THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
WENT ALONG THE SHINING 
 
 IN A DREAM OF PERFECT CONTENT. 
 
 [p. 30. 
 
FOR ONE INSTANT, ONE INSTANT ONLY, FORTUNE FELT SURE, QUITE SURE, THAT 
 SOME WAT OR OTHER SHE WAS VERY DEAR TO ROBERT ROY. [p. 49 
 
THE LAUREL BUSH 
 
 (Q)l&<-fa0l)i0neir 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN," &c. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 FRANKLIN BQUAEE. 
 
 1876. 
 
BY THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX.' 
 
 THE LAUREL BUSH. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents; 12mo, Cloth, $1 50. 
 
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 16mo, Cloth, 90 cents each. Now Ready : 
 
 LITTLE SUNSHINE'S HOLIDAY. TWENTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 THE COUSIN FROM INDIA. IS IT TRUE! 
 
 MISS MOORE. AN ONLY SISTER. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. 
 \S" Sent by mail, pottage prepaid, to any part of tht U. 8. or Canada, on receipt of the price. 
 
 GIFT 
 
 Copyright, 1876, by HAEPEU & BUOTUEES. 
 
THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 TT was a very ugly bush indeed ; that is, so far 
 as any thing in nature can be really ugly. It 
 was lapsided having on the one hand a stunted 
 stump or two, while on the other a huge, heavy 
 branch swept down to the gravel-walk. It had a 
 crooked, gnarled trunk or stem, hollow enough to 
 entice any weak-minded bird to build a nest there 
 only it was so near to the ground, and also to 
 the garden gate. Besides, the owners of the gar- 
 den, evidently of practical mind, had made use of 
 it to place between a fork in its branches a sort 
 of letter-box not the Government regulation one, 
 for twenty years ago this had not been thought 
 of, but a rough receptacle, where, the house being 
 
10 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 a good way off, letters might be deposited, instead 
 of, as hitherto, in a hole in the trunk near the 
 foot of the tree, and under shelter of its mass of 
 evergreen leaves. 
 
 This letter-box, made by the boys of the family 
 at the instigation and with the assistance of their 
 tutor, had proved so attractive to some exceeding- 
 ly incautious sparrow, that during the intervals of 
 the post she had begun a nest there, which was 
 found by the boys. Exceedingly wild boys they 
 were, and a great trouble to their old grandmoth- 
 er, with whom they were staying the summer, and 
 their young governess "Misfortune," as they 
 called her, her real name being Miss Williams 
 Fortune Williams. The nickname was a little too 
 near the truth, as a keener observer than mischiev- 
 ous boys would have read in her quiet, sometimes 
 sad face ; and it had been stopped rather severely 
 by the tutor of the elder boys, a young man whom 
 the grandmother had been forced to get to " keep 
 them in order." He was a Mr. Kobert Eoy, once 
 a student, now a teacher of the " humanities," from 
 the neighboring town I beg its pardon, city ; and 
 a lovely old city it is ! of St. Andrews. Thence 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 11 
 
 he was in the habit of coming to them three and 
 often four days in the week, teaching of mornings 
 and walking of afternoons. They had expected 
 him this afternoon, but their grandmother had car- 
 ried them off on some pleasure excursion; and, 
 being a lady of inexact habits, one, too, to whom 
 tutors were tutors and nothing more, she had 
 merely said to Miss Williams, as the carriage drove 
 away, " When Mr. Koy comes, tell him he is not 
 wanted till to-morrow." 
 
 And so Miss Williams had waited at the gate, 
 not wishing him to have the additional trouble of 
 walking up to the house, for she knew every min- 
 ute of his time was precious. The poor and the 
 hard-working can understand and sympathize with 
 one another. Only a tutor and only a governess : 
 Mrs. Dalziel drove away, and never thought of 
 them again. They were mere machines servants 
 to whom she paid their wages, and, so that they did 
 sufficient service to deserve these wages, she never 
 interfered with them, nor, indeed, wasted a mo- 
 ment's consideration upon them or their concerns. 
 
 Consequently, they were in the somewhat rare 
 and peculiar position of a young man and young 
 
12 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 woman perhaps Mrs. Dalziel would have taken 
 exception to the words " young lady and young 
 gentleman" thrown together day after day, week 
 after week ; nay, it had now become month after 
 month ; to all intents and purposes quite alone, 
 except for the children. They taught together, 
 there being but one school-room; walked out to- 
 gether, for the two younger boys refused to be 
 separated from their elder brothers ; and, in short, 
 spent two-thirds of their existence together, with- 
 out let or hinderance, comment or observation, from 
 any mortal soul. 
 
 I do not wish to make any mystery in this story. 
 A young woman of twenty-five and a young man 
 of thirty, both perfectly alone in the world or- 
 phans, without brother or sister having to earn 
 their own bread, and earn it hardly, and, being 
 placed in circumstances where they had every op- 
 portunity of intimate friendship, sympathy, what- 
 ever you like to call it who could doubt what 
 would happen? The more so, as there was no 
 one to suggest that it might happen ; no one to 
 watch them or warn them, or waken them with 
 worldly-minded hints ; or else to rise up, after the 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 13 
 
 fashion of so many wise parents and guardians and 
 well-intentioned friends, and indignantly shut the 
 stable-door after the steed is stolen. 
 
 No. That something which was so sure to hap- 
 pen had happened ; you might have seen it in 
 their eyes, have heard it in the very tone of their 
 voices, though they still talked in a very common- 
 place way, and still called each other " Miss Wil- 
 liams " and " Mr. Koy." In fact, their whole de- 
 meanor to one another was characterized by the 
 grave and even formal decorum which was natural 
 to very reserved people, just trembling on the 
 verge of that discovery which, will unlock the 
 heart of each to the other, and annihilate reserve 
 forever between the two whom Heaven has de- 
 signed and meant to become one a completed ex- 
 istence. If, by any mischance, this does not come 
 about, each may lead a very creditable and not un- 
 happy life ; but it will be a locked-up life one to 
 which no third person is ever likely to find the 
 key. 
 
 Whether such natures are to be envied or pitied 
 is more than I can say ; but, at least, they are more 
 to be respected than the people who wear their 
 
14 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 hearts upon their sleeves for daws to peck at, and 
 very often are all the prouder the more they are 
 pecked at, and the more elegantly they bleed; 
 which was not likely to be the case with either of 
 these young folks, young as they were. 
 
 They were young, and youth is always interest- 
 ing, and even comely ; but beyond that there was 
 nothing remarkable about either. He was Scotch; 
 she English, or, rather, Welsh. She had the clear 
 blue Welsh eye, the funny retrousse Welsh nose; 
 but with the prettiest little mouth underneath it, 
 firm, close, and sweet ; full of sensitiveness, but a 
 sensitiveness that was controlled and guided by 
 that best possession to either man or woman, a 
 good, strong will. No one could doubt that the 
 young governess had, what was a very useful thing 
 to a governess, " a will of her own ; " but not a 
 domineering or obnoxious will, which indeed is 
 seldom will at all, but merely obstinacy. 
 
 For the rest, Miss Williams was a little woman, 
 or gave the impression of being so, from her slight 
 figure and delicate hands and feet. I doubt if any 
 one would have called her pretty, until he or she 
 had learned to love her. For there are two dis- 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 15 
 
 tinct kinds of love, one in which the eye instructs 
 the heart, and the other in which the heart informs 
 and guides the eye. There have been men who, 
 seeing an unknown beautiful face, have felt sure it 
 implied the most beautiful soul in the world, pur- 
 sued it, worshiped it, wooed and won it, found the 
 fancy true, and loved the woman forever. Other 
 men there are, who would simply say, "I don't 
 know if such a one is handsome or not; I only 
 know she is herself and mine." Both loves are 
 good ; nay, it is difficult to say which is best. But 
 the latter would be the most likely to any one 
 who became attached to Fortune Williams. 
 
 Also, perhaps, to Kobert Eoy, though no one 
 expects good looks in his sex; indeed, they are 
 mostly rather objectionable. Women do not usu- 
 ally care for a very handsome man ; and men are 
 prone to set him down as conceited. No one 
 could lay either charge to Mr. Eoy. He was only 
 an honest-looking Scotchman, tall and strong and 
 manly. Not " red," in spite of his name, but dark- 
 skinned and dark -haired; in no way resembling 
 his great namesake, Eob Eoy Macgregor, as the 
 boys sometimes called him behind his back 
 
16 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 never to his face. Gentle as the young man was, 
 there was something about him which effectually 
 prevented any one's taking the smallest liberty 
 with him. Though he had been a teacher of boys 
 ever since he was seventeen and I have heard 
 one of the fraternity confess that it is almost im- 
 possible to be a school-master for ten years with- 
 out becoming a tyrant still it was a pleasant and 
 sweet-tempered face. Very far from a weak face, 
 though : when Mr. Roy said a thing must be done, 
 every one of his boys knew it must be done, and 
 there was no use saying any more about it. 
 
 He had unquestionably that rare gift, the power 
 of authority, though this did not necessarily im- 
 ply self- control ; for some people can rule every- 
 body except themselves. But Eobert Koy's clear, 
 calm, rather sad eye, and a certain patient expres- 
 sion about the mouth, implied that he, too, had had 
 enough of the hard training of life to be able to 
 govern himself And that is more difficult to a 
 man than to a woman. 
 
 '* All thy passions matched with mine 
 Are as moonlight unto sunlight, or as water unto wine. " 
 
 A truth which even Fortune's tender heart did 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 17 
 
 not fully take in, deep as was her sympathy for 
 him; for his toilsome, lonely life lived more in 
 shadow than in sunshine, and with every tempta- 
 tion to the selfishness which is so apt to follow 
 self-dependence, and the bitterness that to a proud 
 spirit so often makes the sting of poverty. Yet 
 he was neither selfish nor bitter; only a little re- 
 served, silent, and except with children rather 
 grave. 
 
 She stood watching him now, for she could see 
 him a long way off across the level Links, and no- 
 ticed that he stopped more than once to look at 
 the golf-players. He was a capital golfer himself, 
 but had never any time to play. Between his 
 own studies and the teaching by which he earned 
 the money to prosecute them, every hour was fill- 
 ed up. So he turned his back on the pleasant 
 pastime, which seems to have such an extraordi- 
 nary fascination for those who pursue it, and came 
 on to his daily work, with that resolute, deliberate 
 step, bent on going direct to his point and turning 
 aside for nothing. 
 
 Fortune knew it well by this time ; had learned 
 to distinguish it from all others in the world. 
 
18 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 There are some footsteps which by a pardonable 
 poetical license we say " we should hear in our 
 graves;" and though this girl did not think of that 
 (for death looked far off, and she was scarcely a po- 
 etical person), still, many a morning, when, sitting 
 at her school -room window, she heard Mr. Koy 
 coming steadily down the gravel -walk, she was 
 conscious of something which people can not feel 
 twice in a life-time. 
 
 And now, when he approached, with that kind 
 smile of his, which brightened into double pleasure 
 when he saw who was waiting for him, she was 
 aware of a wild heart -beat, a sense of exceeding 
 joy, and then of relief and rest. He was "com- 
 fortable " to her. She could express it in no other 
 way. At sight of his face and at sound of his 
 voice all worldly cares and troubles, of which she 
 had a good many, seemed to fall off. To be with 
 him was like having an arm to lean on, a light to 
 walk by ; and she had walked alone so long. 
 
 " Good -after noon, Miss Williams." 
 
 " Good-afternoon, Mr. Roy." 
 
 They said no more than that, but the stupidest 
 person in the world might have seen that they 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 19 
 
 were glad to meet, glad to be together. Though 
 neither they nor any one else could have explain- 
 ed the mysterious fact, the foundation of all love 
 stories, in books or in life and which the present 
 author owns, after having written many books and 
 seen a great deal of life, is to her also as great a 
 mystery as ever Why do certain people like to 
 be together? What is the inexplicable attraction 
 which makes them seek one another, suit one an- 
 other, put up with one another's weaknesses, con- 
 done one another's faults (when neither are too 
 great to lessen love), and to the last day of life 
 find a charm in one another's society which ex- 
 tends to no other human being ? Happy love, or 
 lost love a full world, or an empty world life 
 with joy, or life without it that is all the differ- 
 ence. Which some people think very small, and 
 that it does not matter; and perhaps it does not, 
 to many people. But it does to some, and I in- 
 cline to put among that category Miss Williams 
 and Mr. Roy. 
 
 They stood by the laurel bush, having just 
 shaken hands, rather more hastily than they usu- 
 ally did ; but the absence of the children, and the 
 
20 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 very unusual fact of their being quite alone, gave 
 to both a certain shyness, and she had drawn her 
 hand away, saying, with a slight blush : 
 
 "Mrs. Dalziel desired me to meet you and tell 
 you that you might have a holiday to-day. She 
 has taken the boys with her to Elie. I dare say 
 you will not be sorry to gain an hour or two for 
 yourself; though I am sorry you should have the 
 trouble of the walk for nothing." 
 
 "For nothing?" with the least shadow of a 
 smile ; not of annoyance certainly. 
 
 " Indeed, I would have let you know if I could, 
 but she decided at the very last minute ; and if I 
 had proposed that a messenger should have been 
 sent to stop you, I am afraid it would not have 
 answered." 
 
 "Of course not," and they interchanged an 
 amused look these fellow -victims to the well- 
 known ways of the household which, however, 
 neither grumbled at: it was merely an outside 
 thing, this treatment of both as mere tutor and 
 governess. After all (as he sometimes said, when 
 some special rudeness, not to himself, but to her, 
 vexed him), they were tutor and governess; but 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 21 
 
 they were something else besides; something which, 
 the instant their chains were lifted off, made them 
 feel free and young and strong; and comforted 
 them with a comfort unspeakable. 
 
 " She bid me apologize. No, I am afraid, if I 
 tell the absolute truth, she did not bid me ; but I 
 do apologize." 
 
 "What for, Miss Williams?" 
 
 "For your having been brought out all this 
 way just to go back again." 
 
 " 1 do not mind it, I assure you." 
 
 "And as for the lost lesson " 
 
 " The boys will not mourn over it, I dare say. 
 In fact, their term with me is so soon coming to 
 an end, that it does not signify much. They told 
 me they are going back to England, to school, 
 next week. Do you go back too?" 
 
 "Not just yet; not till next Christmas. Mrs. 
 Dalziel talks of wintering in London, but she is so 
 vague in her plans that I am never sure from one 
 week to another what she will do." 
 
 " And what are your plans ? You always know 
 what you intend to do ?" 
 
 "Yes, I think so," answered Miss Williams, 
 
22 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 smiling. " One of the few things I remember of 
 mj mother was hearing her say of me, that ' her 
 little girl was a little girl who always knew her 
 own mind.' I think I do. I may not be always 
 able to carry it out, but I think I know it." 
 
 " Of course," said Mr. Koy, absently and some- 
 what vaguely, as he stood beside the laurel bush, 
 pulling one of its shiny leaves to pieces, and look- 
 ing right ahead, across the sunshiny Links, the 
 long shore of yellow sands, where the mermaids 
 might well delight to come and "take hands" 
 to the smooth, dazzling, far-away sea. No sea is 
 more beautiful than that at St. Andrews. 
 
 Its sleepy glitter seemed to have lulled Kobert 
 Eoy into a sudden meditation, from which no 
 word of his companion came to rouse him. In 
 truth, she, never given much to talking, simply 
 stood, as she often did, silently beside him; quite 
 satisfied with the mere comfort of his presence. 
 
 I am afraid this Fortune Williams will be con- 
 sidered a very weak-minded young woman. She 
 was not a bit of a coquette, she had not the slight- 
 est wish to flirt with any man. Nor was she a 
 proud beauty desirous to subjugate the other sex, 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 23 
 
 and drag them triumphantly at her chariot-wheels. 
 She did not see the credit, or the use, or the pleas- 
 ure, of any such proceeding. She was a self-con- 
 tained, self-dependent woman. Thoroughly a 
 woman ; not indifferent at all to womanhood's 
 best blessing; still, she could live without it if 
 necessary, as she could have lived without any 
 thing which it had pleased God to deny her. She 
 was not a creature likely to die for love, or do 
 wrong for love, which some people think the only 
 test of love's strength, instead of being its utmost 
 weakness; but that she was capable of love, for 
 all her composure and quietness capable of it, and 
 ready for it, in its intensest, most passionate, and 
 most enduring form the God who made her 
 knew, if no one else did. 
 
 Her time would come; indeed, had come already. 
 She had too much self-respect to let him guess it, 
 but I am afraid she was very fond ofor, if that is 
 a foolish phrase, deeply attached to Kobert Koy. 
 He had been so good to her, at once strong and 
 tender, chivalrous, respectful, and kind; and she 
 had no father, no brother, no other man at all to 
 judge him by, except the accidental men whom 
 
24: THE LAUEEL BUSH. 
 
 she had met in society, creatures on two legs who 
 wore coats and trousers, who had been civil to her, 
 as she to them, but who had never interested her 
 in the smallest degree, perhaps because she knew 
 so little of them. But no, it would have been just 
 the same had she known them a thousand years. 
 She was not "a man's woman," that is, one of 
 those women who feel interested in any thing in 
 the shape of a man, and make men interested in 
 them accordingly, for the root of much masculine 
 affection is pure vanity. That celebrated Scotch 
 song 
 
 "Come deaf, or come blind, or come cripple, 
 
 O come ony ane o' them a' ! 
 Far better be married to something 
 Than no to be married ava," 
 
 was a rhyme that would never have touched the 
 stony heart of Fortune Williams. And yet, let me 
 own it once more, she was very, very fond of Kob- 
 ert Eoy. He had never spoken to her one word 
 of love actual love, no more than he spoke now, 
 as they stood side by side, looking with the same 
 eyes upon the same scene. I say the same eyes, 
 for they were exceedingly alike in their tastes. 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STOKY. 25 
 
 There was no need ever to go into long explana- 
 tions about this or that ; a glance sufficed, or a 
 word, to show each what the other enjoyed ; and 
 both had the quiet conviction that they were en- 
 joying it together. Now, as that sweet, still, sun- 
 shiny view met their mutual gaze, they fell into no 
 poetical raptures, but just stood and looked, taking 
 it all in with exceeding pleasure, as they had done 
 many and many a time, but never, it seemed, so 
 perfectly as now. 
 
 " What a lovely afternoon 1" she said at last. 
 
 "Yes. It is a pity to waste it. Have you 
 any thing special to do? What did you mean 
 to employ yourself with, now your birds are 
 flown?" 
 
 " Oh, I can always find something to do." 
 
 "But need you find it? We both work so hard. 
 If we could only now and then have a little bit of 
 pleasure !" 
 
 He put it so simply, yet almost with a sigh. 
 This poor girl's heart responded to it suddenly, 
 wildly. She was only twenty-five, yet sometimes 
 she felt quite old, or, rather, as if she had never 
 been young. The constant teaching, teaching of 
 
26 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 rough boys too (for she had had the whole four 
 till Mr. Koy took the two elder off her hands), the 
 necessity of grinding hard out of school -hours to 
 keep herself up in Latin, Euclid, and other branch- 
 es which do not usually form part of a feminine 
 education, only, having a great natural love of 
 work, she had taught herself all these things 
 combined to make her life a dull life, a hard life, 
 till Kobert Eoy came into it. And sometimes even 
 now the desperate craving to enjoy not only to 
 endure, but to enjoy to take a little of the natural 
 pleasures of her age came to the poor governess 
 very sorely, especially on days such as this, when 
 all the outward world looked so gay, so idle, and 
 she worked so hard. 
 
 So did Kobert Koy. Life was not easier to him 
 than to herself; she knew that; and when he said, 
 half joking, as if he wanted to feel his way, "Let 
 us imitate our boys, and take a half-holiday," she 
 only laughed, but did not refuse. 
 
