Chapter 2

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_ 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? _

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