smote her sometimes, knowing it was
not wholly for their sakes. But they had never been near her, and she
had little expectation of seeing any of them ever again, since by this
time she had lived long enough to find out how easily people do drift
asunder, and lose all clue to one another, unless some strong firm will
or unconquerable habit of fidelity exists on one side or the other.

Since the Dalziels she had only lived in the two families before named,
and had been lately driven from the last one by a catastrophe, if it may
be called so, which had been the bitterest drop in her cup since the time
she left St. Andrews.

The rector--a widower, and a feeble, gentle invalid, to whom naturally
she had been kind and tender, regarding him with much the same sort of
motherly feeling as she had regarded his children--suddenly asked her to
become their mother in reality.

It was a great shock and a pang: almost a temptation; for they all loved
her, and wished to keep her. She would have been such a blessing, such
a brightness, in that dreary home. And to a woman no longer young, who
had seen her youth pass without any brightness in it, God knows what
an allurement it is to feel she has still the power of brightening
other lives. If Fortune had yielded--if she had said yes, and married
the rector--it would have been hardly wonderful, scarcely blamable.
Nor would it have been the first time that a good, conscientious,
tender-hearted woman has married a man for pure tenderness.

But she did not do it; not even when they clung around her--those
forlorn, half-educated, but affectionate girls--entreating her to "marry
papa, and make us all happy." She could not--how could she? She felt
very kindly to him. He had her sincere respect, almost affection; but
when she looked into her own heart, she found there was not in it one
atom of love, never had been, for any man alive except Robert Roy. While
he was unmarried, for her to marry would be impossible.

And so she had the wisdom and courage to say to herself, and to them all,
"This can not be;" to put aside the cup of attainable happiness, which
might never have proved real happiness, because founded on an
insincerity.

But the pain this cost was so great, the wrench of parting from her poor
girls so cruel, that after it Miss Williams had a sharp illness, the
first serious illness of her life. She struggled through it, quietly and
alone, in one of those excellent "Governe