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 ove