to the will of God.
+
+She had accepted His will all these years, seeing no reason for it; often
+feeling it very hard and cruel, but still accepting it.  And now?
+
+I am writing no sensational story.  In it are no grand dramatic points;
+no _Deus ex machina_ appears to make all smooth; every event--if it can
+boast of aught so large as an event--follows the other in perfectly
+natural succession.  For I have always noticed that in life there are
+rarely any startling "effects," but gradual evolutions.  Nothing happens
+by accident; and, the premises once granted, nothing happens but what was
+quite sure to happen, following those premises.  We novelists do not
+"make up" our stories; they make themselves.  Nor do human beings invent
+their own lives; they do but use up the materials given to them--some
+well, some ill; some wisely, some foolishly; but, in the main, the dictum
+of the Preacher is not far from the truth, "All things come alike to
+all."
+
+A whole winter had passed by, and the spring twilights were beginning to
+lengthen, tempting Miss Williams and her girls to linger another half
+hour before they lit the lamp for the evening.  They were doing so,
+cozily chatting over the fire, after the fashion of a purely feminine
+household, when there was a sudden announcement that a gentleman, with
+two little boys, wanted to see Miss Williams.  He declined to give his
+name, and said he would not detain her more than a few minutes.
+
+"Let him come in here," Fortune was just about to say, when she reflected
+that it might be some law business which concerned her girls, whom she
+had grown so tenderly anxious to save from any trouble and protect from
+every care.  "No, I will go and speak to him myself."
+
+She rose and walked quietly into the parlor, already shadowed into
+twilight: a neat, compact little person, dressed in soft gray homespun,
+with a pale pink bow on her throat, and another in her cap--a pretty
+little fabric of lace and cambric, which, being now the fashion, her
+girls had at last condescended to let her wear.  She had on a black silk
+apron, with pockets, into one of which she had hastily thrust her work,
+and her thimble was yet on her finger.  This was the figure on which the
+eyes of the gentleman rested as he turned around.
+
+Miss Williams lifted her eyes inquiringly to his face--a bearded face,
+thin and dark.
+
+"I beg your pardon, I have not the pleasure of knowing you; I--"
+
+She suddenly stopped.  Something in the height, the turn of the head, the
+crisp dark hair, in which were not more than a few threads of gray, while
+hers had so many now, reminded her of--someone, the bare thought of whom
+made her feel dizzy and blind.
+
+"No," he said, "I did not expect you would know me; and indeed, until I
+saw you, I was not sure you were the right Miss Williams.  Possibly you
+may remember my name--Roy, Robert Roy."
+
+Faces alter, manners, gestures; but the one thing which never changes is
+a voice.  Had Fortune heard this one--ay, at her last dying hour, when
+all worldly sounds were fading away--she would have recognized it at
+once.
+
+The room being full of shadow, no one could see any thing distinctly; and
+it was as well.
+
+In another minute, she had risen, and held out her hand.
+
+"I am very glad to see you, Mr. Roy.  How long have you been in England?
+Are these your little boys?"
+
+Without answering, he took her hand--a quiet friendly grasp, just as it
+used to be.  And so, without another word, the gulf of fifteen--seventeen
+years was overleaped, and Robert Roy and Fortune Williams had met once
+more.
+
+If anybody had told her when she rose that morning what would happen
+before night, and happen so naturally, too, she would have said it was
+impossible.  That, after a very few minutes, she could have sat there,
+talking to him as to any ordinary acquaintance, seemed incredible, yet it
+was truly so.
+
+"I was in great doubts whether the Miss Williams who, they told me, lived
+here was yourself or some other lady; but I thought I would take the
+chance. Because, were it yourself, I thought, for the sake of old times,
+you might be willing to advise me concerning my two little boys, whom I
+have brought to St. Andrews for their education."
+
+"Your sons, are they?"
+
+"No.  I am not married."
+
+There was a pause, and then he told the little fellows to go and look out
+of the window, while he talked with Miss Williams.  He spoke to them in a
+fatherly tone; there was nothing whatever of the young man left in him
+now. His voice was sweet, his manner grave, his whole appearance
+unquestionably "middle-aged."
+
+"They are orphans.  Their name is Roy, though they are not my relatives,
+or so distant that it matters nothing.  But their father was a very good
+friend of mine, which matters a great deal.  He died suddenly, and his
+wife soon after, leaving their affairs in great confusion.  Hearing this,
+far up in the Australian bush, where I have been a sheep-farmer for some
+years, I came round by Shanghai, but too late to do more than take these
+younger boys and bring them home.  The rest of the family are disposed
+of.  These two will be henceforward mine.  That is all."
+
+A very little "all", and wholly about other people; scarcely a word about
+himself.  Yet he seemed to think it sufficient, and as if she had no
+possible interest in hearing more.
+
+Cursorily he mentioned having received her letter, which was "friendly
+and kind;" that it had followed him to Australia, and then back to
+Shanghai. But his return home seemed to have been entirely without
+reference to it--or to her.
+
+So she let all pass, and accepted things as they were.  It was enough.
+When a ship-wrecked man sees land--ever so barren a land, ever so
+desolate a shore--he does not argue within himself, "Is this my haven?"
+he simply puts into it, and lets himself be drifted ashore.
+
+It took but a few minutes more to explain further what Mr. Roy wanted--a
+home for his two "poor little fellows."
+
+"They are so young still--and they have lost their mother.  They would do
+very well in their classes here, if some kind woman would take them and
+look after them.  I felt, if the Miss Williams I heard of were really the
+Miss Williams I used to know, I could trust them to her, more than to any
+woman I ever knew."
+
+"Thank you."  And then she explained that she had already two girls in
+charge.  She could say nothing till she had consulted them.  In the mean
+time--
+
+Just then the bell sounded.  The world was going on just as usual--this
+strange, commonplace, busy, regardless world!
+
+"I beg your pardon for intruding on your time so long," said Mr. Roy,
+rising.  "I will leave you to consider the question, and you will let me
+know as soon as you can.  I am staying at the hotel here, and shall
+remain until I can leave my boys settled.  Good evening."
+
+Again she felt the grasp of the hand: that ghostly touch, so vivid in
+dreams for these years, and now a warm living reality.  It was too much.
+She could not bear it.
+
+"If you would care to stay," she said--and though it was too dark to see
+her, he must have heard the faint tremble in her voice--"our tea is
+ready.  Let me introduce you to my girls, and they can make friends with
+your little boys."
+
+The matter was soon settled, and the little party ushered into the
+bright warm parlor, glittering with all the appendages of that pleasant
+meal--essentially feminine--a "hungry" tea.  Robert Roy put his hand over
+his eyes as if the light dazzled him, and then sat down in the arm-chair
+which Miss Williams brought forward, turning as he did so to look up at
+her--right in her face--with his grave, soft, earnest eyes.
+
+"Thank you.  How like that was to your old ways!  How very little you are
+changed!"
+
+This was the only reference he made, in the slightest degree, to former
+times.
+
+And she?
+
+She went out of the room, ostensibly to get a pot of guava jelly for the
+boys--found it after some search, and then sat down.
+
+Only in her store closet, with her house-keeping things all about her.
+But it was a quiet place, and the door was shut.
+
+There is, in one of those infinitely pathetic Old Testament stories, a
+sentence--"And he sought where to weep: and he entered into his chamber
+and wept there."
+
+She did not weep, this woman, not a young woman now: she only tried
+during her few minutes of solitude to gather up her thoughts, to realize
+what had happened to her, and who it was that sat in the next room--under
+her roof--at her very fireside.  Then she clasped her hands with a sudden
+sob, wild as any of the emotions of her girlhood.
+
+"Oh, my love, my love, the love of all my life!  Thank God!"
+
+The evening passed, not very merrily, but peacefully; the girls, who had
+heard a good deal of Mr. Roy from David Dalziel, doing their best to be
+courteous to him, and to amuse his shy little boys.  He did not stay
+long, evidently having a morbid dread of "intruding," and his manner was
+exceedingly reserved, almost awkward sometimes, of which he seemed
+painfully conscious, apologizing for being "unaccustomed to civilization
+and to ladies' society," having during his life in the bush sometimes
+passed months at a time without ever seeing a woman's face.