 How could she refuse? There were the long, 
 smooth sands on either side the Eden, stretching 
 away into indefinite distance, with not a human 
 being upon them to break their loneliness; or if 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STOKY. 27 
 
 there was, he or she looked mere dots, not human 
 at all. Even if these two had been afraid of being 
 seen walking together which they hardly were, 
 being too unimportant for any one to care whether 
 they were friends or lovers, or what not there 
 was nobody to see them, except in the character 
 of two black dots on the yellow sands. 
 
 "It is low water ; suppose we go and look for 
 sea anemones. One of my pupils wants some, and 
 I promised to try and find one the first spare hour 
 I had." 
 
 "But we shall not find anemones on the sands." 
 
 "Shells, then, you practical woman! We'll 
 gather shells. It will be all the same to that poor 
 invalid boy and to me," added he, with that in- 
 voluntary sigh which she had noticed more than 
 once, and which had begun to strike on her ears 
 not quite painfully. Sighs, when we are young, 
 mean differently from what they do in after-years. 
 " I don't care very much where I go, or what I 
 do ; I only want well, to be happy for an hour, 
 if Providence will let me." 
 
 "Why should not Providence let you?" said 
 Fortune, gently. " Few people deserve it more." 
 2 
 
28 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 " You are kind to think so, but you are always 
 kind to every body." 
 
 By this time they had left their position by the 
 laurel bush, and were walking along side by side, 
 according as he had suggested. This silent, in- 
 stinctive acquiescence in what he wished done it 
 had happened once or twice before startled her a 
 little at herself; for, as I have said, Miss Williams 
 was not at all the kind of person to do every thing 
 that every body asked her, without considering 
 whether it was right or wrong. She could obey, 
 but it would depend entirely upon whom she had 
 to obey; which, indeed, makes the sole difference 
 between loving disciples and slavish fools. 
 
 It was a lovely day, one of those serene autumn 
 days peculiar to Scotland I was. going to say to 
 St Andrews ; and any one who knows the ancient 
 city will know exactly how it looks in the still, 
 strongly spiritualized light of such an afternoon, 
 with the ruins, the castle, cathedral, and St. Keg- 
 ulus's tower standing out sharply against the in- 
 tensely blue sky ; and on the other side on both 
 sides the yellow sweep of sand curving away into 
 distance, and melting into the sunshiny sea. 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STOKY. 29 
 
 Many a time, in their prescribed walks with their 
 young tribe, Miss Williams and Mr. Eoy had taken 
 this stroll across the Links and round by the sands 
 to the mouth of the Eden, leaving behind them a 
 long and sinuous track of many footsteps, little and 
 large ; but now there were only two lines " foot- 
 prints on the sands of Time," as he jestingly called 
 them, turning round and pointing to the marks of 
 the dainty feet that walked so steadily and straight- 
 ly beside his own. 
 
 " They seem made to go together, those two 
 tracks," said he. 
 
 Why did he say it ? Was he the kind of man 
 to talk thus without meaning it ? If so, alas ! she 
 was not exactly the woman to be thus talked to. 
 Nothing fell on her lightly. Perhaps it was her 
 misfortune, perhaps even her fault; but so it 
 was. 
 
 Kobert Eoy did not "make love;" not at all. 
 Possibly he never could have done it, in the ordi- 
 nary way. Sweet things, polite things, were very 
 difficult to him, either to do or to say. Even the 
 tenderness that was in him came out as if by ac- 
 cident ; but, oh, how infinitely tender he could be ! 
 
30 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 Enough to make any one who loved him die easi- 
 ly, quietly, contentedly, if only just holding his 
 hand. 
 
 There is an incident in Dickens's touching " Tale 
 of Two Cities," where a young man, going innocent 
 to the guillotine, and riding on the death-cart with 
 a young girl whom he had never before seen, is 
 able to sustain and comfort her, even to the last 
 awful moment, by the look of his face and the 
 clasp of his hand. That man, I have often 
 thought, must have been something not unlike 
 Robert Roy. 
 
 Such men are rare, but they do exist ; and it was 
 Fortune's lot, or she believed it was, to have found 
 one. That was enough. She went along the shin- 
 ing sands in a dream of perfect content, perfect 
 happiness, thinking and was it strange or wrong 
 that she should so think? that if it were God's 
 will she should thus walk through life, the thorni- 
 est path would seem smooth, the hardest road easy. 
 She had no fear of life, if lived beside him ; or of 
 death love is stronger than death; at least this 
 sort of love, of which only strong natures are capa- 
 ble, and out of which are made, not the lyrics per- 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 31 
 
 haps, but the epics, the psalms, or the tragedies of 
 our mortal existence. 
 
 I have explained thus mucli about these two 
 friends lovers that may be, or might have been 
 because they never would have done it themselves. 
 Neither was given to much speaking. Indeed, I 
 fear their conversation this day, if recorded, would 
 have been of the most feeble kind brief, frag- 
 mentary, mere comments on the things about them, 
 or abstract remarks not particularly clever or brill- 
 iant. They were neither of them what you would 
 call brilliant people ; yet they were happy, and the 
 hours flew by like a few minutes, until they found 
 themselves back again beside the laurel bush at the 
 gate, when Mr. Eoy suddenly said : 
 
 "Do not go in yet. I mean, need you go in? 
 It is scarcely past sunset; the boys will not be 
 home for an hour, they don't want you, and I 
 I want you so. In your English sense," he add- 
 ed with a laugh, referring to one of their many ar- 
 guments, scholastic or otherwise, wherein she had 
 insisted that to want meant, Anglic^ to wish, or to 
 crave, whereas in Scotland it was always used like 
 the French wander, to miss, or to need. 
 
32 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 " Shall we begin that fight over again ?" asked 
 she, smiling; for every thing, even fighting, seem- 
 ed pleasant to-day. 
 
 " No, I have no wish to fight ; I want to consult 
 you, seriously, on a purely personal matter, if you 
 would not mind taking that trouble." 
 
 Fortune looked sorry. That was one of the bad 
 things in him (the best men alive have their bad 
 things), the pride which apes humility, the self-dis- 
 trust which often wounds another so keenly. Her 
 answer was given with a grave and simple sinceri- 
 ty that ought to have been reproach enough. 
 
 " Mr. Eoy, I would not mind any amount of 
 trouble if I could be of use to you ; you know 
 that." 
 
 "Forgive me! Yes, I do know it. I believe 
 in you and your goodness to the very bottom of 
 my heart." 
 
 She tried to say " Thank you," but her lips re- 
 fused to utter a word. It was so difficult to go on 
 talking like ordinary friends, when she knew, and 
 he must know she knew, that one word more 
 would make them not friends at all something 
 infinitely better, closer, dearer ; but that word was 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 33 
 
 his to speak, not hers. There are women who will 
 " help a man on " propose to him, marry him in- 
 deed while he is under the pleasing delusion that 
 he does it all himself; but Fortune Williams was 
 not one of these. She remained silent and passive, 
 waiting for the next thing he should say. It came : 
 something the shock of which she never forgot as 
 long as she lived ; and he said it with his eyes on 
 her face, so that if it killed her she must keep quiet 
 and composed, as she did. 
 
 "You know the boys' lessons end next week. 
 The week after I go that is, I have almost de- 
 cided to go, to India." 
 
 "To India!" 
 
 " Yes. For which, no doubt, you think me very 
 changeable, having said so often that I meant to 
 keep to a scholar's life, and be a professor one day 
 perhaps, if by any means I could get salt to my 
 porridge. Well, now I am not satisfied with salt 
 to my porridge; I wish to get rich." 
 
 She did not say " Why ?" She thought she had 
 not looked it ; but he answered, " Never mind why. 
 I do wish it, and I will be rich yet, if I can. Are 
 you very much surprised ?" 
 
34: THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 Surprised she certainly was, but she answered, 
 honestly, " Indeed, you are the last person I should 
 suspect of being worldly-minded." 
 
 "Thank you; that is kind. No, just; merely 
 just. One ought to have faith in people; it does 
 one good. I am afraid my own deficiency is want 
 of faith. It takes so much to make me believe for 
 a moment that any one cares for me." 
 
 How hard it was to be silent harder still to 
 speak ! But she did speak. 
 
 "I can understand that; I have often felt the 
 same. It is the natural consequence of a very 
 lonely life. If you and I had had fathers and 
 mothers and brothers and sisters, we might have 
 been different." 
 
 "Perhaps so. But about India. For a long 
 time that is, for many weeks I have been cast- 
 ing about in my mind how to change my way of 
 life to look out for something that would help 
 me to earn money, and quickly ; but there seemed 
 no chance whatever. Until, suddenly, one has 
 opened." 
 
 And then he explained how the father of one of 
 his pupils, grateful for certain benefits, which Mr. 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 35 
 
 Eoy did not specify, and noticing certain business 
 qualities in him " which I suppose I have, though 
 I didn't know it," added he, with a smile had of- 
 fered him a situation in a merchant's office at Cal- 
 cutta : a position of great trust and responsibility, 
 for three years certain, with the option of then giv- 
 ing it up or continuing it. 
 
 "And continuing means making a fortune. 
 Even three years means making something, with 
 my 'stingy' habits. Only I must go at once. 
 Nor is there any time left me for my decision; it 
 must be yes or no. Which shall it be ?" 
 
 The sudden appeal made, too, as if he thought 
 it was nothing that terrible yes or no, which to 
 her made all the difference of living or only half 
 living, of feeling the sun in or out of the world. 
 What could she answer? Trembling violently, 
 she yet answered in a steady voice. " You must 
 decide for yourself. A woman can not understand 
 a man." 
 
 "Nor a man a woman, thoroughly. There is 
 only one thing which helps both to comprehend 
 one another." 
 
 One thing! she knew what it was. Surely so 
 2* 
 
36 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 did he. But that strange distrustfulness of which 
 he had spoken, or the hesitation which the strong- 
 est and bravest men have at times, came between. 
 
 " Oh, the little more, and how much it is ! 
 Oh, the little less, and what worlds away!" 
 
 If, instead of looking vaguely out upon the sea, he 
 had looked into this poor girl's face; if, instead 
 of keeping silence, he had only spoken one word I 
 But he neither looked nor spoke, and the moment 
 passed by. And there are moments which people 
 would sometimes give a whole life-time to recall, 
 and use differently ; but in vain. 
 
 "My engagement is only for three years," he re- 
 sumed ; " and then, if alive, I mean to come back. 
 Dead or alive, I was going to say, but you would 
 not care to see my ghost, I presume ? I beg your 
 pardon, I ought not to make a joke of such serious 
 things." 
 
 " No, you ought not." 
 
 She felt herself almost speechless, that in another 
 minute she might burst into sobs. He saw it at 
 least, he saw a very little of it, and misinterpreted 
 the rest. 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 37 
 
 " I have tired you. Take my arm. You will 
 soon be at home now." Then, after a pause, 
 "You will not be displeased at any thing I have 
 said ? We part friends ? No, we do not part ; I 
 shall see you every day for a week, and be able to 
 tell you all particulars of my journey, if you care 
 to hear." 
 
 " Thank you, yes I do care." 
 
 They stood together, arm-in-arm. The dews 
 were falling ; a sweet, soft, lilac haze had begun 
 to creep over the sea the solemn, far-away sea, 
 that he was so soon to cross. Involuntarily, she 
 clung to his arm. So near, yet so apart ! Why 
 must it be? She could have borne his going 
 away, if it was for his good, if he wished it ; and 
 something whispered to her that this sudden de- 
 sire to get rich was not for himself alone. But, 
 oh, if he would only speak ! One word one lit- 
 tle word ! After that, any thing might come the 
 separation of life, the bitterness of death. To the 
 two hearts that had once opened, each to each, in 
 the full recognition of mutual love, there could 
 never more be any real parting. 
 
 But that one word he did not say. He only 
 
38 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 took the little hand that lay on his arm, pressed it, 
 and held it years after, the feeling of that clasp 
 was as fresh on her fingers as yesterday then, 
 hearing the foot of some accidental passer-by, he 
 let it go, and did not take it again. 
 
 Just at this moment, the sound of distant car- 
 riage-wheels was heard. 
 
 " That must be Mrs. Dalziel and the boys." 
 
 " Then I had better go. Good-bye." 
 
 The day-dream was over. It had all come back 
 again the forlorn, dreary, hard-working world. 
 
 " Good-bye, Mr. Koy." And they shook hands. 
 
 " One word," he said, hastily ; " I shall write to 
 you you will allow me? and I shall see you 
 several times, a good many times, before I go ?" 
 
 "I hope so." 
 
 " Then, for the present, good-bye. That means," 
 he added, earnestly, " 'God be with you!' And I 
 know He always will." 
 
 In another minute Fortune found herself stand- 
 ing beside the laurel bush, alone, listening to the 
 sound of Mr. Boy's footsteps down the road list- 
 ening, listening, as if, with the exceeding tension, 
 her brain would burst. 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 39 
 
 The carriage came, passed ; it was not Mrs. Dal- 
 ziel's, after all. She thought he might discover 
 this, and come back again ; so she waited a little 
 five minutes, ten beside the laurel bush. But he 
 did not come. No footstep, no voice ; nothing but 
 the faint, far-away sound of the long waves wash- 
 ing in upon the sands. 
 
 It was not the brain that felt like to burst now, 
 but the heart. She clasped her hands above her 
 head. It did not matter ; there was no creature to 
 see or hear that appeal was it to man or God ? 
 that wild, broken sob, so contrary to her usual self- 
 controlled and self-contained nature. And then 
 she leaned her forehead against the gate, just where 
 Kobert Eoy had accidentally laid his hand in open- 
 ing it, and wept bitterly. 
 
40 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 fTTHE "every day" on which Mr. Roy had reck- 
 oned for seeing his friend, or whatsoever else 
 he considered Miss Williams to be, proved a failure. 
 Her youngest pupil fell ill, and she was kept be- 
 side him, and away from the school-room, until the 
 doctor could decide whether the illness was infec- 
 tious or not. It turned out to be very trifling a 
 most trivial thing altogether, yet weighted with a 
 pain most difficult to bear, a sense of fatality that 
 almost overwhelmed one person at least. What 
 the other felt, she did not know. He came daily, 
 as usual ; she watched him come and go, and some- 
 times he turned and they exchanged a greeting 
 from the window. But beyond that she had to 
 take all passively. What could she, only a wom- 
 an, do or say or plan? Nothing. Women's bus- 
 iness is to sit down and endure. 
 
 She had counted these days Tuesday, Wednes- 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 41 
 
 day, Thursday, Friday, Saturday as if they had 
 been years. And now they were all gone ; had 
 fled like minutes fled emptily away. A few 
 fragmentary facts she had had to feed on, commu- 
 nicated by the boys in their rough talk. 
 
 " Mr. Eoy was rather cross to-day." 
 
 " Not cross, Dick only dull." 
 
 "Mr. Koy asked why David did not come in to 
 lessons, and said he hoped he would be better by 
 "Saturday." 
 
 " Mr. Eoy said good-bye to us all, and gave us 
 each something to remember him by when he was 
 out in India. Did Miss Williams know he was go- 
 ing out to India? Oh, how jolly !" 
 
 " Yes, and he sails next week, and the name of 
 his ship is the Queen of the South, and he goes by 
 Liverpool instead of Southampton, because it costs 
 less ; and he leaves St. Andrews on Monday morn- 
 ing." 
 
 "Are you sure he said Monday morning?" For 
 that was Saturday night. 
 
 " Certain, because he has to get his outfit still. 
 Oh, what fun it must be !" 
 
 And the boys went on, greatly excited, repeat- 
 
4:2 THE LAUEEL BUSH. 
 
 ing every thing Mr. Eoy had told them for he 
 had made them fond of him, even in those few 
 months expatiating with delight on his future 
 career, as a merchant or something, they did not 
 quite know what ; but, no doubt, it would be far 
 nicer and more amusing than stopping at home 
 and grinding forever over horrid books. Didn't 
 Miss Williams think so? 
 
 Miss Williams only smiled. She knew how all 
 his life he had loved " those horrid books," prefer- 
 ring them to pleasure, recreation, almost to daily 
 bread ; how he had lived on the hope that one day 
 he born only a farmer's son might do some- 
 thing, write something. "I also am of Arcadia." 
 He might have done it or not the genius may or 
 may not have been there ; but the ambition certain- 
 ly was. Could he have thrown it all aside ? And 
 why? 
 
 Not for mere love of money ; she knew him too 
 well for that. He was a thorough book-worm, sim- 
 ple in all his tastes and habits simple almost to 
 penuriousness ; but it was a penuriousness born of 
 hard fortunes, and he never allowed it to affect any 
 body but himself. Still, there was no doubt he 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 43 
 
 did not care for money, or luxury, or worldly posi- 
 tion any of the things that lesser men count large 
 enough to work and struggle and die for. To give 
 up the pursuits he loved, deliberately to choose 
 others, to change his whole life thus, and expatri- 
 ate himself, as it were, for years perhaps for al- 
 ways why did he do it, or for whom ? 
 
 Was it for a woman ? Was it for her? If ever, 
 in those long, empty days and wakeful nights, this 
 last thought entered Fortune's mind, she stifled it 
 as something which, once to have fully believed, 
 and then disbelieved, would have killed her. 
 
 That she should have done the like for him 
 that or any thing else, involving any amount of 
 heroism or self-sacrifice well, it was natural, right; 
 but that he should do it for her? That he" should 
 change his whole purpose of life that he might be 
 able to marry quickly, to shelter in his bosom a 
 poor girl who was not able to fight the world as a 
 man could, the thing not so very impossible, aft- 
 er all seemed to her almost incredible ! And yet 
 (I am telling a mere love story, remember a fool- 
 ish, innocent love story, without apologizing for 
 either the folly or the innocence) sometimes she 
 
44 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 was so far "left to herself," as the Scotch say, that 
 she did believe it In the still twilights, in the 
 wakeful nights, in the one solitary half-hour of in- 
 tense relief, when, all her boys being safe in bed, 
 she rushed out into the garden under the silent 
 stars to sob, to moan, to speak out loud words 
 which nobody could possibly hear. 
 
 " He is going away, and I shall never see him 
 again. And I love him love him better than 
 any thing in all this world. I couldn't help it he 
 couldn't help it. But oh, it's hard hard !" 
 
 And then, altogether breaking down, she would 
 begin to cry like a child. She missed him so, even 
 this week, after having for weeks and months been 
 with him every day; but it was less like a girl 
 missing her lover who was, after all, not her 
 lover than a child mourning helplessly /or the 
 familiar voice, the guiding, helpful hand. With all 
 the rest of the world Fortune Williams was an in- 
 dependent, energetic woman self-contained, brave, 
 and strong, as a solitary governess had need to be ; 
 but beside Eobert Eoy she felt like a child, and she 
 cried for him like a child. 
 
 "And with no language but a cry." 
 
AN" OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 45 
 
 So the week ended and Sunday came, kept at 
 Mrs. Dalziel's like the Scotch Sundays of twenty 
 years ago. No visitor ever entered the house, 
 wherein all the meals were cold and the blinds 
 drawn down, as if for a funeral. The family went 
 to church for the entire day, St. Andrews being too 
 far off for any return home "between sermons." 
 Usually one servant was left in charge, turn and 
 turn about ; but this Sunday, Mrs. Dalziel, having 
 put the governess in the nurse's place beside the 
 ailing child, thought shrewdly she might as well 
 put her in the servant's place too, and let her take 
 charge of the kitchen fire, as well as of little David. 
 Being English, Miss Williams was not so exact 
 about "ordinances" as a Scotchwoman would have 
 been; so Mrs. Dalziel had no hesitation in asking 
 her to remain at home alone the whole day in 
 charge of her pupil. 
 
 Thus faded, Fortune thought, her last hope of 
 seeing Eobert Koy again, either at church where 
 he usually sat in the Dalziel pew, by the old lady's 
 request, to make the boys "behave" or walking- 
 down the street, where he sometimes took the two 
 eldest to eat their "piece" at his lodgings. All was 
 
46 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 now ended; yet on the hope or dread of this 
 last Sunday she had hung, she now felt with what 
 intensity, till it was gone. 
 
