"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.