+
+"And women are your only civilizers," said he.  "That is why I wish my
+motherless lads to be taken into this household of yours, Miss Williams,
+which looks so--so comfortable," and he glanced round the pretty parlor
+with something very like a sigh.  "I hope you will consider the matter,
+and let me know as soon as you have made up your mind."
+
+"Which I will do very soon," she answered.
+
+"Yes, I know you will.  And your decision once made, you never change."
+
+"Very seldom.  I am not one of those who are 'given to change.'"
+
+"Nor I."
+
+He stood a moment, lingering in the pleasant, lightsome warmth, as if
+loath to quit it, then took his little boys in either hand and went away.
+There was a grand consultation that night, for Miss Williams never did
+any thing without speaking to her girls; but still it was merely nominal.
+They always left the decision to her.  And her heart yearned over the two
+little Roys, orphans, yet children still; while Helen and Janetta were
+growing up and needing very little from her except a general motherly
+supervision. Besides, _he_ asked it.  He had said distinctly that she was
+the only woman to whom he could thoroughly trust his boys.  So--she took
+them.
+
+After a few days the new state of things grew so familiar that it seemed
+as if it had lasted for months, the young Roys going to and fro to their
+classes and their golf-playing, just as the young Dalziels had done; and
+Mr. Roy coming about the house, almost daily, exactly as Robert Roy had
+used to do of old.  Sometimes it was to Fortune Williams the strangest
+reflex of former times; only--with a difference.
+
+Unquestionably he was very much changed.  In outward appearance more even
+than the time accounted for.  No man can knock about the world, in
+different lands and climates, for seventeen years, without bearing
+the marks of it.  Though still under fifty, he had all the air of an
+"elderly" man, and had grown a little "peculiar" in his ways, his modes
+of thought and speech--except that he spoke so very little.  He
+accounted for this by his long lonely life in Australia, which had
+produced, he said, an almost unconquerable habit of silence.  Altogether,
+he was far more of an old bachelor than she was of an old maid, and
+Fortune felt this: felt, too, that in spite of her gray hairs she was in
+reality quite as young as he--nay, sometimes younger; for her innocent,
+simple, shut-up life had kept her young.
+
+And he, what had his life been, in so far as he gradually betrayed it?
+Restless, struggling; a perpetual battle with the world; having to hold
+his own, and fight his way inch by inch--he who was naturally a born
+student, to whom the whirl of a business career was especially obnoxious.
+What had made him choose it?  Once chosen, probably he could not help
+himself; besides, he was not one to put his shoulder to the wheel and
+then draw back.  Evidently, with the grain or against the grain, he had
+gone on with it; this sad, strange, wandering life, until he had "made
+his fortune," for he told her so.  But he said no more; whether he meant
+to stay at home and spend it, or go out again to the antipodes (and he
+spoke of those far lands without any distaste, even with a lingering
+kindliness, for indeed he seemed to have no unkindly thought of any place
+or person in all the world), his friend did not know.
+
+His friend.  That was the word.  No other.  After her first outburst of
+uncontrollable emotion, to call Robert Roy her "love," even in fancy, or
+to expect that he would deport himself in any lover-like way, became
+ridiculous, pathetically ridiculous.  She was sure of that.  Evidently no
+idea of the kind entered his mind.  She was Miss Williams, and he was Mr.
+Roy--two middle-aged people, each with their different responsibilities,
+their altogether separate lives; and, hard as her own had been, it seemed
+as if his had been the harder of the two--ay, though he was now a rich
+man, and she still little better than a poor governess.
+
+She did not think very much of worldly things, but still she was aware of
+this fact--that he was rich and she was poor.  She did not suffer herself
+to dwell upon it, but the consciousness was there, sustained with a
+certain feeling called "proper pride."  The conviction was forced upon
+her in the very first days of Mr. Roy's return--that to go back to the
+days of their youth was as impossible as to find primroses in September.
+
+If, indeed, there were any thing to go back to.  Sometimes she felt, if
+she could only have found out that, all the rest would be easy, painless.
+If she could only have said to him, "Did you write me the letter you
+promised? Did you _ever_ love me"?  But that one question was, of course,
+utterly impossible.  He made no reference whatever to old things, but
+seemed resolved to take up the present a very peaceful and happy present
+it soon grew to be--just as if there were no past at all.  So perforce
+did she.
+
+But, as I think I have said once before, human nature is weak, and there
+were days when the leaves were budding, and the birds singing in the
+trees, when the sun was shining and the waves rolling in upon the sands,
+just as they rolled in that morning over those two lines of foot-marks,
+which might have walked together through life; and who knows what mutual
+strength, help, and comfort this might have proved to both?--then it was,
+for one at least, rather hard.
+
+Especially when, bit by bit, strange ghostly fragments of his old self
+began to re-appear in Robert Roy: his keen delight in nature, his love
+of botanical or geological excursions.  Often he would go wandering down
+the familiar shore for hours in search of marine animals for the girls'
+aquarium, and then would come and sit down at their tea-table, reading or
+talking, so like the Robert Roy of old that one of the little group, who
+always crept in the background, felt dizzy and strange, as if all her
+later years had been a dream, and she were living her youth over again,
+only with the difference aforesaid: a difference sharp as that between
+death and life--yet with something of the peace of death in it.
+
+Sometimes, when they met at the innocent little tea parties which St.
+Andrews began to give--for of course in that small community every body
+knew every body, and all their affairs to boot, often a good deal better
+than they did themselves, so that there was great excitement and no end
+of speculation over Mr. Roy--sometimes meeting, as they were sure to do,
+and walking home together, with the moonlight shining down the empty
+streets, and the stars out by myriads over the silent distant sea, while
+the nearer tide came washing in upon the sands--all was so like, so
+frightfully like, old times that it was very sore to bear.
+
+But, as I have said, Miss Williams was Miss Williams, and Mr. Roy Mr.
+Roy, and there were her two girls always besides them; also his two boys,
+who soon took to "Auntie" as naturally as if they were really hers, or
+she theirs.
+
+"I think they had better call you so, as the others do," said Mr. Roy one
+day. "Are these young ladies really related to you?"
+
+"No; but I promised their father on his death-bed to take charge of them.
+That is all."
+
+"He is dead, then.  Was he a great friend of yours?"
+
+She felt the blood flashing all over her face, but she answered,
+steadily: "Not a very intimate friend, but I respected him exceedingly.
+He was a good man.  His daughters had a heavy loss when he died, and I
+am glad to be a comfort to them so long as they need me."
+
+"I have no doubt of it."
+
+This was the only question he ever asked her concerning her past life,
+though, by slow degrees, he told her a good deal of his own.  Enough to
+make her quite certain, even if her keen feminine instinct had not
+already divined the fact, that whatever there might have been in it of
+suffering, there was nothing in the smallest degree either to be ashamed
+of or to hide.  What Robert Roy of Shanghai had written about him had
+continued true.  As he said one day to her, "We never stand still.  We
+either grow better or worse. You have not grown worse."
+
+Nor had he.  All that was good in him had developed, all his little
+faults had toned down.  The Robert Roy of today was slightly different
+from, but in no wise inferior to, the Robert Roy of her youth.  She saw
+it, and rejoiced in the seeing.
+
+What he saw in her she could not tell.  He seemed determined to rest
+wholly in the present, and take out of it all the peace and pleasantness
+that he could.  In the old days, when the Dalziel boys were naughty, and
+Mrs. Dalziel tiresome; and work was hard, and holidays were few, and life
+was altogether the rough road that it often seems to the young, he had
+once called her "Pleasantness and Peace."  He never said so now; but
+sometimes he looked it.