 Fortune was the kind of woman who, were it 
 given her to fight, could fight to the death, against 
 fate or circumstances ; but when her part was sim- 
 ply passive, she could also endure not, as some 
 do, with angry grief or futile resistance, but with a 
 quiet patience so complete that only a very quick 
 eye would have found out she was suffering at all. 
 
 Little David did not, certainly. When, hour aft- 
 er hour, she sat by his sofa, interesting him as best 
 she could in the dull "good" books which alone 
 were allowed of Sundays, and then passing into 
 word-of-mouth stories the beautiful Bible stories 
 over which her own voice trembled while she told 
 them Kuth, with her piteous cry, " Whither thou 
 goest, I will go ; where thou diest, I will die, and 
 there will I be buried;" Jonathan, whose soul 
 "clave to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved 
 him as his own soul" all those histories of pas- 
 sionate fidelity and agonized parting (for every 
 sort of love is essentially the same), how they went 
 to her very heart ! 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 47 
 
 Oh, the awful quietness of that Sunday that 
 Sabbath which was not rest, in which the hours 
 crawled on in sunshiny stillness, neither voices nor 
 steps nor sounds of any kind, breaking the death- 
 like hush of every thing ! At length the boy fell 
 asleep ; and then Fortune seemed to wake up, for 
 the first time, to the full consciousness of what was, 
 and what was about to be. 
 
 All of a sudden she heard steps on the gravel 
 below, then the hall bell rang through the silent 
 house. She knew who it was, even before she 
 opened the door, and saw him standing there. 
 
 " May I come in ? They told me you were keep- 
 ing house alone, and I said I should just walk over 
 to bid you and Davie good-bye." 
 
 Koy's manner was grave and matter-of-fact a 
 little constrained perhaps, but not much and he 
 looked so exceedingly pale and tired that without 
 any hesitation she took him into the school-room 
 where they were sitting, and gave him the arm- 
 chair by Davie's sofa. 
 
 "Yes, I own to being rather overdone. I have 
 had so much to arrange, for I must leave here to- 
 morrow, as I think you know." 
 
48 THE LAUEEL BUSH. 
 
 " The boys told me." 
 
 " I thought they would. I should have done it 
 myself, but every day I hoped to see you. It was 
 this little fellow's fault, I suppose " (patting David's 
 head). " He seems quite well now, and as jolly as 
 possible. You don't know what it is to say c good- 
 bye,' David, my son." 
 
 Mr. Koy, who always got on well with children, 
 had a trick of calling his younger pupils " my son." 
 
 "Why do you say 'good-bye' at all, then?" 
 asked the child, a mischievous but winning young 
 scamp of six or seven, who had as many tricks as 
 a monkey or a magpie. In fact, in chattering and 
 hiding things, he was nearly as bad as a magpie 
 the torment of his governess's life; and yet she 
 was fond of him. " Why do you bid us good-bye, 
 Mr. Roy ? Why don't you stay always with Miss 
 Williams and me?' 
 
 "I wish to God I could!" 
 
 She heard that, heard it distinctly, though it was 
 spoken beneath his breath ; and she felt the look 
 turned for one moment upon her as she stood by 
 the window. She never forgot either never, as 
 long as she lived. Some words, some looks, can 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 49 
 
 deceive, perhaps quite unconsciously, by being 
 either more demonstrative than was meant, or the 
 exaggeration of coldness to hide its opposite ; but 
 sometimes a glance, a tone, betrays, or rather re- 
 veals, the real truth in a manner that nothing after- 
 ward can ever falsify. For one instant, one instant* 
 only, Fortune felt sure, quite sure, that in some 
 way or other she was very dear to Kobert Eoy. 
 If the next minute he had taken her into his arms, 
 and said, or looked, the words which, to an earnest- 
 minded, sincere man like him, constitute a pledge 
 for life, never to be disannulled or denied, she could 
 hardly have felt more completely his own. 
 
 But he did not say them ; he said nothing at all ; 
 sat leaning his head on his hand, with an expres- 
 sion so weary, so sad, that all the coaxing ways of 
 little Davie could hardly win from him more than 
 a faint smile. He looked so old too, and he was 
 but just thirty. Only thirty only twenty -five; 
 and yet these two were bearing, seemed to have 
 borne for years, the burden of life ; feeling all its 
 hardships and none of its sweetnesses. Would 
 things ever change? Would he have the courage 
 (it was his part, not hers) to make them change, 
 
50 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 at least in one way, by bringing about that heart 
 union which to all pure and true natures is con- 
 solation for every human woe ? 
 
 "I wonder," he said, sitting down and taking 
 David on his knee, "I wonder if it is best to bear 
 things one's self, or to let another share the bur- 
 den?" 
 
 Easily, oh, how easily ! could Fortune have an- 
 swered this have told him that, whether he wish- 
 ed it or not,, two did really bear his burdens, and 
 perhaps the one who bore it secretly and silently 
 had not the lightest share. But she did not speak: 
 it was not possible. 
 
 "How shall I hear of you, Miss Williams?" he 
 said again, after a long silence. " You are not like- 
 ly to leave the Dalziel family ?" 
 
 " No," she answered ; " and if I did, I could al- 
 ways be heard of, the Dalziels are so well known 
 hereabouts. Still, a poor wandering governess eas- 
 ily drops out of people's memory." 
 
 "And a poor wandering tutor too. But I am 
 not a tutor any more, and I hope I shall not be 
 poor long. Friends can not lose one another ; such 
 friends as you and I have been. I will take care 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 51 
 
 we shall not do it; that is, if But never mind 
 that. You have been very good to me, and I have 
 often bothered you very much, I fear. You will 
 be almost glad to get rid of me." 
 
 She might have turned upon him eyes swimming 
 with tears woman's tears that engine of power 
 which they say no man can ever resist ; but I think, 
 if so, a woman like Fortune would have scorned to 
 use it. Those poor, weary eyes, which could weep 
 oceans alone under the stars, were perfectly dry 
 now dry, and fastened on the ground, as she re- 
 plied, in a grave, steady voice, 
 
 " You do not really believe that, else you would 
 never have said it." 
 
 Her composure must have surprised him, for he 
 looked suddenly up, then begged her pardon. " I 
 did not hurt you, surely ? We must not part with 
 the least shadow of unkindness between us." 
 
 "No." She offered her hand, and he took it 
 gently, affectionately, but only affectionately. The 
 one step beyond affection, which leads into another 
 world, another life, he seemed determined not to 
 
 For at least half an hour he sat there with Da- 
 3 
 
52 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 vid on his knee, or rising up restlessly to pace the 
 room with David on his shoulder; but apparently 
 not desiring the child's absence, rather wishing 
 to keep him as a sort of barrier." Against what ? 
 himself? And so minute after minute slipped by ; 
 and Miss Williams, sitting in her place by the win- 
 dow, already saw, dotting the Links, group after 
 group of the afternoon church-goers wandering 
 quietly home so quietly, so happily, fathers and 
 mothers and children, companions and friends for 
 whom was no parting and no pain. 
 
 Mr. Hoy suddenly took out his watch. "I 
 must go now ; I see I have spent all but my last 
 five minutes. Good-bye, David, my lad ; you'll be 
 a big man, may be, when I see you again. Miss 
 Williams " (standing before her with an expression 
 on his face such as she had never seen before), 
 "before I go there was a question I had deter- 
 mined to ask you a purely ethical question which 
 a friend of mine has been putting to me, and I 
 could not answer ; that is, I could, from the man's 
 side, the worldly side. A woman might think dif- 
 ferently." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 53 
 
 " Simply this. If a man has not a half-penny, 
 ought he to ask a woman to share it ? Bather an 
 Irish way of putting the matter," with a laugh, not 
 without bitterness, "but you understand. Ought 
 he not to wait till he has at least something to offer 
 besides himself? Is it not mean, selfish, cowardly, 
 to bind a woman to all the chances or mischances 
 of his lot, instead of fighting it out alone like a 
 man? My friend thinks so, and I I agree with 
 him." 
 
 " Then why did you ask me ?" 
 
 The words, though low and clear, were cold and 
 sharp sharp with almost unbearable pain. Ev- 
 ery atom of pride in her was roused. Whether he 
 loved her, and would not tell her so, or loved some 
 other woman and wished her to know it, it was 
 all the same. He was evidently determined to go 
 away free, and leave her free ; and perhaps many 
 sensible men or women would say he was right in 
 so doing. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," he said, almost humbly. 
 " I ought not to have spoken of this at all. I 
 ought just to have said 'good-bye,' and nothing 
 
54 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 There was on it one ring, not very valuable, but 
 she always liked to wear it, as it had belonged to 
 her mother. Eobert Roy drew it off, and put it 
 deliberately into his pocket. 
 
 "Give me this. You shall have it back again 
 when I am dead or you are married, which ever 
 happens first. Do you understand ?" 
 
 Putting David aside (indeed, he seemed for the 
 first time to forget the boy's presence), he took her 
 by the two hands, and looked down into her face. 
 Apparently he read something there, something 
 which startled him, almost shocked him. 
 
 " God forgive me!" he muttered, and stood irres- 
 olute. 
 
 Irresolution, alas! too late; for just then all the 
 three Dalziel boys rushed into the house and the 
 school-room, followed by their grandmother. The 
 old lady looked a good deal surprised, perhaps a 
 little displeased, from one to the other. 
 
 Mr. Roy perceived it, and recovered himself in 
 an instant, letting go Fortune's hands and placing 
 himself in front of her, between her and Mrs. Dal- 
 ziel. Long afterward she remembered that trivial 
 act remembered it with the tender gratitude of 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 55 
 
 the protected toward the protector, if nothing more. 
 " You see, I came, as I told you I should, if possi- 
 ble, to bid Miss Williams good-bye, and wee Davie. 
 They both kindly admitted me, and we have had 
 half an hour's merry chat, have we not, Davie? 
 Now, my man, good-bye." He took up the little 
 fellow and kissed him, then extended his hand. 
 " Good-bye, Miss Williams. I hope your little pu- 
 pils will value you as you deserve." 
 
 Then, with a courteous and formal farewell to 
 the old lady, and a most uproarious one from the 
 boys, he went to the door, but turned round, saying 
 to the eldest boy, distinctly and clearly though 
 she was at the farther end of the room, she heard, 
 and was sure he meant her to hear, every word 
 
 "By-the-bye, Archy, there is something I was 
 about to explain to Miss Williams. Tell her I will 
 write it. She is quite sure to have a letter from 
 me to-morrow no, on Tuesday morning." 
 
 And so he went away, bravely and cheerily, the 
 boys accompanying him to the gate, and shouting 
 and waving their hats to him as he crossed the 
 Links, until their grandmother reprovingly suggest- 
 ed that it was Sunday. 
 
56 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 "But Mr. Eoy does not go off to India every 
 Sunday. Hurra! I wish we were all going too. 
 Three cheers for Mr. Koy 1" 
 
 " Mr. Koy is a very fine fellow, and I hope he 
 will do well," said Mrs. Dalziel, touched by their 
 enthusiasm; also by some old memories, for, like 
 many St. Andrews folk, she was strongly linked 
 with India, and had sent off one-half of her numer- 
 ous family to live or die there. There was some- 
 thing like a tear in her old eyes, though not for the 
 young tutor ; but it effectually kept her from either 
 looking at or thinking of the governess. And she 
 forgot them both immediately. They were merely 
 the tutor and the governess. 
 
 As for the boys, they chattered vehemently all 
 tea-time about Mr. Roy, and their envy of the 
 "jolly "life he was going to; then their minds 
 turned to their own affairs, and there was silence. 
 
 The kind of silence most of us know it when 
 any one belonging to a household, or very familiar 
 there, goes away, on a long, indefinite absence. At 
 first, there is little consciousness of absence at all ; 
 we are so constantly expecting the door to be open- 
 ed for the customary presence, that we scarcely 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 57 
 
 even miss the known voice, or face, or hand. By- 
 and-by, however, we do miss it, and there comes 
 a general, loud, shallow lamentation, which soon 
 cures itself, and implies an easy and comfortable 
 forgetfulness before long. Except with some, or 
 possibly only one, who is, most likely, the one who 
 has never been heard to utter a word of regret, or 
 seen to shed a single tear. 
 
 Miss Williams, now left sole mistress in the 
 school-room, gave her lessons as usual there that 
 Monday morning, and walked with all the four 
 boys on the Links all afternoon. It was a very 
 bright day, as beautiful as Sunday had been, and 
 they communicated to her the interesting facts, 
 learned at golfing that morning, that Mr. Eoy and 
 his portmanteau had been seen at Leuchars, on the 
 way to Burntisland, and that he would likely have 
 a good crossing, as the sea was very calm. There 
 had lately been some equinoctial gales, which had 
 interested the boys amazingly, and they calculated 
 with ingenious pertinacity whether such gales were 
 likely to occur again when Mr. Roy was in the Bay 
 of Bisca}' ; and if his ship were wrecked, what he 
 would be supposed to do. They were quite sure 
 
58 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 he would conduct himself with great heroism, per- 
 haps escape on a single plank, or a raft made by 
 his own hands; and they consulted Miss Williams, 
 who, of course, was a peripatetic cyclopedia of all 
 scholastic information, as to which port in France 
 or Spain he was likely to be drifted to, supposing 
 this exciting event did happen. 
 
 She answered their questions with her usual 
 ready kindliness. She felt like a person in a dream, 
 yet a not unhappy dream, for she still heard the 
 voice still felt the clasp of the strong, tender, sus- 
 taining hands. And to-morrow would be Tuesday. 
 
 Tuesday was a wet morning. The bright days 
 were done. Soon after dawn, Fortune had woke 
 up and watched the sunrise, till a chill fog crept 
 over the sea and blotted it out; then gradually 
 blotted out the land also the Links, the town, ev- 
 ery thing. A regular St. Andrews "haar;" and 
 St. Andrews people know what that is. Miss Wil- 
 liams had seen it once or twice before, but never 
 so bad as this ; blighting, penetrating, and so dense 
 that you could hardly see your hand before you. 
 
 But Fortune scarcely felt it. She said to her- 
 self, " To-day is Tuesday," which meant nothing to 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 59 
 
 any one else, every thing to her. For she knew 
 the absolute faithfulness, the careful accuracy, in 
 great things and small, with which she had to do. 
 If Kobert Eoy said, " I will write on such a day," 
 he was as sure to write as that the day would 
 dawn. That is, so far as his own will went; and 
 will, not circumstance, is the strongest agent in 
 this world. 
 
 Therefore, she waited quietly for the postman's 
 horn. It sounded at last. 
 
 "I'll go," cried Archy. "Just look at the haar. 
 I shall have to grope my way to the gate." 
 
 He came back, after what seemed an almost end- 
 less time, rubbing his head, and declaring he had 
 nearly blinded himself by running right into the 
 laurel bush. 
 
 " I couldn't see for the fog. I only hope I've 
 left none of the letters behind. No, no, all right. 
 Such a lot! It's the Indian mail. There's for you, 
 and you, boys." He dealt them out with a merry, 
 careless hand. 
 
 There was no letter for Miss Williams. A cir- 
 cumstance so usual that nobody noticed it, or her, 
 
 as she sat silent in her corner, while the children 
 3* 
 
60 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 V 
 
 read noisily and gayly the letters from their far- 
 away parents. 
 
 Her letter what had befallen it? Had he for- 
 gotten to write? But Robert Eoy never forgot 
 any thing. Nor did he delay any thing that he 
 could possibly do at the time he promised. He 
 was one of the very few people in this world who, 
 in small things as in great, are absolutely reliable. 
 It seemed so impossible to believe he had not writ- 
 ten, when he said he would, that, as a last hope, 
 she stole out with a plaid over her head and crept 
 through the side walks of the garden, almost grop- 
 ing her way through the fog, and, like Archy, stum- 
 bling over the low boughs of the laurel bush to the 
 letter-box it held. Her trembling hands felt in 
 every corner, but no letter was there. 
 
 She went wearily back ; weary at heart, but pa- 
 tient still. A love like hers, self-existent and suffi- 
 cient to itself, is very patient, quite unlike the other 
 and more common form of the passion; not love, 
 but a diseased craving to be loved, which creates a 
 thousand imaginary miseries and wrongs. Sharp 
 was her pain, poor girl ; but she was not angry, and 
 after her first stab of disappointment her courage 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 61 
 
 rose. All was well with him ; he had been cheer- 
 ily seen starting for Edinburgh ; and her own tem- 
 porary suffering was a comparatively small thing. 
 It could not last; the letter would come to-rnorrow. 
 
 But it did not, nor the next day, nor the next. 
 On the fourth day, her heart felt like to break. 
 
 I think, of all pangs not mortal, few are worse 
 than this small, silent agony of waiting for the post; 
 letting all the day's hope climax upon a single 
 minute, which passes by, and the hope with it ; and 
 then comes another day of dumb endurance, if not 
 despair. This, even with ordinary letters, upon 
 which any thing of moment depends. With oth- 
 ers, such as this letter of Kobert Eoy's let us not 
 speak of it. Some may imagine, others may have 
 known, a similar suspense. They will understand 
 why, long years afterward, Fortune Williams was 
 heard to say, with a quiver of the lip that could 
 have told its bitter tale, "No ; when I have a letter 
 to write, I never put off writing it for a single day." 
 
 As these days wore on, these cruel days, never 
 remembered without a shiver of pain, and of won- 
 der that she could have lived through them at 
 all, the whole fabric of reasons, arguments, excuses, 
 
62 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 that she had built up, tried so eagerly to build 
 up, for him and herself, gradually crumbled away. 
 Had she altogether misapprehended the purport 
 of his promised letter? Was it just some ordina- 
 ry note, about her boys and their studies perhaps, 
 which, after all, he had not thought it worth while 
 to write ? Yet surely it. was worth while, if only 
 to send a kindly and courteous farewell to a friend, 
 after so close an intimacy and in face of so indefi- 
 nite a separation. 
 
 A friend? Only a friend? Words may de- 
 ceive, eyes seldom can. And there had been love 
 in his eyes. Not mere liking, but actual love. 
 She had seen it, felt it, with that almost unerring 
 instinct that women have, whether 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 any thing." 
 
 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 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 63 
 
 down in mid-ocean, or any other poetical simile, 
 used under such circumstances by romantic peo- 
 ple. 
 
 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 break- 
 ing heart. A little paler she grew, a little quieter, 
 but nobody observed this: indeed, it came to be 
 one of her deepest causes of thank fulness that there 
 was nobody to observe any thing 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 contin- 
 uous, sullen, depressing rain. But at night-time, 
 and for the ten minutes between post-hour and les- 
 
64 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 son-hour which she generally passed in her own 
 room if her mother, who died when she was ten 
 years old, could have seen her, she would have said, 
 " My poor child!" 
 
 Kobert Eoy 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 in- 
 describable tenderness which the strong only know 
 how to show or feel. Well she remembered this ; 
 indeed, almost every thing he had said or done 
 came back upon her now vividly, as we recall the 
 words and looks of the dead mingled with such a 
 hungering pain, such a cruel " miss " of him, daily 
 and hourly, his companionship, help, counsel, every 
 thing 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 sin- 
 gle farewell word. 
 
 That he had cared for her in some sort of way, 
 she was certain ; for he was one of those who nev- 
 er 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 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 65 
 
 no falseness, no insincerity, not an atom of pretense 
 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 " 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 hu- 
 man beings, the one human being who was nec- 
 essary to her without whom her life might be 
 busy indeed, and useful, but never perfect, an en- 
 durance instead of a joy was this young man, as 
 
66 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 solitary as herself, as poor, as hard-working ; good, 
 gentle, brave Kobert Roy. 
 
