they return the love or not.

In the latter case,

they seldom doubt it; in the former, they often do.

"Could I have been mistaken?" she thought, with a burning pang of shame. "Oh, why did he not speak, just one word? After that, I could have borne anything."

But he had not spoken, he had not written. He had let 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 anything-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 ten minutes between post-hour and lesson-hourwhich she generally passed in her own roomif 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 everything he had

said or done came back upon her now-vividly, as we recall the words and looks of the deadmingled with such a hungering pain, such a cruel "miss" of him, daily and hourly, his companionship, help, counsel, everything 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 pretence of any kind.

If he did love her, why not tell her so? What was there to hinder him? Nothing, except that strange notion of the "dishonourableness" 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 a 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 worldand ever after belonged to one another, helping, comforting, and strengthening one another, even

though it had been years and years before they were married?

"If only he had loved me, and told me so!" was her bitter cry. "I could have waited for him all my life long, earned my bread 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 to-morrow. 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,