+
+Many an evening he came and sat by her fireside, in the arm-chair, which
+seemed by right to have devolved upon him; never staying very long, for
+he was still nervously sensitive about being "in the way," but making
+himself and them all very cheerful and happy while he did stay.  Only
+sometimes, when Fortune's eyes stole to his face--not a young man's
+face now--she fancied she could trace, besides the wrinkles, a sadness,
+approaching to hardness, that never used to be.  But again, when
+interested in some book or other (he said it was delicious to take to
+reading again, after the long fast of years), he would look around to her
+for sympathy, or utter one of his dry drolleries, the old likeness, the
+old manner and tone would come back so vividly that she started, hardly
+knowing whether the feeling it gave her was pleasure or pain.
+
+But beneath both, lying so deep down that neither he nor any one could
+ever suspect its presence, was something else.  Can many waters quench
+love?  Can the deep sea drown it?  What years of silence can wither it?
+What frost of age can freeze it down?  God only knows.
+
+Hers was not like a girl's love.  Those two girls sitting by her day
+after day would have smiled at it, and at its object.  Between themselves
+they considered Mr. Roy somewhat of an "old fogy;" were very glad to make
+use of him now and then, in the great dearth of gentlemen at St. Andrews,
+and equally glad afterward to turn him over to Auntie, who was always
+kind to him.  Auntie was so kind to every body.
+
+Kind?  Of course she was, and above all when he looked worn and tired.
+He did so sometimes: as if life had ceased to be all pleasure, and the
+constant mirth of these young folks was just a little too much for him.
+Then she ingeniously used to save him from it and them for a while.  They
+never knew--there was no need for them to know--how tenfold deeper than
+all the passion of youth is the tenderness with which a woman cleaves to
+the man she loves when she sees him growing old.
+
+Thus the days went by till Easter came, announced by the sudden
+apparition, one evening, of David Dalziel.
+
+That young man, when, the very first day of his holidays, he walked in
+upon his friends at St. Andrews, and found sitting at their tea-table a
+strange gentleman, did not like it at all--scarcely even when he found
+out that the intruder was his old friend, Mr. Roy.
+
+"And you never told me a word about this," said he, reproachfully, to
+Miss Williams.  "Indeed, you have not written to me for weeks; you have
+forgotten all about me."
+
+She winced at the accusation, for it was true.  Beyond her daily domestic
+life, which she still carefully fulfilled, she had in truth forgotten
+every thing. Outside people were ceasing to affect her at all.  What _he_
+liked, what _he_ wanted to do, day by day--whether he looked ill or well,
+happy or unhappy, only he rarely looked either--this was slowly growing
+to be once more her whole world.  With a sting of compunction, and
+another, half of fear, save that there was nothing to dread, nothing that
+could affect any body beyond herself--Miss Williams roused herself to
+give young Dalziel an especially hearty welcome, and to make his little
+visit as happy as possible.
+
+Small need of that; he was bent on taking all things pleasantly.  Coming
+now near the end of a very creditable college career, being of age and
+independent, with the cozy little fortune that his old grandmother had
+left him, the young fellow was disposed to see every thing _couleur de
+rose_, and this feeling communicated itself to all his friends.
+
+It was a pleasant time.  Often in years to come did that little knot of
+friends, old and young, look back upon it as upon one of those rare
+bright bits in life when the outside current of things moves smoothly on,
+while underneath it there may or may not be, but generally there is, a
+secret or two which turns the most trivial events into sweet and dear
+remembrances forever.
+
+David's days being few enough, they took pains not to lose one, but
+planned excursions here, there, and every where--to Dundee, to Perth, to
+Elie, to Balcarras--all together, children, young folks, and elders: that
+admirable _melange_ which generally makes such expeditions "go off" well.
+Theirs did, especially the last one, to the old house of Balcarras, where
+they got admission to the lovely quaint garden, and Janetta sang "Auld
+Robin Gray" on the spot where it was written.
+
+She had a sweet voice, and there seemed to have come into it a pathos
+which Fortune had never remarked before.  The touching, ever old, ever
+new story made the young people quite quiet for a few minutes; and then
+they all wandered away together, Helen promising to look after the
+two wild young Roys, to see that they did not kill themselves in some
+unforeseen way, as, aided and abetted by David and Janetta, they went on
+a scramble up Balcarras Hill.
+
+"Will you go too?" said Fortune to Robert Roy.  "I have the provisions to
+see to; besides, I can not scramble as well as the rest.  I am not quite
+so young as I used to be."
+
+"Nor I," he answered, as, taking her basket, he walked silently on beside
+her.
+
+It was a curious feeling, and all to come out of a foolish song; but if
+ever she felt thankful to God from the bottom of her heart that she had
+said "No," at once and decisively, to the good man who slept at peace
+beneath the church-yard elms, it was at that moment.  But the feeling
+and the moment passed by immediately.  Mr. Roy took up the thread of
+conversation where he had left it off--it was some bookish or ethical
+argument, such as he would go on with for hours; so she listened to him
+in silence.  They walked on, the larks singing and the primroses blowing.
+All the world was saying to itself, "I am young; I am happy;" but she
+said nothing at all.
+
+People grow used to pain; it dies down at intervals, and becomes quite
+bearable, especially when no one see it or guesses at it.
+
+They had a very merry picnic on the hilltop, enjoying those mundane
+consolations of food and drink which Auntie was expected always to have
+forth-coming, and which those young people did by no means despise, nor
+Mr. Roy neither.  He made himself so very pleasant with them all, looking
+thoroughly happy, and baring his head to the spring breeze with the
+eagerness of a boy.
+
+"Oh, this is delicious!  It makes me feel young again.  There's nothing
+like home.  One thing I am determined upon: I will never quit bonnie
+Scotland more."
+
+It was the first clear intimation he had given of his intentions
+regarding the future, but it thrilled her with measureless content.  If
+only he would not go abroad again, if she might have him within reach for
+the rest of her days--able to see him, to talk to him, to know where he
+was and what he was doing, instead of being cut off from him by those
+terrible dividing seas--it was enough!  Nothing could be so bitter as
+what had been; and whatever was the mystery of their youth, which it was
+impossible to unravel now--whether he had ever loved, or loved her and
+crushed it down and forgotten it, or only felt very kindly and cordially
+to her, as he did now, the past was--well, only the past!--and the
+future lay still before her, not unsweet.  When we are young, we insist
+on having every thing or nothing; when we are older, we learn that "every
+thing" is an impossible and "nothing" a somewhat bitter word.  We are
+able to stoop meekly and pick up the fragments of the children's bread,
+without feeling ourselves to be altogether "dogs".
+
+Fortune went home that night with a not unhappy, almost a satisfied,
+heart. She sat back in the carriage, close beside that other heart which
+she believed to be the truest in all the world, though it had never been
+hers. There was a tremendous clatter of talking and laughing and fun of
+all sorts, between David Dalziel and the little Roys on the box, and the
+Misses Moseley sitting just below them, as they had insisted doing, no
+doubt finding the other two members of the party a little "slow."
+
+Nevertheless Mr. Roy and Miss Williams took their part in laughing with
+their young people, and trying to keep them in order; though after a
+while both relapsed into silence.  One did at least, for it had been a
+long day and she was tired, being, as she had said, "not so young as she
+had been."  But if any of these lively young people had asked her the
+question whether she was happy, or at least contented, she would have
+never hesitated about her reply.  Young, gay, and prosperous as they
+were, I doubt if Fortune Williams would have changed lots with any one of
+them all.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 6
+
+As it befell, that day at Balcarras was the last of the bright days, in
+every sense, for the time being.  Wet weather set in, as even the most
+partial witness must allow does occasionally happen in Scotland, and the
+domestic barometer seemed to go down accordingly.  The girls grumbled at
+being kept in-doors, and would willingly have gone out golfing under
+umbrellas, but Auntie was remorseless.  They were delicate girls at best,
+so that her watch over them was never-ceasing, and her patience
+inexhaustible.