 Oh, why had they not come together, heart to 
 heart just they two, so alone in the world and 
 ever after belonged to each other, helping, com- 
 forting, and strengthening each other, even though 
 it had been years and years before they were mar- 
 ried? 
 
 " 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. Eoy 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. 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 67 
 
 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 tea was quite over, she slipped away into 
 her room, and was missing for a long time. 
 
 So, all was over. No more waiting for that 
 vague " something to happen." Nothing could 
 happen now. He was far away across the seas, 
 and she must just go back to her old monotonous 
 life, as if it had never been any different as if she 
 had never seen his face or heard his voice, never 
 known the blessing of his companionship, friend- 
 ship, love, whatever it was, or whatever he had 
 meant it to be. No, he could not have loved her ; 
 or to have gone away would have been she did 
 not realize whether right or wrong but simply 
 impossible. 
 
 Once, wearying herself with helpless conjectures, 
 
68 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 a thought, sudden and sharp as steel, went through 
 her heart. He was nearly thirty; few lives are 
 thus long without some sort of love in them. Per- 
 haps he was already bound to some other woman, 
 and, finding himself drifting into too pleasant in- 
 timacy with herself, wished to draw back in time. 
 Such things had happened, sometimes almost 
 blamelessly, though most miserably to all parties. 
 But with him it was not likely to happen. He 
 was too clear-sighted, strong, and honest. He 
 would never "drift" into any thing. What he 
 did would be done with a calm, deliberate will, in- 
 capable of the slightest deception, either toward 
 others or himself. Besides, he had at different 
 times told her the whole story of his life, and there 
 was no love in it ; only work, hard work, poverty, 
 courage, and endurance, like her own. 
 
 " No, he could never have deceived me, neither 
 me nor any one else," she often said to herself, al- 
 most joyfully, though the tears were running down. 
 " Whatever it was, it was not that. I am glad 
 glad. I had far rather believe he never loved me 
 than that he had been false to another woman for 
 my sake. And I believe in him still ; I shall al- 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 69 
 
 ways believe in him. He is perfectly good, per- 
 fectly true. And so, it does not much matter 
 about me." 
 
 I am afraid those young ladies who like plenty 
 of lovers, who expect to be adored, and are vexed 
 when they are not adored, and most nobly indig- 
 nant when forsaken, will think very meanly of my 
 poor Fortune Williams. They may console them- 
 selves by thinking she was not a young lady at all 
 only a woman. Such women are not too com- 
 mon, but they exist occasionally. And they bear 
 their cross and dree their weird ; but their lot, at 
 any rate, only concerns themselves, and has one 
 advantage, that it in no way injures the happiness 
 of other people. 
 
 Humble as she was, she had her pride. If she 
 wept, it was out of sight. If she wished herself 
 dead, and a happy ghost, that by any means she 
 might get near him, know where he was, and what 
 he was doing, these dreams came only when her 
 work was done, her boys asleep. Day never be- 
 trayed the secrets of the night. She set to work 
 every morning at her daily labor with a dogged 
 persistence, never allowing herself a minute's idle- 
 
70 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 ness wherein to sit down and mourn. And when, 
 despite her will, she could not quite conquer the 
 fits of nervous irritability that came over her at 
 times when the children's innocent voices used to 
 pierce her like needles, and their incessant ques- 
 tions and perpetual company were almost more 
 than she could bear still, even then, all she did 
 was to run away and hide herself for a little, com- 
 ing back with a pleasant face and a smooth tem- 
 per. Why should she scold them, poor lambs? 
 They were all she had to love, or that loved her. 
 And they did love her, with all their boyish hearts. 
 
 One day, however the day before they all left 
 St. Andrews for England, the two elder to go to 
 school, and the younger ones to return with her to 
 their maternal grandmother to London David 
 said something which wounded her, vexed her, 
 made her almost thankful to be going away. 
 
 She was standing by the laurel bush, which some- 
 how had for her a strange fascination, and her hand 
 was on the letter-box which the boys and Mr. Eoy 
 had made. There was a childish pleasure in touch- 
 ing it, or any thing he had touched. 
 
 "I hope grandmamma won't take away that 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 71 
 
 box," said Archy. " She ought to keep it in mem- 
 ory of us and of Mr. Koy. How cleverly he made 
 it! "Wasn't he clever, now, Miss Williams?" 
 
 " Yes," she answered, and no more. 
 
 " I've got a better letter-box than yours," said 
 little Davie, mysteriously. " Shall I show it to 
 you, Miss Williams? And perhaps," with a know- 
 ing look the mischievous lad! and yet he was 
 more loving and lovable than all the rest, Mr. 
 Koy's favorite, and hers "perhaps you might 
 even find a letter in it. Cook says she has seen 
 you many a time watching for a letter from your 
 sweetheart. Who is he ?" 
 
 "I have none. Tell cook she should not talk 
 such nonsense to little boys," said the governess, 
 gravely. But she felt hot from head to foot, and, 
 turning, walked slowly in-doors. She did not go 
 near the laurel bush again. 
 
 After that, she was almost glad to get away, 
 among strange people and strange places, where 
 Eobert Eoy's name had never been heard. The 
 familiar places hallowed as no other spot in this 
 world could ever be passed out of sight, and in 
 another week her six months' happy life at St. 
 
72 THE LAUEEL BUSH. 
 
 Andrews had vanished, "like a dream when one 
 awaketh." 
 
 Had she awaked? Or was her daily, outside 
 life to be henceforward the dream, and this the re- 
 ality ? 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 73 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 TTTHAT is a "wrecked" life? One which the 
 waves of inexorable fate have beaten to 
 pieces, or one that, like an unseaworthy ship, is 
 ready to go down in any waters ? What most de- 
 stroy us? the things we might well blame our- 
 selves for, only we seldom do, our follies, blunders, 
 errors, not counting actual sins? or the things for 
 which we can blame nobody but Providence if we 
 dared ; such as our losses and griefs, our sickness- 
 es of body and mind, all those afflictions which we 
 call " the visitation of God ?" Ay, and so they are, 
 but not sent in wrath or for ultimate evil. No 
 amount of sorrow need make any human life harm- 
 ful to man or unholy before God; as a discon- 
 tented, unhappy life must needs be unholy in the 
 sight of Him who in the mysterious economy of 
 the universe seems to have one absolute law He 
 wastes nothing. He modifies, transmutes, substi- 
 
74: THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 tutes, re-applies material to new uses; but appar- 
 ently by him nothing is ever really lost, nothing 
 thrown away. 
 
 Therefore, I incline to believe, when I hear peo- 
 ple talking of a " wrecked " existence, that, whoso- 
 ever is to blame, it is not Providence. 
 
 Nobody could have applied the term to Fortune 
 Williams, looking at her as she sat in the drawing- 
 room window of a house at Brighton, just where 
 the gray of the Esplanade meets the green of the 
 Downs a ladies' boarding-school, where she had 
 in her charge two pupils, left behind for the holi- 
 days, while the mistress took a few weeks' repose. 
 She sat watching the sea, which was very beauti- 
 ful, as even the Brighton sea can be sometimes. 
 Her eyes were soft and calm, her hands were fold- 
 ed on her black silk dress ; her pretty little tender- 
 looking hands unringed, for she was still Miss 
 Williams, still a governess. 
 
 But even at thirty-five and she had now reach- 
 ed that age, nay, passed it she was not what you 
 would call "old-maidish." Perhaps because the 
 motherly instinct, naturally very strong in her, had 
 developed more and more. She was one of those 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 75 
 
 governesses the only sort who ought ever to at- 
 tempt to be governesses who really love chil- 
 dren, ay, despite their naughtinesses and mischiev- 
 ousnesses, and worrying ways ; who feel that, after 
 all, these little ones are u of the kingdom of heav- 
 en," 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 Eobert Koy nev- 
 er once, in any way, since that Sunday afternoon 
 when he said, " I will write to-morrow," 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 
 4 
 
76 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 about it. And the wound was even healed, in a 
 sort of a way, and chiefly by the unconscious hands 
 of these little " ministering angels," who were an- 
 gels 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 nat- 
 ure. Women's lives have successive phases, each 
 following the other in natural gradation maiden- 
 hood, wifehood, motherhood : in not one of which, 
 ordinarily, we regret the one before it, to which it 
 is nevertheless impossible to go back. But Fort- 
 une'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 pleas- 
 ures, 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 moth- 
 erly. You see the like in the faces of the Virgin 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 77 
 
 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 astonish- 
 ed to find her, as a middle-aged woman, grown "so 
 good-looking." To which one of her pupils once 
 answered, naively, "It is because she looks so 
 good." 
 
 But this was after ten years and more. Of the 
 first half of those years the less that is said, the 
 better. She did not live ; she merely endured life. 
 Monotony without a constant aching within; a 
 restless, gnawing want, a perpetual expectation, 
 half hope, half fear; no human being could bear 
 all this without being the worse for it, or the bet- 
 ter. But the bitterness came afterward, not at 
 first. 
 
 Sometimes her craving to hear the smallest ti- 
 dings of him, only if he were alive or dead, grew 
 into such an agony, that, had it not been for her 
 entire helplessness in the matter, she might have 
 tried some means of gaining information. But, 
 
78 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 from his sudden change of plans, she was ignorant 
 even of the name of the ship he had sailed by, the 
 firm he had gone to. She could do absolutely 
 nothing, and learn nothing. Hers was something 
 like the "Affliction of Margaret," that poem of 
 Wordsworth's which, when her little pupils recited 
 it as they often did made her ready to sob out 
 loud, from the pang of its piteous reality : 
 
 " I look for ghosts, but none will force 
 Their way to me : 'tis falsely said 
 
 That there was ever intercourse 
 Betwixt the living and the dead : 
 
 For surely then I should have sight 
 
 Of him I wait for, day and night, 
 
 With love and longings infinite." 
 
 Still, in the depth of her heart she did not be- 
 lieve Eobert Roy was dead; for her finger was 
 still empty of that ring her mother's ring which 
 he had drawn off, promising its return "when he 
 was dead or she was married." This implied that 
 he never meant to lose sight of her. Nor, indeed, 
 had he wished it, would it have been very difficult 
 to find her, these ten years having been spent en- 
 tirely in one place, an obscure village in the South 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 79 
 
 of England, where she had lived as governess 
 first in the squire's family, then the rector's. 
 
 From the Dalziel family, where, as she had said 
 to Mr. Eoy, she hoped to remain for years, she had 
 drifted away almost immediately, within a few 
 months. At Christmas old Mrs. Dalziel had sud- 
 denly died ; her son had returned home, sent his 
 four boys to school in Germany, and gone back 
 again to India. There was now, for the first time 
 for half a century, not a single Dalziel left in St. 
 Andrews. 
 
 But though all ties were broken connecting her 
 with the dear old city, her boys still wrote to her 
 now and then, and she to them, with a persisten- 
 cy for which her conscience 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 
 
80 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 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 in- 
 valid, 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 pang. Almost a temp- 
 tation ; 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 wom- 
 an 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 blam- 
 able. 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 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 81 
 
 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 Eobert Koy. While 
 he was unmarried, for her to marry would be im- 
 possible. 
 
 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 quiet- 
 ly and alone, in one of those excellent "Govern- 
 esses' Homes," where every body was very kind to 
 her some more than kind, affectionate. It was 
 strange, she often thought, what an endless amount 
 of affection followed her wherever she went. She 
 
82 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 was by no means one of those women who go 
 about the world moaning that nobody loves them. 
 Every body loved her, and she knew it every 
 body whose love was worth having except Kob- 
 ert Koy. 
 
 Still, her mind never changed ; not even when, 
 in the weakness of illness, there would come vague 
 dreams of that peaceful rectory, with its quiet 
 rooms and green garden; of the gentle, kindly- 
 hearted father, and the two loving girls, whom she 
 could have made so happy, and perhaps won hap- 
 piness herself in the doing of it. 
 
 "I am a great fool, some people would say," 
 thought she, with a sad smile; "perhaps rather 
 worse. Perhaps I am acting absolutely wrong in 
 throwing away my chance of doing good. But I 
 can not help it I can not help it." 
 
 So she kept to her resolution, writing the occa- 
 sional notes she had promised to write to her poor, 
 forsaken girls, without saying a word of her ill- 
 ness ; and when she grew better, though not strong 
 enough to undertake a new situation, finding her 
 money slipping away though, with her good sal- 
 aries and small wants, she was not poor, and had 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 83 
 
 already begun to lay up for a lonely old age she 
 accepted this temporary home at Miss Maclach- 
 lan's, at Brighton. Was it so strange are the un- 
 der-currents which guide one's outward life was 
 it because she had found a curious charm in the 
 old lady's Scotch tongue, unheard for years? that 
 the two little pupils were Indian children, and that 
 the house was at the sea-side ? and she had never 
 seen the sea since she left St. Andrews. 
 
 It was like going back to the days of her youth 
 to sit, as now, watching the sunshine glitter on the 
 far-away ocean. The very smell of the sea- weed, 
 the lap-lap of the little waves, brought back old 
 recollections so vividly old thoughts, some bitter, 
 some sweet, but the sweetness generally overcom- 
 ing the bitterness. 
 
 *' I have had all the joy that the world could bestow ; 
 I have lived I have loved " 
 
 So sings the poet, and truly. Though to this 
 woman love had brought not joy, but sorrow, still 
 she had loved, and it had been the main-stay and 
 stronghold of her life, even though to outsiders it 
 might have appeared little better than a delusion, 
 
 4* 
 
84: THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 a dream. Once, and by one only, her whole nat- 
 ure had been drawn out, her ideal of moral right 
 entirely satisfied. And nothing had ever shatter- 
 ed this ideal. She clung to it, as we cling to the 
 memory of our dead children, who are children 
 forever. 
 
 With a passionate fidelity she remembered all 
 Kobert Eoy's goodness, his rare and noble quali- 
 ties, resolutely shutting her eyes to what she might 
 have judged severely, had it happened to another 
 person his total, unexplained, and inexplicable 
 desertion of herself. It was utterly irreconcilable 
 with all she had ever known of him ; and being 
 powerless to unravel it, she left it, just as we have 
 to leave many a mystery in heaven and earth, with 
 the humble cry, "I can not understand I love." 
 
 She loved him, that was all ; and sometimes 
 even yet, across that desert of despair, stretching 
 before and behind her, came a wild hope, almost a 
 conviction, that she should meet him again, some- 
 where, somehow. This day, even when, after an 
 hour's delicious idleness, she roused herself to take 
 her little girls down to the beach, and sat on the 
 shingle while they played, the sound and sights 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STOEY. 85 
 
 of the sea brought old times so vividly back, that 
 she could almost have fancied coming behind her 
 the familiar step, the pleasant voice, as when Mr. 
 Koy and his boys used to overtake her on the St. 
 Andrews shore Kobert Roy, a young man, with 
 his life all before him, as was hers. Now she was 
 middle-aged, and he he must be over forty by 
 this time. How strange ! 
 
 Stranger still, that there had never occurred to 
 her one possibility that he " was not," that God 
 had taken him. But this her heart absolutely re- 
 fused to accept. So long as he was in it, the world 
 would never be quite empty to her. Afterward 
 But, as I said, there are some things which can not 
 be faced, and this was one of them. 
 
 All else she had faced long ago. She did not 
 grieve now. As* she walked with her children, 
 listening to their endless talk, with that patient 
 sympathy which made all children love her, and 
 which she often found was a better help to their 
 education than dozens of lessons, there was on her 
 face that peaceful expression which is the great- 
 est preservative of youth, the greatest antidote to 
 change. And so it was no wonder that a tall lad, 
 
86 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 passing and repassing on the Esplanade with an- 
 other youth, looked at her more than once with 
 great curiosity, and at last advanced with hesita- 
 ting politeness. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, ma'am, if I mistake; but 
 you are so like a lady I once knew, and am now 
 looking for are you Miss Williams?" 
 
 " My name is Williams, certainly ; and you " 
 something in the curly light hair, the mischievous 
 twinkle of the eye, struck her " you can not be, 
 it is scarcely possible, David Dalziel ?" 
 
 " But I am, though," cried the lad, shaking her 
 hand as if he would shake it off. "And I call 
 myself very clever to have remembered you, though 
 I was such a little fellow when you left us, and I 
 have only seen your photograph since, But you 
 are not a bit altered, not one bit'. And as I knew, 
 by your last letter to Archy, that you were at 
 Brighton, I thought I'd risk it, and speak. Hurra ! 
 how very jolly !" 
 
 He had grown a handsome lad, the pretty wee 
 Davie, an honest-looking lad, too, apparently ; and 
 she was glad to see him. From the dignity of his 
 eighteen years and five feet ten of height, he look- 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 87 
 
 ed down upon the governess and patronized her 
 quite tenderly ; dismissing his friend, and walking 
 home with her, telling her on the way all his affairs 
 and that of his family, with the volubility of little 
 David Dalziel at St. Andrews. 
 
 " No, I've not forgotten St. Andrews one bit, 
 though I was so small. I remember poor old gran- 
 nie, and her cottage, and the garden, and the Links, 
 and the golfing, and Mr. Koy. By-the-bye, what 
 has become of Mr. Koy?" 
 
 The suddenness of the question, nay, the very 
 sound of a name totally silent for so many years, 
 made Fortune's heart throb till its beating was act- 
 ual pain. Then came a sudden, desperate hope, as 
 she answered, 
 
 "I can not tell. I have never heard any thing 
 of him. Have you?" 
 
 " No yet, let me see. I think Archy once got 
 a letter from him, a year or so after he went away ; 
 but we lost it somehow, and never answered it. 
 We have never heard any thing since." 
 
 Miss Williams sat down on one of the benches 
 facing the sea, with a murmured excuse of being 
 "tired." One of her little girls crept beside her, 
 
88 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 stealing a hand in hers. She held it fast, her own 
 shook so, but gradually she grew quite herself 
 again. " I have been ill," she explained, " and 
 can not walk far. Let us sit down here a little. 
 You were speaking about Mr. Roy, David ?" 
 
 " Yes ; what a good fellow he was ! We called 
 him Rob Roy, I remember, but only behind his 
 back. He was strict, but he was a jolly old soul, 
 for all that. I believe I should know him again 
 any day, as I did you. But perhaps he is dead ; 
 people die pretty fast abroad, and ten years is a 
 long time, isn't it?" 
 
 "A long time. And you never got any more 
 letters?" 
 
 " No ; or if they did come, they were lost, being 
 directed probably to the care of poor old grannie, 
 as ours was. We thought it so odd, after she was 
 dead, you know." 
 
 Thus the boy chattered on his tongue had not 
 shortened with his increasing inches and every 
 idle word sunk down deep in his old governess's 
 heart. 
 
 Then it was only her whom Robert Roy had 
 forsaken ? He had written to his boys ; probably 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 89 
 
 would have gone on writing, had they answered 
 his letter. He was neither faithless nor forgetful. 
 With an ingenuity that might have brought to any 
 listener a smile or a tear, Miss Williams led the 
 conversation round again, till she could easily ask 
 more concerning that one letter ; but David remem- 
 bered little or nothing except that it was dated 
 from Shanghai, for his brothers had had a discussion 
 whether Shanghai was in China or Japan. Then, 
 boy-like, they had forgotten the whole matter. 
 
 " Yes, by this time every body has forgotten 
 him," thought Fortune to herself, when, having 
 bid David good-bye at her door and arranged to 
 meet him again he was on a visit at Brighton 
 before matriculating at Oxford next term she sat 
 down in her own room, with a strangely bewil- 
 dered feeling. " Mine, all mine," she said, and her 
 heart closed itself over him, her old friend at least, 
 if nothing more, with a tenacity of tenderness as 
 silent as it was strong. 
 
