-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 ha