+
+David Dalziel also was in a very trouble-some mood, quite unusual for
+him.  He came and went, complained bitterly that the girls were not
+allowed to go out with him; abused the place, the climate, and did all
+those sort of bearish things which young gentlemen are sometimes in the
+habit of doing, when--when that wicked little boy whom they read about at
+school and college makes himself known to them as a pleasant, or
+unpleasant, reality.
+
+Miss Williams, whom, I am afraid, was far too simple a woman for the new
+generation, which has become so extraordinarily wise and wide-awake,
+opened her eyes and wondered why David was so unlike his usual self.  Mr.
+Roy, too, to whom he behaved worse than to any one else, only the elder
+man quietly ignored it all, and was very patient and gentle with the
+restless, ill-tempered boy--Mr. Roy even remarked that he thought David
+would be happier at his work again; idling was a bad thing for young
+fellows at his age, or any age.
+
+At last it came out, the bitterness which rankled in the poor lad's
+breast; with another secret, which, foolish woman that she was, Miss
+Williams had never in the smallest degree suspected.  Very odd that she
+had not, but so it was.  We all find it difficult to realize the moment
+when our children cease to be children.  Still more difficult is it for
+very serious and earnest natures to recognize that there are other
+natures who take things in a totally different way, and yet it may be the
+right and natural way for them.  Such is the fact; we must learn it, and
+the sooner we learn it, the better.
+
+One day, when the rain had a little abated, David appeared, greatly
+disappointed to find the girls had gone out, down to the West Sands with
+Mr. Roy.
+
+"Always Mr. Roy!  I am sick of his very name," muttered David, and then
+caught Miss Williams by the dress as she was rising.  She had a gentle
+but rather dignified way with her of repressing bad manners in young
+people, either by perfect silence, or by putting the door between her
+and them.  "Don't go!  One never can get a quiet word with you, you are
+always so preternaturally busy."
+
+It was true.  To be always busy was her only shield against--certain
+things which the young man was never likely to know, and would not
+understand if he did know.
+
+"Do sit down, if you ever can sit down, for a minute," said he,
+imploringly; "I want to speak to you seriously, very seriously."
+
+She sat down, a little uneasy.  The young fellow was such a good fellow;
+and yet he might have got into a scrape of some sort.  Debt, perhaps,
+for he was a trifle extravagant; but then life had been all roses to
+him.  He had never known a want since he was born.
+
+"Speak, then, David; I am listening.  Nothing very wrong, I hope!" said
+she, with a smile.
+
+"Nothing at all wrong, only--When is Mr. Roy going away"?
+
+The question was so unexpected that she felt her color changing a little;
+not much, she was too old for that.
+
+"Mr. Roy leaving St. Andrews, you mean?  How can I tell?  He has never
+told me.  Why do you ask?"
+
+"Because until he gone, I stay," said the young man, doggedly.  "I'm not
+going back to Oxford leaving him master of the field.  I have stood him
+as long as I possibly can, and I'll not stand him any longer."
+
+"David! you forget yourself."
+
+"There--now you are offended; I know you are, when you draw yourself up
+in that way, my dear little auntie.  But just hear me.  You are such an
+innocent woman, you don't know the world as men do.  Can't you see--no,
+of course you can't--that very soon all St. Andrews will be talking about
+you?"
+
+"About me?"
+
+"Not about you exactly, but about the family.  A single man--a marrying
+man, as all the world says he is, or ought to be, with his money--can not
+go in and out, like a tame cat, in a household of women, without having,
+or being supposed to have--ahem!--intentions.  I assure you"--and he
+swung himself on the arm of her chair, and looked into her face with an
+angry earnestness quite unmistakable--"I assure you, I never go into the
+club without being asked, twenty times a day, which of the Miss Moseleys
+Mr. Roy is going to marry."
+
+"Which of the Miss Moseleys Mr. Roy is going to marry!"
+
+She repeated the words, as if to gain time and to be certain she heard
+them rightly.  No fear of her blushing now; every pulse in her heart
+stood dead still; and then she nerved herself to meet the necessity of
+the occasion.
+
+"David, you surely do not consider what you are saying.  This is a most
+extraordinary idea."
+
+"It is a most extraordinary idea; in fact, I call it ridiculous,
+monstrous: an old battered fellow like him, who has knocked about the
+world, Heaven knows where, all these years, to come home, and, because he
+has got a lot of money, think to go and marry one of these nice, pretty
+girls.  They wouldn't have him, I believe that; but nobody else believes
+it; and every body seems to think it the most natural thing possible.
+What do you say?"
+
+"I?"
+
+"Surely you don't think it right, or even possible?  But, Auntie, it
+might turn out a rather awkward affair, and you ought to take my advice,
+and stop it in time."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Why, by stepping him out of the house.  You and he are great friends: if
+he had any notion of marrying, I suppose he would mention it to you--he
+ought.  It would be a cowardly trick to come and steal one of your
+chickens from under your wing.  Wouldn't it?  Do say something, instead
+of merely echoing what I say.  It really is a serious matter, though you
+don't think so."
+
+"Yes, I do think so," said Miss Williams, at last; "and I would stop it
+if I thought I had any right.  But Mr. Roy is quite able to manage his
+own affairs; and he is not so very old--not more than five-and-twenty
+years older than--Helen."
+
+"Bother Helen!  I beg her pardon, she is a dear good girl.  But do you
+think any man would look at Helen when there was Janetta?"
+
+It was out now, out with a burning blush over all the lad's honest
+face, and the sudden crick-crack of a pretty Indian paper-cutter he
+unfortunately was twiddling in his fingers.  Miss Williams must have been
+blind indeed not to have guessed the state of the case.
+
+"What!  Janetta?  Oh, David!" was all she said.
+
+He nodded.  "Yes, that's it, just it.  I thought you must have found it
+out long ago: though I kept myself to myself pretty close, still you
+might have guessed."
+
+"I never did.  I had not the remotest idea.  Oh, how remiss I have been!
+It is all my fault."
+
+"Excuse me, I can not see that it is any body's fault, or any body's
+misfortune, either," said the young fellow, with a not unbecoming pride.
+"I hope I should not be a bad husband to any girl, when it comes to that.
+But it has not come; I have never said a single word to her.  I wanted to
+be quite clear of Oxford, and in a way to win my own position first.  And
+really we are so very jolly together as it is.  What are you smiling
+for?"
+
+She could not help it.  There was something so funny in the whole affair.
+They seemed such babies, playing at love; and their love-making, if such
+it was, had been carried on in such an exceedingly open and lively way,
+not a bit of tragedy about it, rather genteel comedy, bordering on farce.
+It was such a contrast to--certain other love stories that she had known,
+quite buried out of sight now.
+
+Gentle "Auntie"--the grave maiden lady, the old hen with all these young
+ducklings who would take to the water so soon--held out her hand to the
+impetuous David.
+
+"I don't know what to say to you, my boy: you really are little more than
+a boy, and to be taking upon yourself the responsibilities of life so
+soon! Still, I am glad you have said nothing to her about it yet.  She is
+a mere child, only eighteen."
+
+"Quite old enough to marry, and to marry Mr. Roy even, the St. Andrews
+folks think.  But I won't stand it.  I won't tamely sit by and see her
+sacrificed.  He might persuade her; he has a very winning way with him
+sometimes.  Auntie, I have not spoken, but I won't promise not to speak.
+It is all very well for you; you are old, and your blood runs cold, as
+you said to us one day--no, I don't mean that; you are a real brick
+still, and you'll never be old to us, but you are not in love, and you
+can't understand what it is to be a young fellow like me to see an old
+fellow like Roy coming in and just walking over the course.  But he
+sha'nt do it!  Long ago, when I was quite a lad, I made up my mind to
+get her; and get her I will, spite of Mr. Roy or any body."
+
+Fortune was touched.  That strong will which she too had had, able, like
+faith, to "remove mountains," sympathized involuntarily with the lad.  It
+was just what she would have said and done, had she been a man and loved
+a woman.  She gave David's hand a warm clasp, which he returned.
