Angela's answer to this long oration was a simple one. She rose slowly
from her low seat, and, putting her hands upon Mr. Fraser's shoulders,
kissed him on the forehead and said--

"How shall I ever learn to be grateful enough for all I owe you? What
should I have been now but for you? How good and patient you have been
to me!"

This embrace affected the clergyman strangely; he put his hand to his
heart, and a troubled look came into his eyes. Thrusting her gently
away from him, he sat down.

"Angela," he said presently, "go away now, dear, I am tired to-night;
I shall see you at church to-morrow to say good-by."

And so she went homewards, through the wind and storm, little knowing
that she left her master to struggle with a tempest far more
tremendous than that which raged around her.

As for him, as the door closed, he gave a sigh of relief.

"Pray God I have not put it off too long," he said to himself. "And
now for to-morrow's sermon. Sleep for the young! laughter for the
happy! work for old fools--work, work, work!"

And thus it was that Angela became a scholar.

CHAPTER XVII

The winter months passed away slowly for Angela, but not by any means
unhappily. Though she was quite alone and missed Mr. Fraser sadly, she
found considerable consolation in his present of books, and in the
thought that she was getting a good hold of her new subjects of study.
And then came the wonder of the spring with its rush of budding life,
and who, least of all Angela, could be sad in springtime? But
nevertheless that spring marked an important change in our heroine,
for it was during its sweet hours, when, having put her books aside,
she would roam alone, or in company with her ravens, through the
flower-starred woods around the lake, that a feeling of restlessness,
amounting at times almost to dissatisfaction, took possession of her.
Indeed, as the weeks crept on and she drew near the completion of her
twentieth year, she realized with a sigh that she could no longer call
herself a girl, and began to feel that her life was incomplete, that
something was wanting in it. And this was what was wanting in Angela's
life: she had, if we except her nurse, no one to love, and she had so
much love to give!

Did she but guess it, the still recesses of her heart already tremble
to the footfall of one now drawing near: out of the multitude of the
lives around her, a life is marked to mingle with her o