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