 From that day, though she saw, and was deter- 
 mined henceforward to see, as much as she could 
 of young David Dalziel, she never once spoke to 
 him of Mr. Roy. 
 
yO THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 Still, to have the lad coming about her was a 
 pleasure, a fond link with the past, and to talk to 
 him about his future was a pleasure too. He was 
 the one of all the four Mr. Koy always said so 
 who had "brains" enough to become a real stu- 
 dent; and instead of following the others to In- 
 dia, he was to go to Oxford and do his best there. 
 His German education had left him few English 
 friends ; he was an affectionate, simple-hearted lad, 
 and, now that his mischievous days were done, was 
 taking to thorough hard work. He attached him- 
 self to his old governess with an enthusiasm that a 
 lad in his teens often conceives for a woman still 
 young enough to be sympathetic, and intelligent 
 enough to guide, without ruling, the errant fancy 
 of that age. She, too, soon grew very fond of him. 
 It made her strangely happy, this sudden rift of 
 sunshine out of the never-forgotten heaven of her 
 youth, now almost as far off as heaven itself. 
 
 I have said she never spoke to David about Mr. 
 Koy, nor did she; but sometimes he spoke, and 
 then she listened. It seemed to cheer her for hours 
 only to hear that name. She grew stronger, gayer, 
 younger. Every body said how much good the 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 91 
 
 sea was doing her, and so it was; but not exactly 
 in the way people thought. The spell of silence 
 upon her life had been broken, and though she 
 knew all sensible persons would esteem her in this, 
 as in that other matter, a great " fool," still she 
 could not stifle a vague hope that some time or 
 other her blank life might change. Every little 
 wave that swept in from the mysterious ocean, the 
 ocean that lay between them two, seemed to carry 
 a whispering message and lay it at her feet. " Wait 
 and be patient, wait and be patient." 
 
 She did wait, and the message came at last. 
 
 One day, David Dalziel called, on one of his fa- 
 vorite daily rides, and threw a newspaper down at 
 her door, where she was standing. 
 
 "An Indian paper my mother has just sent. 
 There's something in it that will interest you, 
 and" 
 
 His horse galloped off with the unfinished sen- 
 tence ; and, supposing it was something concerning 
 his family, she put the paper in her pocket to read 
 at leisure while she sat on the beach. She had al- 
 most forgotten it, as she watched the waves, full 
 of that pleasant idleness and dreamy peace so new 
 
92 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 in her life, and which the sound of the sea so often 
 brings to peaceful hearts, who have no dislike to 
 its monotony, no dread of those solemn thoughts of 
 infinitude, time, and eternity, God, and death, and 
 love which it unconsciously gives, and which I 
 think is the secret why some people say they have 
 " such a horror of the sea-side." 
 
 She had none; she loved it, for its sights and 
 sounds were mixed up with all the happiness of 
 her young days. She could have sat all this sun- 
 shiny morning on the beach doing absolutely noth- 
 ing, had she not remembered David's newspaper; 
 which, just to please him, she must look through. 
 She did so, and in the corner among the brief list 
 of names in the obituary, she saw that of "Koy." 
 Not himself; as she soon found, as soon as she 
 could see to read, in the sudden blindness that 
 came over her. Not himself. Only his child. 
 
 " On Christmas-day, at Shanghai, aged three and 
 a half years, Isabella, the only and beloved daugh- 
 ter of Eobert and Isabella Koy." 
 
 He was alive, then. That was her first thought, 
 almost a joyful one, showing how deep had been 
 her secret dread of the contrary. And he was 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 93 
 
 married. His " only and beloved daughter !" Oh! 
 how beloved she could well understand. Married, 
 and a father; and his child was dead. 
 
 Many may think it strange (it would be in most 
 women, but it was not in this woman) that the tor- 
 rent of tears which burst forth, after her first few 
 minutes of dry-eyed anguish, was less for herself, 
 because he was married and she had lost him, than 
 for him, because he had had a child and lost it 
 he who was so tender of heart, so -fond of children. 
 The thought of his grief brought such a consecra- 
 tion with it, that her grief the grief most women 
 might be expected to feel, on reading suddenly in 
 a newspaper that the man they loved was married 
 to another did not come. At least not at once. 
 It did not burst upon her, as sorrow does some- 
 times, like a wild beast out of a jungle, slaying and 
 devouring. She was not slain, not even stunned. 
 After a few minutes it seemed to her as if it had 
 happened long ago as if she had always known it 
 must happen, and was not astonished. 
 
 His "only and beloved daughter!" The words 
 sung themselves in and out of her brain, to the 
 murmur of the sea. How he must have loved the 
 
94 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 child! She could almost see him with the little 
 one in his arms, or watching over her bed, or 
 standing beside her small coffin. Three years and 
 a half old ! Then he must have been married a 
 good while long and long after she had gone on 
 thinking of him as no righteous woman ever can 
 go on thinking of another woman's husband. 
 
 One burning blush one shiver from head to 
 foot of mingled agony and shame one cry of pite- 
 ous despair, which nobody heard but God and 
 she was not afraid of His hearing and the strug- 
 gle was over. She saw Eobert Roy, with his child 
 in his arms, with his wife by his side, the same and 
 yet a totally different man. 
 
 She, too, when she rose up and tried to walk 
 tried to feel that it was the same sea, the same 
 shore, the same earth and sky was a totally dif- 
 ferent woman. Something was lost, something 
 never to be retrieved on this side the grave, but 
 also something was found. 
 
 " He is alive," she said to herself, with the 
 same strange joy ; for now she knew where 
 he was, and what had happened to him. The 
 silence of all these years was broken, the dead 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 95 
 
 had come to life again, and the lost, in a sense, 
 was found. 
 
 Fortune Williams rose up and walked, in more 
 senses than one; went round to fetch her little 
 girls, as she had promised, from that newly opened 
 delight of children, the Brighton Aquarium ; staid 
 a little with them, admiring the fishes ; and when 
 she reached home and found David Dalziel in the 
 drawing-room, met him and thanked him for bring- 
 ing her the newspaper. 
 
 "I suppose it was on account of that obituary 
 notice of Mr. Hoy's child," said she, calmly speak- 
 ing the name now. "What a sad thing! But 
 still I am glad to know he is alive and well. So 
 will you be. Shall you write to him ?" 
 
 " Well, I don't know," answered the lad, care- 
 lessly crumpling up the newspaper and throw- 
 ing it on the fire. Miss Williams made a faint 
 movement to snatch it out, then disguised the 
 gesture in some way, and silently watched it 
 burn. "I don't quite see the use of writing. 
 He's a family man now, and must have forgot- 
 ten all about his old friends. Don't you think 
 so?" 
 
96 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 " Perhaps; only he was not the sort of person 
 easily to forget." 
 
 She could defend him now ; she could speak of 
 him, and did speak, more than once afterward, 
 when David referred to the matter. And then the 
 lad quit Brighton for Oxford, and she was left in 
 her old loneliness. 
 
 A loneliness which I will not speak of. She 
 herself never referred to that time. After it, she 
 roused herself to begin her life anew in a fresh 
 home, to work hard, not only for daily bread, but 
 for that humble independence which she was de- 
 termined to win before the dark hour when the 
 most helpful become helpless, and the most inde- 
 pendent are driven to fall a piteous burden into 
 the charitable hands of friends or strangers a 
 thing to her so terrible, that, to save herself from 
 the possibility of it, she who had never leaned upon 
 any body, never had any body to lean upon, be- 
 came her one almost morbid desire. 
 
 She had no dread of a solitary old age, but an 
 old age beholden to either public or private charity 
 was to her intolerable ; and she had now few years 
 left her to work in a governess's life wears worn- 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 97 
 
 en out very fast. She determined to begin to work 
 again immediately, laying by as much as possible 
 yearly, against the days when she could work no 
 more; consulted Miss Maclachlan, who was most 
 kind; and then sought, and was just about going 
 to, another situation, with the highest salary she 
 had yet earned, when an utterly unexpected change 
 altered every thing. 
 
98 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 CHAPTER IY. 
 
 fly was already at the door, and Miss Wil- 
 liams, with her small luggage, would in five 
 minutes have departed, followed by the good wish- 
 es of all the household, from Miss Maclachlan's 
 school to her new situation, when the postman 
 passed and left a letter for her. 
 
 "I will put it in my pocket and read it in the 
 train," she said, with a slight change of color. For 
 she recognized the handwriting of that good man 
 who had loved her, and whom she could not love. 
 
 "Better read it now. No time like the pres- 
 ent," observed Miss Maclachlan. 
 
 Miss Williams did so. As soon as she was fair- 
 ly started, and alone in the fly, she opened it ; with 
 hands slightly trembling, for she was touched by 
 the persistence of the good rector, and his faithful- 
 ness to her, a poor governess, when he might have 
 married, as they said in his neighborhood, " any 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 99 
 
 body." He would never marry any body now 
 he was dying. 
 
 "I have come to feel how wrong I was," he 
 wrote, " in ever trying to change our happy rela- 
 tions together. I have suffered for this so have 
 we all. But it is too late for regret now. My 
 time has come. Do not grieve yourself by imag- 
 ining it has come the faster through any decision 
 of yours, but by slow, inevitable disease, which the 
 doctors have only lately discovered. Nothing 
 could have saved me. Be satisfied that there is no 
 cause for you to give yourself one minute's pain." 
 (How she sobbed over those shaky lines, more 
 even than over the newspaper lines which she had 
 read that sunshiny morning on % the shore!) "Ke- 
 member only that you made me very happy me 
 and all mine for years ; that I loved you, as even 
 at my age a man can love ; as I shall love you to 
 the end, which can not be very far off now. Would 
 you dislike coming to see me just once again? My 
 girls will be so very glad, and nobody will remark 
 it, for nobody knows any thing. Besides, what 
 matter? I am dying. Come if you can, within a 
 week or so; they tell me I may last thus long. 
 
100 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 And I want to consult with you about my chil- 
 dren. Therefore I will not say good-bye now, 
 only good-night, and God bless you." 
 
 But it was good-bye, after all. Though she did 
 not wait the week ; indeed, she waited for nothing, 
 considered nothing, except her gratitude to this 
 good man the only man who had loved her, and 
 her affection for the two girls, who would soon 
 be fatherless; though she sent a telegram from 
 Brighton to say she was coming, and arrived with- 
 in twenty-four hours, still, she came too late. 
 
 When she reached the village, she heard that 
 his sufferings were all over ; and a few yards from 
 his garden wall, in the shade of the church-yard 
 lime-tree, the old sexton was busy re-opening, after 
 fourteen years, the family grave, where he was to 
 be laid beside his wife the day after to-morrow. 
 His two daughters, sitting alone together in the 
 melancholy house, heard Miss Williams enter, and 
 ran to meet her. With a feeling of nearness and 
 tenderness such as she had scarcely ever felt for 
 any human being, she clasped them close, and let 
 them weep their hearts out in her motherly arms. 
 
 Thus the current of her whole life was changed ; 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 101 
 
 for, when Mr. Moseley's will was opened, it was 
 found that, besides leaving Miss Williams a hand- 
 some legacy, carefully explained as being given 
 " in gratitude for her care of his children," he had 
 chosen her as their guardian, until they came of 
 age, or married, entreating her to reside with them, 
 and desiring them to pay her all the respect due to 
 "a near and dear relative." The tenderness with 
 which he had arranged every thing, down to the 
 minutest points, for them and herself, even amidst 
 all his bodily sufferings, and in face of the supreme 
 hour which he had met, his daughters said, with 
 a marvelous calmness, even joy touched Fortune 
 as perhaps nothing had ever touched her in all her 
 life before. When she stood with her two poor 
 orphans beside their father's grave, and returned 
 with them to the desolate house, vowing within 
 herself to be to them, all but in name, the mother 
 he had wished her to be, this sense of duty the 
 strange new duty which had suddenly come to fill 
 her empty life was so strong that she forgot ev- 
 ery thing else even Eobert Roy. 
 
 And for months afterward months of anxious 
 business, involving the leaving of the rectory, and 
 
102 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 the taking of a temporary house in the village, un- 
 til they could decide where finally to settle Miss 
 Williams had scarcely a moment or a thought to 
 spare for any beyond the vivid present. Past and 
 future faded away together, except so far as con- 
 cerned her girls. 
 
 " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with 
 thy might," were words which had helped her 
 through many a dark time. Now, with all her 
 might, she did her motherly duty to the orphan 
 girls, and as she did so, by -and -by she began 
 strangely to enjoy it, and to find also not a little 
 of motherly pride and pleasure in them. She had 
 no time to think of herself at all, or of the great 
 blow which had fallen, the great change which had 
 come, rendering it impossible for her to let herself 
 feel as she had used to feel, dream as she used to 
 dream, for years and years past. That one pathet- 
 ic line, 
 
 "I darena think o' Jamie, for that wad be a sin," 
 
 burned itself into her heart, and needed nothing 
 more. 
 
 "My children! I must only love my children 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 103 
 
 now," was her continual thought, and she believed 
 she did so. 
 
 It was not until spring came, healing the girls' 
 grief as naturally as it covered their father's grave 
 with violets and primroses, and making them cling 
 a little less to home and her, a little more to the 
 returning pleasures of their youth, for they were 
 two pretty girls, well-born, with tolerable fortunes, 
 and likely to be much sought after not until the 
 spring days left her much alone, did Fortune's 
 mind recur to an idea which had struck her once, 
 and then been set aside to write to Kobert Eoy. 
 Why should she not? Just a few friendly lines, 
 telling him how, after long years, she had seen his 
 name in the papers ; how sorry she was, and yet 
 glad glad to think he was alive and well, and 
 married; how she sent all kindly wishes to his 
 wife and himself, and so on. In short, the sort of 
 letter that any body might write or receive, what- 
 ever had been the previous link between them. 
 
 And she wrote it, on an April day, one of those 
 first days of spring which make young hearts throb 
 with a vague delight, a nameless hope ; and older 
 ones but is there any age when hope is quite 
 
104 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 dead ? I think not, even to those who know that 
 the only spring that will ever come to them will 
 dawn in the world everlasting. 
 
 When her girls, entering, offered to post her let- 
 ter, and Miss Williams answered gently that she 
 would rather post it herself, as it required a foreign 
 stamp, how little they guessed all that lay under- 
 neath, and how, over the first few lines, her hand 
 had shaken so that she had to copy it three times. 
 But the address, "Kobert Koy, Esquire, Shanghai" 
 all she could put, but she had little doubt it 
 would find him was written with that firm, clear 
 hand which he had so often admired, saying he 
 wished she could teach his boys to write as well. 
 Would he recognize it? Would he be glad or 
 sorry, or only indifferent? Had the world changed 
 him ? or, if she could look at him now, would he 
 be the same Eobert Eoy simple, true, sincere, and 
 brave every inch a man and a gentleman ? 
 
 For the instant the old misery came back ; the 
 sharp, sharp pain ; but she smothered it down. 
 His dead child his living, unknown wife came 
 between, with their soft, ghostly hands. He was 
 still himself; she hoped, absolutely unchanged; 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 105 
 
 but he was hers no more. Yet, that strange yearn- 
 ing, the same which had impelled Mr. Moseley to 
 write, and say, " Come and see me before I die," 
 seemed impelling her to stretch a hand out across 
 the seas " Have you forgotten me ? I have never 
 forgotten you." As she passed through the church- 
 yard on her way to the village, and saw the rec- 
 tor's grave lie smiling in the evening sunshine, 
 Fortune thought what a strange lot hers had been. 
 The man who had loved her, the man whom she 
 had loved, were equally lost to her ; equally dead 
 and buried. And yet she lived still her busy, 
 active, and not unhappy life. It was God's will, 
 all; and it was best. 
 
 Another six months went by, and she still re- 
 mained in the same place, though talking daily of 
 leaving. They began to go into society again, she 
 and her girls, and to receive visitors now and then : 
 among the rest, David Dalziel, who had preserved 
 his affectionate fidelity even when he went back to 
 college, and had begun to discover somehow that 
 the direct road from Oxford to everywhere was 
 through this secluded village. I arn afraid Miss 
 Williams was not as alive as she ought to have 
 
106 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 been to this fact, and to the other fact that Helen 
 and Janetta were not quite children now ; but she 
 let the young people be happy, and was happy 
 with them, after her fashion. Still, hers was less 
 happiness than peace; the deep peace which a 
 storm-tossed vessel finds when kindly fate has towed 
 it into harbor; with torn sails and broken masts, 
 may be, but still safe, never needing to go to sea 
 any more. 
 
 She had come to that point in life when we cease 
 to be " afraid of evil tidings ;" since nothing is like- 
 ly to happen to us beyond what has happened. 
 She told herself that she did not look forward to 
 the answer from Shanghai, if, indeed, any came; 
 nevertheless, she had ascertained what time the re- 
 turn mail would be likely to bring it. And, al- 
 most punctual to the day, a letter arrived with 
 the postmark " Shanghai." Not his letter, nor his 
 hand-writing at all. And, besides, it was address- 
 ed to " Mrs. Williams." 
 
 A shudder of fear, the only fear which could 
 strike her now that he might be dead made 
 Fortune stand irresolute a moment : then go up to 
 her own room before she opened it. 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 107 
 
 " MADAM, I beg to apologize for having read 
 nearly through your letter before comprehending 
 that it was not meant for me, but probably for an- 
 other Mr. Kobert Eoy, who left this place not long 
 after I came here, and between whom and myself 
 some confusion arose, till we became intimate, and 
 discovered that we were most likely distant, very 
 distant, cousins. He came from St Andrews, and 
 was head clerk in a firm here, doing a very good 
 business in tea and silk, until they mixed them- 
 selves up in the opium trade, which Mr. Roy, with 
 one or two more of our community here, thought 
 so objectionable that at last he threw up his situa- 
 tion, and determined to seek his fortunes in Aus- 
 tralia. It was a pity, for he was in a good way 
 to get on rapidly ; but every body who knew him 
 agreed it was just the sort of thing he was sure 
 to do, and some respected him highly for doing it. 
 He was indeed what we Scotch call ' weel respeck- 
 it' wherever he went. But he was a reserved 
 man : made few intimate friends, though those he 
 did make were warmly attached to him. My fam- 
 ily were; and though it is now five years since we 
 
108 THE LAUEEL BUSH. 
 
 have heard any thing of or from him, we remem- 
 ber him still." 
 
 Five years! The letter dropped from her 
 hands. Lost and found, yet found and lost. What 
 might not have happened to him in five years? 
 But she read on, dry-eyed : women do not weep 
 very much or very easily at her age. 
 
 "I will do my utmost, madam, that your letter 
 shall reach the hands for which I am sure it was 
 intended ; but that may take some time, my only 
 clue to Mr. Eoy's whereabouts being the chance 
 that he has left his address with our branch house 
 at Melbourne. I can not think he is dead, because 
 such tidings pass rapidly from one to another in 
 our colonial communities, and he was too much 
 beloved for his death to excite no concern. 
 
 " I make this long explanation because it strikes 
 me you may be a lady, a friend or relative of Mr. 
 Eoy's, concerning whom he employed me to make 
 some inquiries, only you say so very little abso- 
 lutely nothing of yourself in your letter, that I 
 can not be at all certain if you are the same person. 
 She was a governess in a family named Dalziel, 
 living at St. Andrews. He said he had written to 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 109 
 
 that family repeatedly, but got no answer, and then 
 asked me, if any thing resulted from my inquiries, 
 to write to him to the care of our Melbourne house. 
 But no news ever came, and I never wrote to him, 
 for which my wife still blames me exceedingly. 
 She thanks you, dear madam, for the kind things 
 you say about our poor child, though meant for 
 another person. We have seven boys, but little 
 Bell was our youngest, and our hearts' delight. 
 She died after six hours' illness. 
 
 "Again begging you to pardon my unconscious 
 offense in reading a stranger's letter, and the length 
 of this one, I remain, your very obedient servant, 
 
 " E. EOY. 
 
 "P.S. I ought to say that this Mr. Eobert Eoy 
 seemed between thirty -five and forty, tall, dark- 
 haired, walked with a slight stoop. He had, I be- 
 lieve, no near relatives whatever, and I never 
 heard of his having been married." 
 
