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,