+
+"Forgive me," said he, affectionately.  "I did not mean to bother you;
+but as things stand, the matter is better out than in.  I hate
+underhandedness. I may have made an awful fool of myself, but at least I
+have not made a fool of her.  I have been as careful as possible not to
+compromise her in any way; for I know how people do talk, and a man has
+no right to let the girl he loves be talked about.  The more he loves
+her, the more he ought to take care of her.  Don't you think so?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'd cut myself up into little pieces for Janetta's sake," he went on,
+"and I'd do a deal for Helen too, the sisters are so fond of one another.
+She shall always have a home with us, when we are married."
+
+"Then," said Miss Williams, hardly able again to resist a smile, "you are
+quite certain you will be married?  You have no doubt about her caring
+for you?"
+
+David pulled his whiskers, not very voluminous yet, looked conscious, and
+yet humble.
+
+"Well, I don't exactly say that.  I know I'm not half good enough for
+her. Still, I thought, when I had taken my degree and fairly settled
+myself at the bar, I'd try.  I have a tolerably good income of my own
+too, though of course I am not as well off as that confounded Roy.  There
+he is at this minute meandering up and down the West Sands with those two
+girls, setting every body's tongue going!  I can't stand it.  I declare
+to you I won't stand it another day."
+
+"Stop a moment," and she caught hold of David as he started up.  "What
+are you going to do?"
+
+"I don't know and I don't care, only I won't have my girl talked
+about--my pretty, merry, innocent girl.  He ought to know better, a
+shrewd old fellow like him.  It is silly, selfish, mean."
+
+This was more than Miss Williams could bear.  She stood up, pale to the
+lips, but speaking strongly, almost fiercely:
+
+"You ought to know better, David Dalziel.  You ought to know that Mr. Roy
+had not an atom of selfishness or meanness in him--that he would be the
+last man in the world to compromise any girl.  If he chooses to marry
+Janetta, or any one else, he has a perfect right to do it, and I for one
+will not try to hinder him."
+
+"Then you will not stand by me any more?"
+
+"Not if you are blind and unfair.  You may die of love, though I don't
+think you will; people don't do it nowadays" (there was a slightly bitter
+jar in the voice): "but love ought to make you all the more honorable,
+clear-sighted, and just.  And as to Mr. Roy--"
+
+She might have talked to the winds, for David was not listening.  He had
+heard the click of the garden gate, and turned round with blazing eyes.
+
+"There he is again!  I can't stand it, Miss Williams.  I give you fair
+warning I can't stand it.  He has walked home with them, and is waiting
+about at the laurel bush, mooning after them.  Oh, hang him!"
+
+Before she had time to speak the young man was gone.  But she had no fear
+of any very tragic consequences when she saw the whole party standing
+together--David talking to Janetta, Mr. Roy to Helen, who looked so
+fresh, so young, so pretty, almost as pretty as Janetta.  Nor did Mr.
+Roy, pleased and animated, look so very old.
+
+That strange clear-sightedness, that absolute justice, of which Fortune
+had just spoken, were qualities she herself possessed to a remarkable,
+almost a painful, degree.  She could not deceive herself, even if she
+tried. The more cruel the sight, the clearer she saw it; even as now she
+perceived a certain naturalness in the fact that a middle-aged man so
+often chooses a young girl in preference to those of his own generation,
+for she brings him that which he has not; she reminds him of what he used
+to have; she is to him like the freshness of spring, the warmth of
+summer, in his cheerless autumn days.  Sometimes these marriages are not
+unhappy--far from it; and Robert Roy might ere long make such a marriage.
+Despite poor David's jealous contempt, he was neither old nor ugly, and
+then he was rich.
+
+The thing, either as regarded Helen, or some other girl of Helen's
+standing, appeared more than possible--probable; and if so, what then?
+
+Fortune looked out once, and saw that the little group at the laurel bush
+were still talking; then she slipped up stairs into her own room and
+bolted the door.
+
+The first thing that she did was to go straight up and look at her own
+face in the glass--her poor old face, which had never been beautiful,
+which she had never wished beautiful, except that it might be pleasant
+in one man's eyes.  Sweet it was still, but the sweetness lay in its
+expression, pure and placid, and innocent as a young girl's.  But she saw
+not that; she saw only its lost youth, its faded bloom.  She covered it
+over with both her hands, as if she would fain bury it out of sight;
+knelt down by her bedside, and prayed.
+
+"Mr. Roy is waiting below ma'am--has been waiting some time; but he says
+if you are busy he will not disturb you; he will come to-morrow instead."
+
+"Tell him I shall be very glad to see him to-morrow."
+
+She spoke through the locked door, too feeble to rise and open it; and
+then lying down on her bed and turning her face to the wall, from sheer
+exhaustion fell fast asleep.
+
+People dream strangely sometimes.  The dream she dreamt was so
+inexpressibly soothing and peaceful, so entirely out of keeping with the
+reality of things, that it almost seemed to have been what in ancient
+times would be called a vision.
+
+First, she thought that she and Robert Roy were little children--mere
+girl and boy together, as they might have been from the few years'
+difference in their ages--running hand in hand about the sands of St.
+Andrews, and so fond of one another--so very fond!  With that innocent
+love a big boy often has for a little girl, and a little girl returns
+with the tenderest fidelity.  So she did; and she was so happy--they were
+both so happy.  In the second part of the dream she was happy still, but
+somehow she knew she was dead--had been dead and in paradise for a long
+time, and was waiting for him to come there.  He was coming now; she felt
+him coming, and held out her hands, but he took and clasped her in his
+arms; and she heard a voice saying those mysterious words: "In heaven
+they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of
+God."
+
+It was very strange, all was very strange, but it comforted her.  She
+rose up, and in the twilight of the soft spring evening she washed her
+face and combed her hair, and went down, like King David after his child
+was dead, to "eat bread."
+
+Her young people were not there.  They had gone out again; she heard,
+with Mr. Dalziel, not Mr. Roy, who had sat reading in the parlor alone
+for upward of an hour.  They were supposed to be golfing, but they staid
+out till long after it was possible to see balls or holes; and Miss
+Williams was beginning to be a little uneasy, when they all three walked
+in, David and Janetta with a rather sheepish air, and Helen beaming all
+over with mysterious delight.
+
+How the young man had managed it--to propose to two sisters at once, at
+any rate to make love to one sister while the other was by--remained
+among the wonderful feats which David Dalziel, who had not too small an
+opinion of himself, was always ready for, and generally succeeded in; and
+if he did wear his heart somewhat "on his sleeve," why, it was a very
+honest heart, and they must have been ill-natured "daws" indeed who took
+pleasure in "pecking at it."
+
+"Wish me joy, Auntie!" he cried, coming forward, beaming all over, the
+instant the girls had disappeared to take their hats off.  "I've been and
+gone and done it, and it's all right.  I didn't intend it just yet, but
+he drove me to it, for which I'm rather obliged to him.  He can't get her
+now.  Janetta's mine!"
+
+There was a boyish triumph in his air; in fact, his whole conduct was
+exceedingly juvenile, but so simple, frank, and sincere as to be quite
+irresistible.
+
+I fear Miss Williams was a very weak-minded woman, or would be so
+considered by a great part of the world--the exceedingly wise and prudent
+and worldly-minded "world."  Here were two young people, one twenty-two,
+the other eighteen, with--it could hardly be said "not a half-penny,"
+but still a very small quantity of half-pennies, between them--and they
+had not only fallen in love, but engaged themselves to married! She ought
+to have been horrified, to have severely reproached them for their
+imprudence, used all her influence and, if needs be, her authority, to
+stop the whole thing; advising David not to bind himself to any girl till
+he was much older, and his prospects secured; and reasoning with Janetta
+on the extreme folly of a long engagement, and how very much better it
+would be for her to pause, and make some "good" marriage with a man of
+wealth and position, who could keep her comfortably.
+
+All this, no doubt, was what a prudent and far-seeing mother or friend
+ought to have said and done.  Miss Williams did no such thing, and said
+not a single word.  She only kissed her "children"--Helen too, whose
+innocent delight was the prettiest thing to behold--then sat down and
+made tea for them all, as if nothing had happened.
