t,
after all, these little ones are "of the kingdom of heaven," and that the
task of educating them for that kingdom somehow often brings us nearer to
it ourselves.

Her heart, always tender to children, had gone out to them more and more
every year, especially after that fatal year when a man took it and broke
it. No, not broke it, but threw it carelessly away, wounding it so
sorely that it never could be quite itself again. But it was a true and
warm and womanly heart still.

She had never heard of him--Robert Roy--never once, in any way, since
that Sunday afternoon when he said, "I will write tomorrow," and did not
write, but let her drop from him altogether like a worthless thing.
Cruel, somewhat, even to a mere acquaintance--but to her?

Well, all was past and gone, and the tide of years had flowed over it.
Whatever it was, a mistake, a misfortune, or a wrong, nobody knew any
thing about it. And the wound even was healed, in a sort of a way, and
chiefly by the unconscious hands of these little "ministering angels,"
who were angels that never hurt her, except by blotting their copy-books
or not learning their lessons.

I know it may sound a ridiculous thing that a forlorn governess should
be comforted for a lost love by the love of children; but it is true to
nature. Women's lives have successive phases, each following the other in
natural gradation--maidenhood, wifehood, motherhood: in not one of which,
ordinarily, we regret the one before it, to which it is nevertheless
impossible to go back. But Fortune's life had had none of these,
excepting, perhaps, her one six months' dream of love and spring. That
being over, she fell back upon autumn days and autumn pleasures--which
are very real pleasures, after all.

As she sat with the two little girls leaning against her lap--they were
Indian children, unaccustomed to tenderness, and had already grown very
fond of her--there was a look in her face, not at all like an ancient
maiden or a governess, but almost motherly. You see the like in the
faces of the Virgin Mary, as the old monks used to paint her, quaint, and
not always lovely, but never common or coarse, and spiritualized by a
look of mingled tenderness and sorrow into something beyond all beauty.

This woman's face had it, so that people who had known Miss Williams as
a girl were astonished to find her, as a middle-aged woman, grown "so
good-looking." To which one of her pupils once answered, naively