 Unquestionably Miss Williams did well in retir- 
 ing to her chamber and locking the door before she 
 opened the letter. It is a mistake to suppose that 
 at thirty -five or forty or what age? women cease 
 
110 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 to feel. I once was walking with, an old maiden 
 lady, talking of a character in a book. "He re- 
 minded me," she said, " of the very best man I 
 ever knew, whom I saw a good deal of when I was 
 a girl ;" and to the natural question, was he alive, 
 she answered, "No; he died while he was still 
 young." Her voice kept its ordinary tone, but 
 there came a slight flush on the cheek, a sudden 
 quiver over the whole withered face she was 
 some years past seventy and I felt I could not 
 say another word. 
 
 Nor shall I say a word now of Fortune Wil- 
 liams, when she had read through and wholly taken 
 in the contents of this letter. 
 
 Life began for her again life on a new and yet 
 on the old basis ; for it was still waiting, waiting 
 she seemed to be among those whose lot it is to 
 "stand and wait" all their days. But it was not 
 now in that absolute darkness and silence which it 
 used to be. She knew that in all human proba- 
 bility Eobert Koy was alive still somewhere, and 
 hope never could wholly die out of the world so 
 long as he was in it. His career, too, if not prosper- 
 ous in worldly things, had been one to make any 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. Ill 
 
 heart that loved him content content and proud. 
 For if he had failed in his fortunes, was it not from 
 doing what she would most have wished him to 
 do the right, at all costs? Nor had he quite for- 
 gotten her, since even so late as five years back 
 he had been making inquiries about her. Also, he 
 was then unmarried. 
 
 But human nature is weak, and human hearts 
 are so hungry sometimes. 
 
 "Oh, if he had only loved me, and told me so!" 
 she said sometimes, as piteously as fifteen years 
 ago. But the tears which followed were not, as 
 then, a storm of passionate despair only a quiet, 
 sorrowful rain. 
 
 For what could she do? Nothing. Now, as 
 ever, her part seemed just to fold her hands and 
 endure. If alive, he might be found some day ; 
 but now she could not find him oh, if she could ! 
 Had she been the man and he the woman nay, 
 had she been still herself, a poor, lonely governess, 
 having to earn every crumb of her own bitter 
 bread, yet knowing that he loved her, might not 
 things have been different ? Had she belonged to 
 him, they would never have lost one another. She 
 
112 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 would have sought him, as Evangeline sought Ga- 
 briel, half the world over. 
 
 And little did her two girls imagine as they call- 
 ed her down-stairs that night, secretly wondering 
 what important business could make "Auntie" 
 keep tea waiting fully five minutes,- and set her 
 after tea to read some of the "pretty poetry," es- 
 pecially Longfellow's, which they had a fancy for 
 little did they think, those two happy creatures, 
 listening to their middle-aged governess, who read 
 so well that sometimes her voice actually faltered 
 over the lines, how there was being transacted un- 
 der their very eyes a story which in its " constant 
 anguish of patience" was scarcely less pathetic 
 than that of Acadia. 
 
 For nearly a year after that letter came, the lit- 
 tle family of which Miss Williams was the head 
 went on in its innocent, quiet way, always plan- 
 ning, yet never making a change, until driven to 
 it at last by fate. Neither Helen nor Janetta was 
 very healthy, and at last a London doctor gave as 
 his absolute fiat that the girls must cease to live in 
 their warm inland village, and migrate, for some 
 years, at any rate, to a bracing sea-side place. 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STOEY. 113 
 
 Whereupon David Dalziel, who had somehow 
 established himself as the one masculine adviser 
 of the family, suggested St. Andrews. Bracing 
 enough it was, at any rate: he remembered the 
 winds used almost to cut his nose off. And it was 
 such a nice place too so pretty, with such excel- 
 lent society. He was sure the young ladies would 
 find it delightful. Did Miss Williams remember the 
 walk by the shore, and the golfing across the Links? 
 
 "Quite as well as you could have done at the 
 early age of seven," she suggested, smiling. " Why 
 are you so very anxious we should go to live at 
 St. Andrews ?" 
 
 The young fellow blushed all over his kindly, 
 eager face, and then frankly owned he had a mo- 
 tive. His grandmother's cottage, which she had 
 left to him, the youngest and her pet always, was 
 now unlet. He meant perhaps to go and live at it 
 himself, when when he was of age and could af- 
 ford it ; but in the mean time he was a poor soli- 
 tary bachelor; and and 
 
 "And you would like us to keep your nest 
 warm for you till you can claim it ? You want us 
 for your tenants, eh, Davie ?" 
 
114 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 " Just that. You've hit it. Couldn't wish bet- 
 ter. In fact, I have already written to my trustees 
 to drive the hardest bargain possible." 
 
 Which was an ingenious modification of the 
 truth, as she afterward found; but evidently the 
 lad had set his heart upon the thing. And she? 
 
 At first she had shrunk back from the plan with 
 a shiver almost of fear. It was like having to 
 meet face to face something some one long dead. 
 To walk among the old familiar places, to see the 
 old familiar sea and shore nay, to live in the very 
 same house, haunted, as houses are sometimes, 
 every room and every nook, with ghosts, yet with 
 such innocent ghosts Could she bear it ? 
 
 There are some people who have an actual terror 
 of the past who, the moment a thing ceases to 
 be pleasurable, fly from it, would willingly bury it 
 out of sight forever. But others have no fear of 
 their harmless dead dead hopes, memories, loves 
 can sit by a grave-side, or look behind them at 
 a dim, spectral shape, without grief, without dread, 
 only with tenderness. This woman could. 
 
 After a long, wakeful night, spent in very serious 
 thought for every one's good, not excluding her 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 115 
 
 own since there is a certain point beyond which 
 one has no right to forget one's self, and perpetual 
 martyrs rarely make very pleasant heads of fami- 
 lies she said to her girls next morning that she 
 thought David Dalziel's brilliant idea had a great 
 deal of sense in it ; St. Andrews was a very nice 
 place, and the cottage there would exactly suit 
 their finances, while the tenure upon which he pro- 
 posed they should hold it (from term to term) 
 would also fit in with their undecided future; be- 
 cause, as all knew, whenever Helen or Janetta mar- 
 ried, each would just take her fortune and go, leav- 
 ing Miss Williams with her little legacy, above 
 want certainly, but not exactly a millionaire. 
 
 These and other points she set before them in 
 her practical fashion, just as if her heart did not 
 leap sometimes with pleasure, sometimes with 
 pain at the very thought of St. Andrews, and as 
 if to see herself sit daily and hourly face to face 
 with her old self, the ghost of her own youth, would 
 be a quite easy thing. 
 
 The girls were delighted. They left all to auntie, 
 as was their habit to do. Burdens naturally fall 
 upon the shoulders fitted for them, and which 
 
116 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 seem even to have a faculty for drawing them 
 down there. Miss Williams's new duties had de- 
 veloped in her a whole range of new qualities, dor- 
 mant during her governess life. Nobody knew 
 better than she how to manage a house and guide 
 a family. The girls soon felt that auntie might 
 have been a mother all her days, she was so thor- 
 oughly motherly, and they gave up every thing 
 into her hands. 
 
 So the whole matter was settled, David rejoicing 
 exceedingly, and considering it "jolly fun," and 
 quite like a bit out of a play, that his former gov- 
 erness should come back as his tenant, and inhabit 
 the old familiar cottage. 
 
 "And I'll take a run over to see you as soon as 
 the long vacation begins, just to teach the young 
 ladies golfing. Mr. Eoy taught all us boys, you 
 know; and we'll take that very walk he used to 
 take us, across the Links and along the sands to 
 the Eden. Wasn't it the river Eden, Miss Wil- 
 liams? I am sure I remember it. I think I am 
 very good at remembering.'' 
 
 "Very." 
 
 Other people were also " good at remembering." 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 117 
 
 During the first few weeks after they settled down 
 at St. Andrews, the girls noticed that auntie be- 
 came excessively pale, and was sometimes quite 
 "distrait" and bewildered-looking, which was lit- 
 tle wonder, considering all she had to do and to 
 arrange. But she got better in time. The cottage 
 was so sweet, the sea so fresh, the whole place so 
 charming. Slowly Miss Williams's ordinary look 
 returned the " good " looks which her girls so en- 
 ergetically protested she had now, if never before. 
 They never allowed her to confess herself old by 
 caps or shawls, or any of those pretty temporary 
 hinderances to the march of Time. She resisted 
 not ; she let them dress her as they pleased, in a 
 reasonable way, for she felt they loved her ; and 
 as to her age, why, she knew it, and kne^ that noth- 
 ing could alter it, so what did it matter? She 
 smiled, and tried to look as nice and as young as 
 she could, for her girls' sake. 
 
 I suppose there are such things as broken or 
 breaking hearts, even at St. Andrews, but it is cer- 
 tainly not a likely place for them. They have lit- 
 tle chance against the fresh, exhilarating air, strong 
 as new wine; the wild sea-waves, the soothing 
 
118 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 sands, giving with health, of body wholesomeness 
 of mind. By-and-by the busy world recovered its 
 old face to Fortune Williams not the world as 
 she once dreamed of it, but the real world, as she 
 had fought through it all these years. 
 
 "I was ever a fighter, so one fight more!" as she 
 read sometimes in the " pretty " poetry her girls 
 were always asking for read steadily, even when 
 she came to the last verse in that passionate "Pros- 
 pice:" 
 
 "Till, sudden, the worst turns the best to the brave, 
 
 The black minute's at end ; 
 And the elements rage, the fiend voices that rave 
 
 Shall dwindle, shall blend, 
 Shall change, shall become first a peace, then a joy, 
 
 Then a light then thy breast, 
 O thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again, 
 
 And with God be the rest!" 
 
 To that life to come, during all the burden and 
 heat of the day (no, the afternoon, a time, faded, 
 yet hot and busy still, which is often a very trying 
 bit of woman's life), she now often began yearning- 
 ly to look. To meet him again, even in' old age, 
 or with death between, was her only desire. Yet 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 119 
 
 she did her duty still, and enjoyed all she could, 
 knowing that one by one the years were hurrying 
 onward, and the night coming " in which no man 
 can work." 
 
 Faithful to his promise, about the middle of 
 July David Dalziel appeared, in overflowing spir- 
 its, having done very well at college. He was 
 such a boy still, in character and behavior; though 
 as he carefully informed the family now twen- 
 ty-one and a man, expecting to be treated as such. 
 He was their landlord too, and drew up the agree- 
 ment in his own name, meaning to be a lawyer, 
 and having enough to live on something better 
 than bread and salt, " till I can earn a fortune, as I 
 certainly mean to do, some day." 
 
 And he looked at Janetta, who looked down on 
 the parlor carpet as young people will. Alas ! I 
 fear that the eyes of her anxious friend and gov- 
 erness were not half wide enough open to the fact 
 that these young folk were no longer boys and 
 girls, and that things might happen in fact, were 
 almost certain to happen which had happened to 
 herself in her youth making life not quite so easy 
 to her as it seemed to be to these two bright girls. 
 
120 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 Yet they were so bright, and their relations with 
 David Dalziel were so frank and free in fact, the 
 young fellow himself was such a thoroughly good 
 fellow, so very difficult to shut her door against, 
 even if she had thought of so doing. But she did 
 not She let him come and go, " miserable bache- 
 lor" as he proclaimed himself, with all his kith 
 and kin across the seas, and cast not a thought to 
 the future, or to the sad necessity which sometimes 
 occurs to parents and guardians of shutting the 
 stable door after the steed is stolen. 
 
 Especially as, not long after David appeared, 
 there happened a certain thing a very small thing 
 to all but her, and yet to her it was, for the time 
 being, utterly overwhelming. It absorbed all her 
 thoughts into one maddened channel, where they 
 writhed and raved and dashed themselves blindly 
 against inevitable fate. For the first time in her 
 life this patient woman felt as if endurance were 
 not the right thing; as if wild shrieks of pain, bit- 
 ter outcries against Providence, would be somehow 
 easier, better: might reach His throne, so that even 
 now He might listen and hear. 
 
 The thing was this. One day, waiting for some 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 121 
 
 one beside the laurel bush at her gate the old fa- 
 miliar bush, though it had grown and grown till 
 its branches, which used to drag on the gravel, now 
 covered the path entirely she overheard David 
 explaining to Janetta how he and his brothers and 
 Mr. Eoy had made the wtfoden letter-box, which 
 actually existed still, though in very ruinous con- 
 dition. 
 
 "And no wonder, after fifteen years and more. 
 It is fully that old, isn't it, Miss Williams ? You 
 will have to superannuate it shortly, and* return to 
 the old original letter-box my letter-box, which 
 I remember so well. I do believe I could find it 
 still." 
 
 Kneeling down, he thrust his hand through the 
 thick barricade of leaves, into the very heart of 
 the tree. 
 
 "I've found it! I declare I've found it! the 
 identical hole in the trunk where I used to put all 
 my treasures my " magpie's nest," as they called 
 it, where I hid every thing I could find. What a 
 mischievous young scamp I was!" 
 
 "Very," said Miss Williams, affectionately, lay- 
 ing a gentle hand on his curls "pretty" still, 
 
122 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 though cropped down to the frightful modern fash- 
 ion. Secretly she was rather proud of him, this 
 tall young fellow, whom she had had on her lap 
 many a time. 
 
 "Curious! It all comes back to me even to 
 the very last thing I hid here, the day before we 
 left which was a letter." 
 
 "A letter!" Miss Williams slightly started 
 " what letter?" 
 
 " One I found lying under the laurel bush, quite 
 hidden by its leaves. It was all soaked with rain ; 
 I dried it in the sun, and then put it in my letter- 
 box, telling nobody, for I meant to deliver it my- 
 self at the hall-door, with a loud ring an English 
 postman's ring. Our Scotch one used to blow his 
 horn, you remember?" 
 
 " Yes," said Miss Williams. She was leaning 
 against the fatal bush, pale to the very lips, but her 
 veil was down ; nobody saw. " What sort of a 
 letter was it, David? Who was it to? Did you 
 notice the hand-writing?" 
 
 "Why, I was such a little fellow," and he look- 
 ed up in wonder and slight concern. "How could 
 I remember? Some letter that somebody had 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STOEY. 123 
 
 dropped, perhaps, in taking the rest out of the box. 
 It could not matter certainly not now. You 
 would not bring my youthful misdeeds up against 
 me, would you ?" And he turned up a half-com- 
 ical, half-pitiful face. 
 
 Fortune's first impulse what was it? She hard- 
 ly knew. But her second was that safest, easiest 
 thing now grown into the habit and refuge of her 
 whole life silence. 
 
 " No, it certainly does not matter now." 
 
 A deadly sickness came over her. What if this 
 letter were Eobert Eoy's, asking her that question 
 which, he said, no man ought ever to ask a woman 
 twice? And she had never seen it never an- 
 swered it. So, of course, he went away. Her 
 whole life nay, two whole lives had been de- 
 stroyed, and by a mere accident the aimless mis- 
 chief of a child's innocent hand. She could never 
 prove it, but it might have been so. And, alas! 
 alas! God, the merciful God, had allowed it to be 
 so! 
 
 Which is the worst, to wake up suddenly and 
 find that our life has been wrecked by our own 
 folly, mistake, or sin ; or that it has been done for 
 
 6 
 
124: THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 us, either directly by the hand of Providence, or in- 
 directly through some innocent nay, possibly not 
 innocent, but intentional hand ? In both cases, the 
 
 
 
 agony is equally sharp the sharper because irre- 
 mediable. 
 
 All these thoughts, vivid as lightning, and as 
 rapid, darted through poor Fortune's brain during 
 the few moments that she stood with her hand on 
 David's shoulder, while he drew from his magpie's 
 nest a heterogeneous mass of rubbish pebbles, 
 snail-shells, bits of glass and china, fragments even 
 of broken toys. 
 
 * ' Just look there ! What ghosts of my childhood, 
 as people would say ! Dead and buried, though." 
 And he laughed merrily he in the full tide and 
 glory of his youth. 
 
 Fortune Williams looked down on his happy 
 face this lad that really loved her, would not have 
 hurt her for the world ; and her determination was 
 made. He should never know any thing. No- 
 body should ever know any thing. The " dead and 
 buried " of fifteen years ago must be dead and bur- 
 ied forever. 
 
 "David," she said, "just out of curiosity, put 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 125 
 
 your hand down to the very bottom of that hole, 
 and see if you can fish up the mysterious let- 
 ter." 
 
 Then she waited, just as one would wait at the 
 edge of some long-closed grave, to see if the dead 
 could possibly be claimed as our dead, even if but 
 a handful of unhonored bones. 
 
 No, it was not possible. Nobody could expect 
 it, after such a lapse of time. Something David 
 pulled out it might be paper, it might be rags. 
 It was too dry to be moss or earth, but no one 
 could have recognized it as a letter. 
 
 " Give it me," said Miss Williams, holding out 
 her hand. 
 
 David put the little heap of " rubbish " therein. 
 She regarded it a moment, and then scattered it on 
 the ground " dust to dust," as we say in our fu- 
 neral service. But she said nothing. 
 
 At that moment the young people they were 
 waiting for came to the other side of the gate, clubs 
 in hand. David and the two Miss Moseleys had 
 by this time become perfectly mad for golf, as is 
 the fashion of the place. They proceeded across 
 the Links, Miss Williams accompanying them, as 
 
126 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 in duty bound. But she said she was rather 
 " tired," and, leaving them in charge of another 
 chaperon if chaperons are ever wanted, or need- 
 ed, in those merry Links of St. Andrews came 
 home alone. 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 127 
 
 CHAPTEK Y. 
 
 " Shall sharpest pathos blight us, doing no wrong?" 
 
 OO writes our greatest living poet, in one of 
 the noblest poems he ever penned. And he 
 speaks truth. The real canker of human existence 
 is not misery, but sin. 
 
 After the first cruel pang, the bitter wail after 
 her lost life and we have here but one life to 
 lose! her lost happiness, for she knew now that 
 though she might be very peaceful, very content, 
 no real happiness ever had come, ever could come 
 to her in this world, except Eobert Eoy's love 
 after this, Fortune sat down, folded her hands, and 
 bowed her head to the waves of sorrow that kept 
 sweeping over her, not for one day or two days, 
 but for many days and weeks the anguish, not of 
 patience, but regret sharp, stinging, helpless re- 
 gret. They came rolling in those remorseless 
 billows just like the long breakers on the sands 
 
128 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 of St. Andrews. Hopeless to resist, she could only 
 crouch down and let them pass. "All Thy waves 
 have gone over me." 
 
 Of course, this is spoken metaphorically. Out- 
 wardly, Miss Williams neither sat still, nor folded 
 her hands. She was seen everywhere as usual, 
 her own proper self, as the world knew it ; but un- 
 derneath all that was the self that she knew, and 
 God knew. No one else. No one ever could have 
 known, except Eobert Eoy, had things been dif- 
 ferent from what they were, from what God had 
 apparently willed them to be. 
 
 A sense of inevitable fate came over her. It 
 was now nearly two years since that letter from 
 Mr. Roy, of Shanghai, and no more tidings had 
 reached her. She began to think none ever would 
 reach her now. She ceased to hope or to fear, but 
 let herself drift on, accepting the small, pale pleas- 
 ures of every day, and never omitting one of its 
 duties. One only thought remained, which, con- 
 trasted with the darkness of all else, often gleamed 
 out as an actual joy. 
 
 If the lost letter really was Robert Roy's and 
 though she had no positive proof, she had the 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 129 
 
 strongest conviction, remembering the thick fog 
 of that Tuesday morning, how easily Archy might 
 have dropped it out of his hand, and how, dur- 
 ing those days of soaking rain, it might have lain, 
 unobserved by any one, under the laurel branches 
 till the child picked it up and hid it, as he said 
 if Eobert Eoy had written to her written in any 
 way, he was, at least, not faithless. And he might 
 have loved her then. Afterward, he might have 
 married, or died ; she might never find him again 
 in this world, or if she found him, he might be to- 
 tally changed still, whatever happened, he had 
 loved her. The fact remained. No power in earth 
 or heaven could alter it. 
 