+
+But such events do not happen without making a slight stir in a family,
+especially such a quiet family as that at the cottage.  Besides, the
+lovers were too childishly happy to be at all reticent over their
+felicity.  Before David was turned away that night to the hotel which he
+and Mr. Roy both inhabited, every body in the house knew quite well that
+Mr. Dalziel and Miss Janetta were to be married.
+
+And every body had of course suspected it long ago, and was not in the
+least surprised, so that the mistress of the household herself was half
+ashamed to confess how very much surprised _she_ had been.  However, as
+every body seemed delighted, for most people have a "sneaking kindness"
+toward young lovers, she kept her own counsel; smiled blandly over her
+old cook's half-pathetic congratulations to the young couple, who were
+"like the young bears, with all their troubles before them," and laughed
+at the sympathetic forebodings of the girls' faithful maid, a rather
+elderly person, who was supposed to have been once "disappointed," and
+who "hoped Mr. Dalziel was not too young to know his own mind."  Still,
+in spite of all, the family were very much delighted, and not a little
+proud.
+
+David walked in, master of the position now, directly after breakfast,
+and took the sisters out for a walk, both of them, declaring he was as
+much encumbered as if he were going to marry two young ladies at once,
+but bearing his lot with great equanimity.  His love-making indeed was so
+extraordinarily open and undisguised that it did not much matter who was
+by.  And Helen was of that sweet negative nature that seemed made for the
+express purpose of playing "gooseberry."
+
+Directly they had departed, Mr. Roy came in.
+
+He might have been a far less acute observer than he was not to detect at
+once that "something had happened" in the little family.  Miss Williams
+kept him waiting several minutes, and when she did come in her manner
+was nervous and agitated.  They spoke about the weather and one or two
+trivial things, but more than once Fortune felt him looking at her with
+that keen, kindly observation which had been sometimes, during all these
+weeks now running into months, of almost daily meeting, and of the
+closest intimacy--a very difficult thing to bear.
+
+He was exceedingly kind to her always; there was no question of that.
+Without making any show of it, he seemed always to know where she was
+and what she was doing.  Nothing ever lessened his silent care of her.
+If ever she wanted help, there he was to give it.  And in all their
+excursions she had a quiet conviction that whoever forgot her or her
+comfort, he never would.  But then it was his way.  Some men have eyes
+and ears for only one woman, and that merely while they happen to be in
+love with her; whereas Robert Roy was courteous and considerate to every
+woman, even as he was kind to every weak or helpless creature that
+crossed his path.
+
+Evidently he perceived that all was not right; and, though he said
+nothing, there was a tenderness in his manner which went to her heart.
+
+"You are not looking well to-day; should you not go out?" he said.  "I
+met all your young people walking off to the sands: they seemed
+extraordinarily happy."
+
+Fortune was much perplexed.  She did not like not to tell him the
+news--him, who had so completely established himself as a friend of the
+family. And yet to tell him was not exactly her place; besides, he might
+not care to hear.  Old maid as she was, or thought herself, Miss Williams
+knew enough of men not to fall into the feminine error of fancying they
+feel as we do--that their world is our world, and their interest our
+interest. To most men, a leader in the _Times_, an article in the
+_Quarterly_, or a fall in the money market is of far more importance than
+any love affair in the world, unless it happens to be their own.
+
+Why should I tell him? she thought, convinced that he noticed the anxiety
+in her eyes, the weariness at her heart.  She had passed an almost
+sleepless night, pondering over the affairs of these young people, who
+never thought of any thing beyond their own new-born happiness.  And
+she had perplexed herself with wondering whether in consenting to this
+engagement she was really doing her duty by her girls, who had no one but
+her, and whom she was so tender of, for their dead father's sake.  But
+what good was it to say any thing?  She must bear her own burden.  And
+yet--
+
+Robert Roy looked at her with his kind, half-amused smile.
+
+"You had better tell me all about it; for, indeed, I know already."
+
+"What! did you guess it?"
+
+"Perhaps.  But Dalziel came to my room last night and poured out
+everything.  He is a candid youth.  Well, and am I to congratulate?"
+
+Greatly relieved, Fortune looked up.
+
+"That's right," he said; "I like to see you smile.  A minute or two ago
+you seemed as if you had the cares of all the world on your shoulders.
+No, that is not exactly the truth.  Always meet the truth face to face,
+and don't be frightened by it."
+
+Ah, no.  If she had had that strong heart to lean on, that tender hand to
+help her through the world, she never would have been "frightened" at any
+thing.
+
+"I know I am very foolish," she said; "but there are many things which
+these children of mine don't see, and I can't help seeing."
+
+"Certainly; they are young, and we are--well, never mind.  Sit down here,
+and let you and me talk the matter quietly over.  On the whole, are you
+glad or sorry?"
+
+"Both, I think.  David is able to take care of himself; but poor little
+Janetta--my Janetta--what if he should bring her to poverty?  He is a
+little reckless about money, and has only a very small certain income.
+Worse; suppose being so young, he should by-and-by get tired of her, and
+neglect her, and break her heart?"
+
+"Or twenty other things which may happen, or may not, and of which they
+must take the chance, like their neighbors.  You do not believe very much
+in men, I see, and perhaps you are right.  We are a bad lot--a bad lot.
+But David Dalziel is as good as most of us, that I can assure you."
+
+She could hardly tell whether he was in jest or earnest; but this was
+certain, he meant to cheer and comfort her, and she took the comfort,
+and was thankful.
+
+"Now to the point," continued Mr. Roy.  "You feel that, in a worldly
+point of view, these two have done a very foolish thing, and you have
+aided and abetted them in doing it?"
+
+"Not so," she cried, laughing; "I had no idea of such a thing till David
+told me yesterday morning of his intentions."
+
+"Yes, and he explained to me why he told you, and why he dared not wait
+any longer.  He blurts out every thing, the foolish boy!  But he has made
+friends with me now.  They do seem such children, do they not, compared
+with old folks like you and me?"
+
+What was it in the tone or the words which made her feel not in the least
+vexed, nor once attempt to rebut the charge of being "old?"
+
+"I'll tell you what it is," said Robert Roy, with one of his sage smiles,
+"you must not go and vex yourself needlessly about trifles.  We should
+not judge other people by ourselves.  Every body is so different.
+Dalziel may make his way all the better for having that pretty creature
+for a wife, not but what some other pretty creature might soon have done
+just as well.  Very few men have tenacity of nature enough, if they can
+not get the one woman they love, to do without any other to the end of
+their days.  But don't be disappointed yourself about your girl.  David
+will make her a very good husband.  They will be happy enough, even
+though not very rich."
+
+"Does that matter much?"
+
+"I used to think so.  I had so sore a lesson of poverty in my youth, that
+it gave me an almost morbid terror of it, not for myself, but for any
+woman I cared for.  Once I would not have done as Dalziel has for the
+world. Now I have changed my mind.  At any rate, David will not have one
+misfortune to contend with.  He has a thoroughly good opinion of himself,
+poor fellow!  He will not suffer from that horrible self-distrust which
+makes some men let themselves drift on and on with the tide, instead of
+taking the rudder into their own hands and steering straight on--direct
+for the haven where they would be.  Oh, that I had done it."
+
+He spoke passionately, and then sat silent.  At last, muttering something
+about "begging her pardon," and "taking a liberty," he changed the
+conversation into another channel, by asking whether this marriage, when
+it happened--which, of course could not be just immediately--would make
+any difference to her circumstances.
+
+Some difference, she explained, because the girls would receive their
+little fortunes whenever they came of age or married, and the sisters
+would not like to be parted; besides, Helen's money would help the
+establishment.  Probably, whenever David married, he would take them
+both away; indeed, he had said as much.
+
+"And then shall you stay on here?"
+
+"I may, for I have a small income of my own; besides, there are your two
+little boys, and I might find two or three more.  But I do not trouble
+myself much about the future.  One thing is certain, I need never work
+as hard as I have done all my life."