 And sometimes, even yet, a half -superstitious 
 feeling came over her that all this was not for 
 nothing the impulse which had impelled her to 
 write to Shanghai, the other impulse, or concatena- 
 tion of circumstances, which had floated her, after 
 so many changes, back to the old place, the old life. 
 It looked like chance, but was it? Is any thing 
 chance? Does not our own will, soon or late, ac- 
 complish for us what we desire that is, when we 
 try to reconcile it to the will of God ? 
 
130 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 She had accepted his will all these years, seeing 
 no reason for it; often feeling it very hard and 
 cruel, but still accepting it. And now ? 
 
 I am writing no sensational story. In it are no 
 grand dramatic points; no Deus ex machind ap- 
 pears to make all smooth ; every event if it can 
 boast of aught so large as an event follows the 
 other in perfectly natural succession. For I have 
 always observed that in life there are rarely any 
 startling "effects," but gradual evolutions. Noth- 
 ing happens by accident; and, the premises once 
 granted, nothing happens but what was quite sure 
 to happen, following those premises. We novel- 
 ists do not "make up" our stories; they make 
 themselves. Nor do human beings invent their 
 own lives ; they do but use up the materials given 
 to them some well, some ill ; some wisely, some 
 foolishly; but in the main, the dictum of the 
 Preacher is not far from the truth, "All things 
 come alike to all." 
 
 A whole winter had passed by, and the spring 
 twilights were beginning to lengthen, tempting 
 Miss Williams and her girls to linger another half 
 hour before they lighted the lamp for the evening. 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 131 
 
 They were doing so, cozily chatting over the fire, 
 after the fashion of a purely feminine household, 
 when there was a sudden announcement that a gen- 
 tleman, with two . little boys, wanted to see Miss 
 Williams. He declined to give his name, and said 
 he would not detain her more than a few min- 
 utes. 
 
 " Let him come in here," Fortune was just about 
 to say, when she reflected that it might be some 
 law business which concerned her girls, whom she 
 had grown so tenderly anxious to save from any 
 trouble and protect from every care. " No, I will 
 go and speak to him myself." 
 
 She rose and walked quietly into the parlor, al- 
 ready shadowed into twilight; a neat, compact lit- 
 tle person, dressed in soft gray home-spun, with a 
 pale pink bow on her throat, and another in her 
 cap a pretty little fabric of lace and cambric, 
 which, being now the fashion, her girls had at last 
 condescended to let her wear. She had on a black 
 silk apron, with pockets, into one of which she had 
 hastily thrust her work, and her thimble was yet 
 on her finger. This was the figure on which the 
 
 eyes of the gentleman rested as he turned round. 
 
 6* 
 
132 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 Miss Williams lifted her eyes inquiringly to his 
 face a bearded face, thin and dark. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, I have not the pleasure of 
 knowing you ; I " 
 
 She suddenly stopped. Something in the height, 
 the turn of the head, the crisp dark hair, in which 
 were not more than a few threads of gray, while 
 hers had so many now, reminded her of some 
 one the bare thought of whom made her feel dizzy 
 and blind. 
 
 " No," he said, " I did not expect you would 
 know me; and, indeed, until I saw you, I was not 
 sure you were the right Miss Williams. Possibly, 
 you may remember my name Roy, Robert Roy." 
 
 Faces alter, manners, gestures ; but the one thing 
 which never changes is a voice. Had Fortune 
 heard this one ay, at her last dying hour, when 
 all worldly sounds were fading away she would 
 have recognized it at once. 
 
 The room being full of shadow, no one could see 
 any thing distinctly ; and it was as well. 
 
 In another minute she had risen, and held out 
 her hand. 
 
 "I am very glad to see you, Mr. Roy. How 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STOKY. 133 
 
 long have you been in England ? Are these your 
 little boys?" 
 
 Without answering, he took her hand, a quiet, 
 friendly grasp, just as it used to be. And so, with- 
 out another word, the gulf of fifteen seventeen 
 years was overleaped, and Kobert Eoy and Fort- 
 une Williams had met once more. 
 
 If any body had told her when she rose that 
 morning what would happen before night, and hap- 
 pen so naturally too, she would have said it was 
 impossible. That after a very few minutes, she 
 could have sat there, talking to him as to any or- 
 dinary acquaintance, seemed incredible, yet it was 
 truly so. 
 
 "I was in great doubt whether the Miss Wil- 
 liams who, they told me, lived here was yourself, 
 or some other lady ; but I thought I would take 
 the chance. Because, were it yourself, I thought, 
 for the sake of old times, you might be willing to 
 advise me concerning my two little boys, whom I 
 have brought to St. Andrews for their education." 
 
 " Your sons, are they ?" 
 
 " "No. I am not married." 
 
 There was a pause, and then he told the little fel- 
 
134: THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 lows to go and look out of the window, while he 
 talked with Miss Williams. He spoke to them in 
 a fatherly tone; there was nothing whatever of the 
 young man left in him now. His voice was sweet, 
 his manner grave, his whole appearance unques- 
 tionably " middle-aged." 
 
 " They are orphans. Their name is Koy ; though 
 they are not my relatives, or so distant that it mat- 
 ters nothing. But their father was a very good 
 friend of mine, which matters a great deal. He 
 died suddenly, and his wife soon after, leaving 
 their affairs in great confusion. Hearing this far 
 up in the Australian bush, where I had been a 
 sheep -farmer for some years, I came round by 
 Shanghai, but too late to do more than take these 
 younger boys and bring them home. The rest of 
 the family are disposed of. These two will be 
 henceforward mine. That is all." 
 
 A very little " all," and wholly about other peo- 
 ple ; scarcely a word about himself. Yet he seem- 
 ed to think it sufficient, and as if she had no possi- 
 ble interest in hearing more. 
 
 Cursorily, he mentioned having received her 
 letter, which was "friendly and kind;" that it had 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 135 
 
 followed him to Australia, and then back to Shang- 
 hai. But his return home seemed to have been 
 entirely without reference to it or to her. 
 
 So she let all pass, and accepted things as they 
 were. It was enough. When a shipwrecked man 
 sees land ever so barren a land, ever so desolate 
 a shore he does not argue within himself, "Is 
 this my haven ?" He simply puts into it, and lets 
 himself be drifted ashore. 
 
 It took but a few minutes more to explain fur- 
 ther what Mr. Eoy wanted a home for his two 
 " poor little fellows." 
 
 "They are so young still and they have lost 
 their mother. They would do very well in their 
 classes here, if some kind woman would take them 
 and look after them. I felt, if the Miss Williams I 
 heard of were really the Miss Williams I used to 
 know, I could trust them to her more than to any 
 woman I ever knew." 
 
 "Thank you." And then she explained that 
 she had already two girls in charge. She could 
 say nothing till she had consulted them. In the 
 mean time 
 
 At this moment the tea -bell sounded. The 
 
136 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 world was going on just as usual this strange, 
 commonplace, busy, regardless world ! 
 
 " I beg your pardon for intruding on your time 
 so long," said Mr. Roy, rising. " I will leave you 
 to consider the question, and you will let me know 
 as soon as you can. I am staying at the hotel here, 
 and shall remain until I can leave my boys settled. 
 Good-evening." 
 
 Again she felt the grasp of the hand: that ghost- 
 ly touch, so vivid in dreams for all these years, and 
 now a warm, living reality. It was too much. She 
 could not bear it. 
 
 "If you would care to stay," she said and 
 though it was too dark to see her, he must have 
 heard the faint tremble in her voice "our tea is 
 ready. Let me introduce you to my girls, and 
 they can make friends with your little boys." 
 
 The matter was soon settled, and the little par- 
 ty ushered into the bright, warm parlor, glittering 
 with all the appendages of that pleasant meal es- 
 sentially feminine a " hungry " tea. Robert Roy 
 put his hand over his eyes as if the light dazzled 
 him, and then sat down in the arm-chair which 
 Miss Williams brought forward, turning as he did 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STOEY. 137 
 
 so to look up at her right in her face with his 
 grave, soft, earnest eyes. 
 
 "Thank you. How like that was to your old 
 ways ! How very little you are changed I" 
 
 This was the only reference he made, in the 
 slightest degree, to former times. 
 
 And she ? 
 
 She went out of the room, ostensibly to get a pot 
 of guava jelly for tae boys found it after some 
 search, and then sat down. 
 
 Only in her store-closet, with her housekeeping 
 things all about her. But it was a quiet place, 
 and the door was shut. 
 
 There is, in one of these infinitely pathetic Old 
 Testament stories, a sentence: "And he sought 
 where to weep; and he entered into his chamber 
 and wept there." 
 
 She did not weep, this woman, not a young wom- 
 an now : she only tried during her few minutes of 
 solitude to gather up her thoughts, to realize what 
 had happened to her, and who it was that sat in 
 the next room under her roof at her very fire- 
 side. Then she clasped her hands with a sudden 
 sob, wild as any of the emotions of her girlhood : 
 
138 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 " Oh, my love, my love, the love of all my life ! 
 Thank God !" 
 
 The evening passed, not very merrily, but peace- 
 fully ; the girls, who had heard a good deal of Mr. 
 Eoy from David Dalziel, doing their best to be 
 courteous to him, and to amuse his shy little boys. 
 He did not stay long, evidently having a morbid 
 dread of " intruding," and his manner was exceed- 
 ingly reserved, almost awkward sometimes, of 
 which he seemed painfully conscious, apologizing 
 for being " unaccustomed to civilization, and to la- 
 dies' society, having during his life in the bush 
 sometimes passed months at a time without ever 
 seeing a woman's face." 
 
 "And women are your only civilizers," said he. 
 " That is why I wished my motherless lads to be 
 taken into this household of yours, Miss Williams, 
 which looks so so comfortable," and he glanced 
 round the pretty parlor with something very like a 
 sigh. " I hope you will consider the matter, and let 
 me know as soon as you have made up your mind." 
 
 " Which I shall do very soon," she answered. 
 
 " Yes, I know you will. And your decision 
 once made, you never change." 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 139 
 
 " Very seldom. I am not one of those who are 
 'given to change.' " 
 
 "Nor I." 
 
 He stood a moment, lingering in the pleasant, 
 lightsome warmth, as if loath to quit it, then took 
 his little boys iri either hand, and went away. 
 
 There was a grand consultation that night, for 
 Miss Williams never did any thing without speak- 
 ing to her girls; but still it was only nominal. 
 They always left the decision to her. And her 
 heart yearned over the two little Roys, orphans, yet 
 children still ; while Helen and Janetta were grow- 
 ing up, and needing very little from her except a 
 general motherly supervision. Besides, he asked 
 it. He had said distinctly that she was the only 
 woman to whom he could thoroughly trust his 
 boys. So she took them. 
 
 After a few days, the new state of things grew 
 so familiar that it seemed as if it had lasted for 
 months, the young Roys going to and fro to their 
 classes, and their golf-playing, just as the young 
 Dalziels had done ; and Mr. Roy coming about the 
 house, almost daily exactly as Robert Roy had 
 used to do of old. Sometimes it was to Fortune 
 
140 THE LAUEEL BUSH. 
 
 "Williams the strangest reflex of former times; only 
 with a difference. 
 
 Unquestionably, he was very much changed. 
 In outward appearance more even than the time 
 accounted for. No man can knock about the 
 world, in different lands and climates, for seventeen 
 years, without bearing the marks of it. Though 
 still under fifty, he had all the air of an "elderly " 
 man, and had grown a little "peculiar " in his ways 
 his modes of thought and speech, except that he 
 spoke so very little. He accounted for this by his 
 long, lonely life in Australia, which had produced, 
 he said, an almost unconquerable habit of silence. 
 Altogether, he was far more of an old bachelor than 
 she was of an old m#id, and Fortune felt this : felt, 
 too, that, in spite of her gray hairs, she was in reali- 
 ty quite as young as he, nay, sometimes younger; 
 for her innocent, simple, shut-up life had kept her 
 young. 
 
 And he, what had his life been, in so far as he 
 gradually betrayed it ? Eestless, struggling ; a per- 
 petual battle with the world ; having to hold his 
 own, and fight his way inch by inch he who was 
 naturally a born student, to whom the whirl of a 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 141 
 
 business career was especially obnoxious. What 
 had made him choose it? Once chosen, probably 
 he could not help himself; besides, he was not one 
 to put his shoulder to the wheel and then draw 
 back. Evidently, with the grain or against the 
 grain, he had gone on with it this sad, strange, 
 wandering life, until he had "made his fortune," 
 for he told her so. But he said no more ; whether 
 he meant to stay at home and spend it, or go out 
 again to the antipodes (and he spoke of those far 
 lands without any distaste, even with a lingering 
 kindliness, for indeed he seemed to have no un- 
 kindly thought of any place or person in all the 
 world), his friend did not know. 
 
 His friend. That was the word. No other.' 
 After her first outburst of uncontrollable emotion, 
 to call Eobert Eoy her " love," even in fancy, or to 
 expect that he would deport himself in any lover- 
 like way, became ridiculous, pathetically ridiculous. 
 She was sure of that. Evidently, no idea of the 
 kind entered his mind. She was Miss Williams, 
 and he was Mr. Koy two middle-aged people, both 
 with their different responsibilities, their altogether 
 separate lives ; and, hard as her own had been, it 
 
142 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 seemed as if his had been the harder of the two 
 aj, though he was now a rich man, and she still 
 little better than a poor governess. 
 
 She did not think very much of worldly things, 
 but still she was aware of this fact that he was 
 rich and she was poor. She did not suffer herself 
 to dwell upon it, but the consciousness was there, 
 sustained with a certain feeling called "proper 
 pride." The conviction was forced upon her in 
 the very first days of Mr. Eoy's return that to go 
 back to the days of their youth was as impossible 
 as to find primroses in September. 
 
 If, indeed, there were any thing to go back to. 
 Sometimes she felt, if she could only have found 
 out that, all the rest would be easy, painless. If 
 she could only have said to him, "Did you write 
 me the letter you promised? Did you ever love 
 me?" But that one question was, of course, utter- 
 ly impossible. He made no reference whatever 
 to old things, but seemed resolved to take up the 
 present a very peaceful and happy present it soon 
 grew to be just as if there were no past at all. 
 So perforce did she. 
 
 But, as I think I have said once before, human 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 143 
 
 nature is weak, and there were days when the leaves 
 were budding, and the birds singing in the trees, 
 when the sun was shining and the waves rolling in 
 upon the sands, just as they rolled in that morning 
 over those two lines of footmarks, which might 
 have walked together through life; and who knows 
 what mutual strength, help, and comfort this might 
 have proved to both? then, it was, for one at 
 least, rather hard. 
 
 Especially when, bit by bit, strange, ghostly frag- 
 ments of his old self began to re-appear in Kobert 
 Eoy : his keen delight in nature, his love of botan- 
 ical or geological excursions. Often he would go 
 wandering down the familiar shore for hours, in 
 search of marine animals for the girls' aquarium, 
 and then would come and sit down at their tea-ta- 
 ble, reading or talking, so like the Eobert Koy of old, 
 that one of the little group, who always crept in the 
 background, felt dizzy and strange, as if all her later 
 years had been a dream, and she were living her 
 youth over again, only with the difference afore- 
 said. A difference, sharp as that between death and 
 life yet with something of the peace of death in it. 
 
 Sometimes, when they met at the innocent little 
 
144: THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 tea-parties which St. Andrews began to give for, 
 of course, in that small community every body 
 knew every body, and all his affairs to boot, often 
 a good deal better than he did himself; so that 
 there was great excitement, and no end of specu- 
 lation, over Mr. Eoy sometimes, meeting, as they 
 were sure to do, and walking home together, with 
 the moonlight shining down the empty streets, and 
 the stars out by myriads over the silent distant sea, 
 while the nearer tide came washing in upon the 
 sands all was so like so frightfully like! old 
 times, that it was very sore to bear. 
 
 But, as I have said, Miss Williams was Miss Wil- 
 liams, and Mr. Eoy Mr. Roy, and there were her 
 two girls always besides them; also his two boys, 
 who soon took to " auntie " as naturally as if they 
 were really hers, or she theirs. 
 
 " I think they had better call you so, as the oth- 
 ers do," said Mr. Roy, one day. "Are these young 
 ladies really related to you ?" 
 
 "No; but I promised their father on his death- 
 bed to take charge of them. That is all." 
 
 "He is dead, then? Was he a great friend of 
 yours?" 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 145 
 
 She felt the blood flashing all over her face, but 
 she answered steadily: "Not a very intimate friend, 
 but I respected him exceedingly. He was a good 
 man. His daughters had a heavy loss when he 
 died, and I am glad to be a comfort to them so 
 long as they need me." 
 
 "I have no doubt of it." 
 
 This was the only question he ever asked her 
 concerning her past life, though, by slow degrees, he 
 told her a good deal of his own. Enough to make 
 her quite certain, even if her keen feminine instinct 
 had not already divined the fact, that whatever 
 there might have been in it of suffering, there was 
 nothing in the smallest degree either to be ashamed 
 of or to hide. What Eobert Roy, of Shanghai, had 
 written about him had continued true. As he said 
 one day to her, " We never stand still. We either 
 grow better or worse. You have not grown worse." 
 
 Nor had he. All that was good in him had de- 
 veloped, all his little faults had toned down. The 
 Robert Roy of to-day was slightly different from, 
 but in nowise inferior to, the Robert Roy of her 
 youth. She saw it, and rejoiced in the seeing. 
 
 What he saw in her she could not tell. He 
 
146 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 seemed determined to rest wholly in the present, 
 and take out of it all the peace and pleasantness 
 that he could. In the old days, when the Dalziel 
 boys were naughty, and Mrs. Dalziel tiresome, and 
 work was hard, and holidays were few, and life 
 was altogether the rough road that it often seems 
 to the young, he had once called her " Pleasantness 
 and Peace." He never said so now; but some- 
 times he looked it. 
 
 Many an evening he came and sat by her fire- 
 side, in the arm-chair, which seemed by right to 
 have devolved upon him; never staying very 
 long, for he was still nervously sensitive about be- 
 ing "in the way," but making himself and them 
 all very cheerful and happy while he did stay. 
 Only sometimes when Fortune's eyes stole to his 
 face not a young man's face now she fancied 
 she could trace, besides the wrinkles, a sadness, ap- 
 proaching to hardness, that never used to be. But, 
 again, when, interested in some book or other (he 
 said it was delicious to take to reading again, after 
 the long fast of years), he would look round to her 
 for sympathy, or utter one of his dry drolleries, the 
 old likeness^ the old manner and tone, would come 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 147 
 
 back so vividly that she started, hardly knowing 
 whether the feeling it gave her was pleasure or 
 pain. 
 
 But beneath both, lying so deep clown that nei- 
 ther he nor any one could ever suspect its presence, 
 was something else. Can many waters quench 
 love? Can the deep sea drown it? What years 
 of silence can wither it ? What frost of age can 
 freeze it down ? God only knows. 
 
 Hers was not like a girl's love. Those two girls 
 sitting by her day after day would have smiled 
 at it, and at its object Between themselves they 
 considered Mr. Roy somewhat of an "old fogy;" 
 were very glad to make use of him now and then, 
 in the great dearth of gentlemen at St. Andrews, 
 and equally glad afterward to turn him over to 
 auntie, who was always kind to him. Auntie was 
 so kind to every body. 
 
 Kind ? Of course she was, and, above all, when 
 he looked worn and tired. He did so sometimes : 
 as if life had ceased to be all pleasure, and the con- 
 stant mirth of these young folks was just a little 
 too much for him. Then she ingeniously used to 
 
 save him from it and them, for a while. They nev- 
 
 7 
 
148 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 er knew there was no need for them to know 
 how tenfold deeper than all the passion of youth is 
 the tenderness with which a woman cleaves to the 
 man she loves when she sees him growing old. 
 