+
+"Have you worked so very hard, then, my poor--"
+
+He left the sentence unfinished; his hand, half extended, was drawn back,
+for the three young people were seen coming down the garden, followed by
+the two boys, returning from their classes.  It was nearly dinner-time,
+and people must dine, even though in love; and boys must be kept to
+their school work, and all the daily duties of life must be done.  Well,
+perhaps, for many of us, that such should be!  I think it was as well for
+poor Fortune Williams.
+
+The girls had come in wet through, with one of those sudden "haars" which
+are not uncommon at St. Andrews in spring, and it seemed likely to last
+all day.  Mr. Roy looked out of the window at it with a slightly dolorous
+air.
+
+"I suppose I am rather _de trop_ here, but really I wish you would not
+turn me out.  In weather like this our hotel coffee-room is just a trifle
+dull, isn't it, Dalziel?  And, Miss Williams, your parlor looks so
+comfortable.  Will you let me stay?"
+
+He made the request with a simplicity quite pathetic.  One of the most
+lovable things about this man--is it not in all men?--was, that with all
+his shrewdness and cleverness, and his having been knocked up and down
+the world for so many years, he still kept a directness and simpleness of
+character almost child-like.
+
+To refuse would have been unkind, impossible; so Miss Williams told him
+he should certainly stay if he could make himself comfortable.  And to
+that end she soon succeeded in turning off her two turtle-doves into a
+room by themselves, for the use of which they had already bargained,
+in order to "read together, and improve their minds."  Meanwhile she
+and Helen tried to help the two little boys to spend a dull holiday
+indoors--if they were ever dull beside Uncle Robert, who had not lost
+his old influence with boys, and to those boys was already a father in
+all but the name.
+
+Often Fortune watched them, sitting upon his chair, hanging about him as
+he walked, coming to him for sympathy in every thing.  Yes, every body
+loved him, for there was such an amount of love in him toward every
+mortal creature, except--
+
+She looked at him and his boys, then turned away.  What was to be had
+been, and always would be.  That which we fight against in our youth as
+being human will, human error, in our age we take humbly, knowing it to
+be the will of God.
+
+By-and-by in the little household the gas was lighted, the curtains
+drawn, and the two lovers fetched in for tea, to behave themselves as
+much as they could like ordinary mortals, in general society, for the
+rest of the evening.  A very pleasant evening it was, spite of this new
+element; which was got rid of as much as possible by means of the window
+recess, where Janetta and David encamped composedly, a little aloof from
+the rest.
+
+"I hope they don't mind me," said Mr. Roy, casting an amused glance in
+their direction, and then adroitly maneuvering with the back of his chair
+so as to interfere as little as possible with the young couple's
+felicity.
+
+"Oh no, they don't mind you at all," answered Helen, always affectionate,
+if not always wise.  "Besides, I dare say you yourself were young once,
+Mr. Roy."
+
+Evidently Helen had no idea of the plans for her future which were being
+talked about in St. Andrews.  Had he?  No one could even speculate with
+such an exceedingly reserved person.  He retired behind his newspaper,
+and said not a single word.
+
+Nevertheless, there was no cloud in the atmosphere.  Every body was used
+to Mr. Roy's silence in company.  And he never troubled any body, not
+even the children, with either a gloomy look or a harsh word.  He was so
+comfortable to live with, so unfailingly sweet and kind.
+
+Although there was a strange atmosphere of peace in the cottage that
+evening, though nobody seemed to do any thing or say very much.  Now and
+then Mr. Roy read aloud bits out of his endless newspapers--he had a
+truly masculine mania for newspapers, and used to draw one after another
+out of his pockets, as endless as a conjurer's pocket-handkerchiefs.  And
+he liked to share their contents with any body that would listen; though
+I am afraid nobody did listen much to-night except Miss Williams, who sat
+beside him at her sewing, in order to get the benefit of the same lamp.
+And between his readings he often turned and looked at her, her bent
+head, her smooth soft hair, her busy hands.
+
+Especially after one sentence, out of the "Varieties" of some Fife
+newspaper.  He had begun to read it, then stopped suddenly, but finished
+it.  It consisted only of a few words: _"'Young love is passionate, old
+love is faithful; but the very tenderest thing in all this world is a
+love revived.'_  That is true."
+
+He said only those three words, in a very low, quiet voice, but Fortune
+heard.  His look she did not see, but she felt it--even as a person long
+kept in darkness might feel a sunbeam strike along the wall, making it
+seem possible that there might be somewhere in the earth such a thing as
+day.
+
+About nine P.M. the lovers in the window recess discovered that the haar
+was all gone, and that it was a most beautiful moonlight night; full
+moon, the very night they had planned to go in a body to the top of St.
+Regulus tower.
+
+"I suppose they must," said Mr. Roy to Miss Williams; adding, "Let the
+young folks make the most of their youth; it never will come again."
+
+"No."
+
+"And you and I must go too.  It will be more _comme il faut_, as people
+say."
+
+So, with a half-regretful look at the cozy fire, Mr. Roy marshaled the
+lively party, Janetta and David, Helen and the two boys; engaging to get
+them the key of that silent garden of graves over which St. Regulus tower
+keeps stately watch.  How beautiful it looked, with the clear sky shining
+through its open arch, and the brilliant moonlight, bright as day almost,
+but softer, flooding every alley of that peaceful spot!  It quieted even
+the noisy party who were bent on climbing the tower, to catch a view,
+such as is rarely equaled, of the picturesque old city and its beautiful
+bay.
+
+"A 'comfortable place to sleep in,' as some one once said to me in a
+Melbourne church-yard.  But 'east or west, home is best.--I think, Bob,
+I shall leave it in my will that you are to bury me at St. Andrews.'"
+
+"Nonsense, Uncle Robert!  You are not to talk of dying.  And you are to
+come with us up to the top of the tower.  Miss Williams, will you come
+too?"
+
+"No, I think she had better not," said Uncle Robert, decisively.  "She
+will stay here, and I will keep her company."
+
+So the young people all vanished up the tower, and the two elders walked
+silently side by side the quiet graves--by the hearts which had ceased
+beating, the hands which, however close they lay, would never clasp one
+another any more.
+
+"Yes, St. Andrews is a pleasant place," said Robert Roy at last.  "I
+spoke in jest, but I meant in earnest; I have no wish to leave it again.
+And you," he added, seeing that she answered nothing--"what plans have
+you?  Shall you stay on at the cottage till these young people are
+married?"
+
+"Most likely.  We are all fond of the little house."
+
+"No wonder.  They say a wandering life after a certain number of years
+unsettles a man forever; he rests nowhere, but goes on wandering to the
+end.  But I feel just the contrary.  I think I shall stay permanently at
+St. Andrews.  You will let me come about your cottage, 'like a tame cat,'
+as that foolish fellow owned he had called me--will you not?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+But at the same time she felt there was a strain beyond which she could
+not bear.  To be so near, yet so far; so much to him, and yet so little.
+She was conscious of a wild desire to run away somewhere--run away and
+escape it all; of a longing to be dead and buried, deep in the sea, up
+away among the stars.
+
+"Will those young people be very long, do you think?"
+
+At the sound of her voice he turned to look at her, and saw that she was
+deadly pale, and shivering from head to foot.
+
+"This will never do.  You must 'come under my plaidie,' as the children
+say, and I will take you home at once.  Boys!" he called out to the
+figures now appearing like jackdaws at the top of the tower, "we are
+going straight home.  Follow us as soon as you like.  Yes, it must be
+so," he answered to the slight resistance she made.  "They must all take
+care of themselves.  I mean to take care of you."
+
+Which he did, wrapping her well in the half of his plaid, drawing her
+hand under his arm and holding it there--holding it close and warm at
+his heart all the way along the Scores and across the Links, scarcely
+speaking a single word until they reached the garden gate.  Even there
+he held it still.
+
+"I see your girls coming, so I shall leave you.  You are warm now, are
+you not?"
+
+"Quite warm."
+
+"Good-night, then.  Stay.  Tell me"--he spoke rapidly, and with much
+agitation--"tell me just one thing, and I will never trouble you again.
+Why did you not answer a letter I wrote to you seventeen years ago?"
+
+"I never got any letter.  I never had one word from you after the Sunday
+you bade me good-by, promising to write."
+
+"And I did write," cried he, passionately.  "I posted it with my own
+hands.  You should have got it on the Tuesday morning."
+
+She leaned against the laurel bush, that fatal laurel bush, and in a few
+breathless words told him what David had said about the hidden letter.
+
+"It must have been my letter.  Why did you not tell me this before?"
+
+"How could I?  I never knew you had written.  You never said a word.  In
+all these years you have never said a single word."
+
+Bitterly, bitterly he turned away.  The groan that escaped him--a man's
+groan over his lost life--lost, not wholly through fate alone--was such
+as she, the woman whose portion had been sorrow, passive sorrow only,
+never forgot in all her days.
+
+"Don't mind it," she whispered--"don't mind it.  It is so long past now."
+
+He made no immediate answer, then said,
+
+"Have you no idea what was in the letter?"
+
+"No."
+
+"It was to ask you a question, which I had determined not to ask just
+then, but I changed my mind.  The answer, I told you, I should wait for
+in Edinburgh seven days; after that, I should conclude you meant No, and
+sail.  No answer came, and I sailed."
+
+He was silent.  So was she.  A sense of cruel fatality came over her.
+Alas! those lost years, that might have been such happy years!  At length
+she said, faintly, "Forget it.  It was not your fault."
+
+"It was my fault.  If not mine, you were still yourself--I ought never to
+have let you go.  I ought to have asked again; to have sought through the
+whole world till I found you again.  And now that I have found you--"
+
+"Hush!  The girls are here."
+
+They came along laughing, that merry group--with whom life was at its
+spring--who had lost nothing, knew not what it was to lose!
+
+"Good-night," said Mr. Roy, hastily.  "But--to-morrow morning?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"There never is night to which comes no morn," says the proverb. Which
+is not always true, at least as to this world; but it is true sometimes.
+
+That April morning Fortune Williams rose with a sense of strange
+solemnity--neither sorrow nor joy.  Both had gone by; but they had left
+behind them a deep peace.
+
+After her young people had walked themselves off, which they did
+immediately after breakfast, she attended to all her household duties,
+neither few nor small, and then sat down with her needle-work beside the
+open window.  It was a lovely day; the birds were singing, the leaves
+budding, a few early flowers making all the air to smell like spring.
+And she--with her it was autumn now.  She knew it, but still she did not
+grieve.
+
+Presently, walking down the garden walk, almost with the same firm step
+of years ago--how well she remembered it!--Robert Roy came; but it was
+still a few minutes before she could go into the little parlor to meet
+him. At last she did, entering softly, her hand extended as usual.  He
+took it, also as usual, and then looked down into her face, as he had
+done that Sunday.  "Do you remember this?  I have kept it for seventeen
+years."
+
+It was her mother's ring.  She looked up with a dumb inquiry.
+
+"My love, did you think I did not love you?--you always, and only you?"
+
+So saying, he opened his arms; she felt them close round her, just as in
+her dream.  Only they were warm, living arms; and it was this world, not
+the next.  All those seventeen bitter years seemed swept away,
+annihilated in a moment; she laid her head on his shoulder and wept out
+her happy heart there.
+
+         *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+The little world of St. Andrews was very much astonished when it
+learned that Mr. Roy was going to marry, not one of the pretty Miss
+Moseleys, but their friend and former governess, a lady, not by any
+means young, and remarkable for nothing except great sweetness and
+good sense, which made every body respect and like her; though nobody
+was much excited concerning her.  Now people had been excited about
+Mr. Roy, and some were rather sorry for him; thought perhaps he had
+been taken in, till some story got wind of its having been an "old
+attachment,"  which interested them of course; still, the good folks were
+half angry with him.  To go and marry an old maid when he might have
+had his choice of half a dozen young ones! when, with his fortune and
+character, he might, as people say--as they had said of that other good
+man, Mr. Moseley--"have married any body!"
+
+They forgot that Mr. Roy happened to be one of those men who have no
+particular desire to marry "any body;"  to whom _the_ woman, whether
+found early or late--alas! in this case found early and won late--is the
+one woman in the world forever.  Poor Fortune--rich Fortune! she need not
+be afraid of her fading cheek, her silvering hair; he would never see
+either.  The things he loved her for were quite apart from any thing that
+youth could either give or take away.  As he said one, when she lamented
+hers, "Never mind, let it go.  You will always be yourself--and mine."
+
+This was enough.  He loved her.  He had always loved her: she had no
+fear but that he would love her faithfully to the end.
+
+Theirs was a very quiet wedding, and a speedy one.  "Why should they
+wait? they had waited too long already," he said, with some bitterness.
+But she felt none.  With her all was peace.
+
+Mr. Roy did another very foolish thing which I can not conscientiously
+recommend to any middle-aged bachelor.  Besides marrying his wife, he
+married her whole family.  There was no other way out of the difficulty,
+and neither of them was inclined to be content with happiness, leaving
+duty unfulfilled.  So he took the largest house in St. Andrews, and
+brought to it Janetta and Helen, till David Dalziel could claim them;
+likewise his own two orphan boys, until they went to Oxford; for he
+meant to send them there, and bring them up in every way like his own
+sons.
+
+Meantime, it was rather a heterogeneous family; but the two heads of it
+bore their burden with great equanimity, nay, cheerfulness; saying
+sometimes, with a smile which had the faintest shadow of pathos in it,
+"that they liked to have young life about them."
+
+And by degrees they grew younger themselves; less of the old bachelor
+and old maid, and more of the happy middle-aged couple to whom
+Heaven gave, in their decline, a St. Martin's summer almost as sweet as
+spring.  They were both too wise to poison the present by regretting the
+past--a past which, if not wholly, was partly, at least, owing to that
+strange fatality which governs so many lives, only some have the will to
+conquer it, others not.  And there are two sides to every thing:  Robert
+Roy, who alone knew how hard his own life had been, sometimes felt a
+stern joy in thinking no one had shared it.
+
+Still, for a long time there lay at the bottom of that strong, gentle
+heart of his a kind of remorseful tenderness, which showed itself in
+heaping his wife with every luxury that his wealth could bring; better
+than all, in surrounding her with that unceasing care which love alone
+teaches, never allowing the wind to blow on her too roughly--his "poor
+lamb," as he sometime called her, who had suffered so much.
+
+They are sure, humanly speaking, to "live very happy to the end of their
+days."  And I almost fancy sometimes, if I were to go to St. Andrews, as
+I hope to do many a time, for I am as fond of the Aged City as they are,
+that I should see those two, made one at last after all those cruel
+divided years, wandering together along the sunshiny sands, or standing
+to watch the gay golfing parties; nay, I am not sure that Robert Roy
+would not be visible sometimes in his red coat, club in hand, crossing
+the Links, a victim to the universal insanity of St. Andrews, yet
+enjoying himself, as golfers always seem to do, with the enjoyment of a
+very boy.
+
+She is not a girl, far from it; but there will always be a girlish
+sweetness in her faded face till its last smile.  And to see her sitting
+beside her husband on the green slopes of the pretty garden--knitting,
+perhaps while he reads his eternal newspapers--is a perfect picture.
+They do not talk very much; indeed, they were neither of them ever great
+talkers.  But each knows the other is close at hand, ready for any
+needful word, and always ready with that silent sympathy which is so
+mysterious a thing, the rarest thing to find in all human lives.  These
+have found it, and are satisfied.  And day by day truer grows the truth
+of that sentence which Mrs. Roy once discovered in her husband's
+pocket-book, cut out of a newspaper--she read and replaced it without a
+word, but with something between a smile and tear--_"Young love is
+passionate, old love is faithful; but the very tenderest thing in all
+this world is a love revived."_
+
+
+
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