 Thus the days went by, till Easter came, an- 
 nounced by the sudden apparition, one evening, of 
 David Dalziel. 
 
 That young man, when, the very first day of his 
 holidays, he walked in upon his friends at St. An- 
 drews, and found sitting at their tea-table a strange 
 gentleman, did not like it. Scarcely even when 
 he found out that the intruder was his old friend, 
 Mr. Eoy. 
 
 "And you never told me a word about this," 
 said he, reproachfully, to Miss Williams. " Indeed, 
 you have not written to me for weeks ; you have 
 forgotten all about me." 
 
 She winced at the accusation, for it was true. 
 Beyond her daily domestic life, which she still care- 
 fully fulfilled, she had, in truth, forgotten every 
 thing. Outside people were ceasing to affect her at 
 all. What he liked, what he wanted to do, day by 
 day whether he looked ill or well, happy or unhap- 
 py, only he rarely looked either this was slowly 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 149 
 
 growing to be once more her whole world. With a 
 sting of compunction, and another, half of fear, save 
 that there was nothing to dread, nothing that could 
 affect any body beyond herself Miss Williams 
 roused herself to give young Dalziel an especially 
 hearty welcome, and to make his little visit as hap- 
 py as possible. 
 
 Small need of that ; he was bent on taking all 
 things pleasantly. Coming now near the end of a 
 very creditable college career, being of age and in- 
 dependent, with the cozy little fortune that his old 
 grandmother had left him, the young fellow was 
 disposed to see every thing coukur de rose, and this 
 feeling communicated itself to all his friends. 
 
 It was a pleasant time. Often in years to come 
 did that little knot of friends, old and young, look 
 back upon it as upon one of those rare bright bits 
 in life when the outside current of things moves 
 smoothly on, while underneath it there may or may 
 not be, but generally there is, a secret or two which 
 turns the most trivial events into sweet and dear 
 remembrances forever. 
 
 David's days being few enough, they took pains 
 not to lose one, but planned excursions here, there, 
 
150 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 and everywhere to Dundee, to Perth, to Elie, to 
 Balcarras all together, children, young folks, and 
 elders; that admirable melange which generally 
 makes such expeditions "go off" well. Theirs 
 did, especially the last one, to the old house of 
 Balcarras, where they got admission to the lovely 
 quaint garden, and Janetta sung "Auld Kobin 
 Gray " on the spot where it was written. 
 
 She had a sweet voice, and there seemed to have 
 come into it a pathos which Fortune had never re- 
 marked before. The touching, ever old, ever new 
 story made the young people quite quiet for a few 
 minutes; and then they all wandered away to- 
 gether, Helen promising to look after the two wild 
 young Roys, to see that they did not kill them- 
 selves in some unforeseen way, as, aided and abet- 
 ted by David and Janetta, they went on a scramble 
 up Balcarras Hill. 
 
 "Will you go too?" said Fortune to Robert Roy. 
 "I have the provisions to see to; besides, I can 
 not scramble as well as the rest. I am not quite 
 so young as I used to be." 
 
 "Nor I," he answered, as, taking her basket, he 
 walked silently on beside her. 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 151 
 
 It was a curious feeling, and all to come out of a 
 foolish song ; but if ever she felt thankful to God 
 from the bottom of her heart, that she had said 
 "No," at once and decisively, to the good man 
 who slept at peace beneath the church -yard elms, it 
 was at that moment. But the feeling and the mo- 
 ment passed by immediately. Mr. Roy took up 
 the thread of conversation where he had left it off 
 it was some bookish or ethical argument, such as 
 he would go on with for hours ; so she listened to 
 him in silence. They walked on, the larks sing- 
 ing and the primroses blowing. All the world was 
 saying to itself, " I am young, I am happy ;" but 
 she said nothing at all. 
 
 People grow used to pain ; it dies down at inter- 
 vals, and becomes quite bearable, especially when 
 no one sees it, or guesses at it. 
 
 They had a very merry picnic on the hill-top 
 enjoying those mundane consolations of food and 
 drink which auntie was expected always to have 
 forthcoming, and which those young people did 
 by no means despise, nor Mr. Eoy neither. He 
 made himself so very pleasant with them all, 
 looking thoroughly happy, and baring his head 
 
152 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 to the spring breeze with the eagerness of a 
 boy. 
 
 " Oh, this is delicious ! It makes me feel young 
 again. There's nothing like home. One thing I 
 am determined upon: I will never quit bonnie 
 Scotland more." 
 
 It was the first clear intimation he had given of 
 his intentions regarding the future, but it thrilled 
 her with measureless content. If only he would 
 not go abroad again, if she might have him within 
 reach for the rest of her days able to see him, to 
 talk to him, to know where he was and what he 
 was doing, instead of being cut off from him by 
 those terrible dividing seas it was enough ! Noth- 
 ing could be so bitter as what had been ; and what- 
 ever was the mystery of their youth, which it was 
 impossible to unravel now whether he had ever 
 loved her, or loved her and crushed it down and 
 forgotten it, or only felt very kindly and cordially 
 to her, as he did now, the past was well, only the 
 past! and the future lay still before her, not un- 
 sweet. When we are young, we insist on having 
 every thing or nothing; when we are older, we 
 learn that "every thing" is an impossible, and 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 153 
 
 " nothing " a somewhat bitter, word. We are able 
 to stoop meekly, and pick up the fragments of the 
 children's bread, without feeling ourselves to be al- 
 together " dogs." 
 
 Fortune went home that night with a not unhap- 
 py, almost a satisfied, heart. She sat back in the 
 carriage, close beside that other heart which she 
 believed to be the truest in all the world, though 
 it had never been hers. There was a tremendous 
 clatter of talking and laughing, and fun of all sorts, 
 between David Dalziel and the little Eoys on the 
 box, and the Miss Moseleys sitting just below 
 them, as they had insisted on doing, no doubt find- 
 ing the other two members of the party a little 
 "slow." 
 
 Nevertheless, Mr. Koy and Miss Williams took 
 their part in laughing with their young people, 
 and trying to keep them in order; though after a 
 while both relapsed into silence. One did at least, 
 for it had been a long day, and she was tired, be- 
 ing, as she had said, "not so young as she had 
 been." But if any one of these lively young peo- 
 ple had asked her the question whether she was 
 happy, or at least contented, she would have nev- 
 
154 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 er hesitated about her reply. Young, gay, and 
 prosperous as they were, I doubt if Fortune Wil- 
 liams would have changed lots with any one of 
 them all. 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 155 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 A S it befell, that day at Balcarras was the last 
 of the bright days, in every sense, for the time 
 being. Wet weather set in, as even the most par- 
 tial witness must allow does occasionally happen in 
 Scotland, and the domestic barometer seemed to go 
 down accordingly. The girls grumbled at being 
 kept indoors, and would willingly have gone out 
 golfing under umbrellas, but auntie was remorse- 
 less. They were delicate girls at best, so that her 
 watch over them was never ceasing, and her pa- 
 tience inexhaustible. 
 
 David Dalziel also was in a very troublesome 
 mood, quite unusual for him. He came and went, 
 complained bitterly that the girls were not allowed 
 to go out with him ; abused the place, the climate, 
 and did all those sort of bearish things which young 
 gentlemen are sometimes in the habit of doing, 
 
 when when that wicked little boy whom they 
 7* 
 
156 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 read about at school and college makes himself 
 known to them as a pleasant, or unpleasant, real, 
 ity. 
 
 Miss Williams, who, I am afraid, was far too sim- 
 ple a woman for the new generation, which has 
 become so extraordinarily wise and wide awake, 
 opened her eyes and wondered why David was so 
 unlike his usual self. Mr. Koy, too, to whom he 
 behaved worse than to any one else, only the elder 
 man quietly ignored it all, and was very patient 
 and gentle with the restless, ill-tempered boy Mr. 
 Eoy even remarked that he thought David would 
 be happier at his work again; idling was a bad 
 thing for young fellows at his age, or any age. 
 
 At last it all came out, the bitterness which ran- 
 kled in the poor lad's breast; with another secret, 
 which, foolish woman that she was, Miss Williams 
 had never in the least degree suspected. Yery 
 odd that she had not, but so it was. We all find 
 it difficult to realize the moment when our children 
 cease to be children. Still more difficult is it for 
 very serious and earnest natures to recognize that 
 there are other natures which take things in a to- 
 tally different way, and yet it may be the right and 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 157 
 
 natural way for them. Such is the fact : we must 
 learn it, and the sooner we learn it the better. 
 
 One day, when the rain had a little abated, Da- 
 vid appeared, greatly disappointed to find the girls 
 had gone out, down to the West Sands, with Mr. 
 Koy. 
 
 "Always Mr. Koy ! I am sick of his name," 
 muttered David, and then caught Miss Williams 
 by the dress as she was rising: she had a gentle 
 but rather dignified way with her of repressing bad 
 manners in young people, either by perfect silence, 
 or by putting the door between her and them. 
 " Don't go ! One never can get a quiet word with 
 you, you are always so preternaturally busy." 
 
 It was true. To be always busy was her only 
 shield against certain things which the young 
 man was never likely to know, and would not un- 
 derstand if he did know. 
 
 11 Do sit down, if you ever can sit down, for a 
 minute," said he, imploringly ; " I want to speak to 
 you seriously, very seriously." 
 
 She sat down, a little uneasy. The young fellow 
 was such a good fellow; and yet he might have 
 got into a scrape of some sort. Debt, perhaps ; for 
 
158 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 he was a trifle extravagant : but, then, life had been 
 all roses to him. He had never known a want 
 since he was born. 
 
 " Speak then, David ; I am listening. Nothing 
 very wrong, I hope !" said she, with a smile. 
 
 " Nothing at all wrong, only When is Mr. 
 Eoy going away?" 
 
 The question was so unexpected that she felt 
 her color changing a little; not much: she was 
 too old for that. 
 
 " Mr. Eoy leaving St. Andrews, you mean ? How 
 can I tell ? He has never told me. Why do you 
 ask?" 
 
 " Because until he is gone, I stay," said the young 
 man, doggedly. "I'm not going back to Oxford 
 leaving him master of the field. I have stood him 
 as long as I possibly can, and I'll not stand him 
 any longer." 
 
 "David! you forget yourself." 
 
 "There now you are offended; I know you 
 are, when you draw yourself up in that way, my 
 dear little auntie. But just hear me. You are 
 such an innocent woman, you don't know the world 
 as we men do. Can't you see no, of course you 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 159 
 
 can't that very soon all St. Andrews will be talk- 
 ing about you ?" 
 
 "About me?" 
 
 " Not about you exactly but about the family. 
 A single man a marrying man, as all the world 
 says he is, or ought to be, with his money can 
 not go in and out like a tame cat in a household 
 of women, without having, or being supposed to 
 have ahem! intentions. I assure you" and 
 he swung himself on the arm of her chair, and 
 looked into her face with an angry earnestness 
 quite unmistakable "I assure you, I never go 
 into the club without being asked, twenty times a 
 day, which of the Miss Moseleys Mr. Koy is going 
 to marry ?" 
 
 " Which of the Miss Moseleys Mr. Eoy is going 
 to marry ?" 
 
 She repeated the words, as if to gain time, and 
 to be certain she heard them rightly. No fear of 
 her blushing now ; every pulse in her heart stood 
 dead still ; and then she nerved herself to meet the 
 necessity of the occasion. 
 
 "David, you surely do not consider what you 
 are saying. This is a most extraordinary idea." 
 
160 THE LAUEEL BUSH. 
 
 " It is a most extraordinary idea ; in fact, I call 
 it ridiculous, monstrous; an old battered fellow 
 like him, who has knocked about the world, Heav- 
 en knows where, all these years, to come home, 
 and, because he has got a lot of money, think to go 
 and marry one of these nice, pretty girls. They 
 wouldn't have him, I believe that ; but nobody else 
 believes it ; and every body seems to think it the 
 most natural thing possible. What do you say ?" 
 
 "I?" 
 
 " Surely you don't think it right, or even possi- 
 ble? But, auntie, it might turn out a rather awk- 
 ward affair, and you ought to take my advice, and 
 stop it in time.'* 
 
 "How?" 
 
 " Why, by stopping him out of the house. You 
 and he are great friends ; if he had any notion of 
 marrying, I suppose he would mention it to you 
 he ought. It would be a cowardly trick to come 
 and steal one of your chickens from under your 
 wing, wouldn't it? Do say something, instead of 
 merely echoing what I say. It really is a serious 
 matter, though you don't think so." 
 
 "Yes! I do think so," said Miss Williams at 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STOKY. 161 
 
 last ; " and I would stop it, if I thought I had any 
 right. But Mr. Boy is quite able to manage his 
 own affairs ; and he is not so very old not more 
 than five-and-twenty years older than Helen." 
 
 "Bother Helen ! I beg her pardon, she is a dear, 
 good girl. But, do you think any man would look 
 at Helen when there was Janetta?" 
 
 It was out now, out with a burning blush over 
 all the lad's honest face, and the sudden crick- 
 crack of a pretty Indian paper-cutter he unfortu- 
 nately was twiddling in his fingers. Miss Williams 
 must have been blind indeed not to have guessed 
 the state of the case. 
 
 " What 1 Janetta? Oh, David !" was all she said. 
 
 He nodded. "Yes, that's it, just it. I thought 
 you must have found it out long ago; though I 
 kept myself to myself pretty close : still, you might 
 have guessed." 
 
 " I never did. I had not the remotest idea. Oh, 
 how remiss I have been ! It is all my fault." 
 
 " Excuse me, I can not see that it is any body's 
 fault, or any body's misfortune either," said the 
 young fellow, with a not unbecoming pride. "I 
 hope I should not be a bad husband to any girl, 
 
162 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 when it comes to that. But it has not come; I 
 have never said a single word to her. I wanted to 
 be quite clear of Oxford, and in a way to win my 
 own position first. And, really, we are so very jol- 
 ly together as it is. What are you smiling for ?" 
 
 She could not help it. There was something so 
 funny in the whole affair. They seemed such ba- 
 bies, playing at love ; and their love-making, if such 
 it was, had been carried on in such an exceedingly 
 open and lively way not a bit of tragedy about it ; 
 rather genteel comedy, bordering on farce. It was 
 such a contrast to certain other love stories that 
 she had known, quite buried out of sight now. 
 
 Gentle "auntie" the grave maiden lady, the 
 old hen with all these young ducklings who would 
 take to the water so soon held out her hand to 
 the impetuous David. 
 
 "I don't know what to say to you, my boy : 
 you really are little more than a boy; and to be 
 taking upon yourself the responsibilities of life so 
 soon ! Still, I am glad you have said nothing to 
 her about it yet. She is a mere child, only eight- 
 een." 
 
 " Quite old enough to marry, and to marry Mr. 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 163 
 
 Roy even, the St. Andrews folks think. But I 
 won't stand it. I won't tamely sit by and see her 
 sacrificed. He might persuade her ; he has a very 
 winning way with him sometimes. Auntie, I have 
 not spoken, but I won't promise not to speak. It 
 is all very well for you; you are old, and your 
 blood runs cold, as you said to us one day no, I 
 don't mean that ; you are a real brick still, and 
 you'll never be old to us ; but you are not in love, 
 and you can't understand what it is to a young fel- 
 low like me to see an old fellow like Roy coming 
 in and j ust walking over the course. But he sha'n't 
 do it. Long ago, when I was quite a lad, I made 
 up my mind to get her; and get her I will, spite 
 of Mr. Roy or any body." 
 
 Fortune was touched. That strong will, which 
 she too had had, able, like faith, to " remove mount- 
 ains," sympathized involuntarily with the lad. It 
 was j ust what she would have said and done, had 
 she been a man and loved a woman. She gave 
 David's hand a warm clasp, which he returned. 
 
 "Forgive me," said he, affectionately. "I did 
 not mean to bother you ; but, as things stand, the 
 matter is better out than in. I hate underhanded- 
 
164 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 ness. I may have made an awful fool of myself, 
 but at least I have not made a fool of her. I have 
 been as careful as possible not to compromise her 
 in any way ; for I know how people do talk, and a 
 man has no right to let the girl he loves be talked 
 about. The more he loves her, the more he ought 
 to take care of her. Don't you think so?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I'd cut myself up into little pieces for Janetta's 
 sake," he went on, " and I'd do a deal for Helen 
 too : the sisters are so fond of one another. She 
 shall always have a home with us, when we are 
 married." 
 
 " Then," said Miss Williams, hardly able again 
 to resist a smile, "you are quite certain you will 
 be married ? You have no doubt about her caring 
 for you ?" 
 
 David pulled his whiskers, not very voluminous 
 yet, looked conscious, and yet humble. 
 
 " Well, I don't exactly say that. I know I'm 
 not half good enough for her. Still, I thought, 
 when I had taken my degree, and fairly settled 
 myself at the bar, I'd try. I have a tolerably good 
 income of my own too, though, of course, I am not 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 165 
 
 as well off as that confounded old Koy. There 
 he is at this minute, meandering up and down the 
 West Sands with those two girls, setting every 
 body's tongue going! I can't stand it! I declare 
 to you, I won't stand it another day !" 
 
 " Stop a moment," and she caught hold of Da- 
 vid as he started up. "What are you going to 
 do?" 
 
 " I don't know and I don't care, only I won't 
 have my girl talked about my pretty, merry, in- 
 nocent girl. He ought to know better, a shrewd 
 old fellow like him. It is silly, selfish, mean." 
 
 This was more than Miss Williams could bear. 
 She stood up, pale to the lips, but speaking strong- 
 ly, almost fiercely. 
 
 11 You ought to know better, David Dalziel. 
 You ought to know that Mr. Eoy has not an atom 
 of selfishness or meanness in him, that he would 
 be the last man in the world to compromise any 
 girl. If he chooses to marry Janetta, or any one 
 else, he has a perfect right to do it, and I for one 
 will not try to hinder him." 
 
 "Then you'll not stand by me any more?" 
 
 "Not if you are blind and unfair. You may 
 
166 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 die of love, though I don't think you will ; people 
 don't do it nowadays " (there was a slightly bitter 
 jar in the voice) ; " but love ought to make you 
 all the more honorable, clear-sighted, and just. 
 And as to Mr. Koy " 
 
 She might have talked to the winds, for David 
 was not listening. He had heard the click of the 
 garden gate, and turned round with blazing eyes. 
 
 " There he is again ! I can't stand it, Miss Wil- 
 liams ! I give you fair warning, I can't stand it ! 
 He has walked home with them, and is waiting 
 about at the laurel bush, mooning after them. Oh, 
 hang him!" 
 
 Before she had time to speak, the young man 
 was gone. But she had no fear of any very tragic 
 consequences when she saw the whole party stand- 
 ing together David talking to Janetta, Mr. Roy 
 to Helen, who looked so fresh, so young, so pretty, 
 almost as pretty as Janetta. Nor did Mr. Koy, 
 pleased and animated, look so very old. 
 
 That strange clear-sightedness, that absolute jus- 
 tice, of which Fortune had just spoken, were qual- 
 ities she herself possessed to a remarkable, almost 
 a painful, degree. She could not "deceive herself, 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 167 
 
 even if she tried. The more cruel the sight, the 
 clearer she saw it; even as now she perceived a 
 certain naturalness in the fact that a middle-aged 
 man so often chooses a young girl in preference 
 to those of his own generation, for she brings him 
 that which he has not ; she reminds him of what 
 he used to have ; she is to him like the freshness 
 of spring, the warmth of summer, in his cheerless 
 autumn days. Sometimes these marriages are not 
 unhappy far from it ; and Eobert Koy might ere 
 long make such a marriage. Despite poor David's 
 jealous contempt, he was neither old nor ugly, and, 
 then, he was rich. 
 
 The thing, either as regarded Helen, or some 
 other girl of Helen's standing, appeared more than 
 possible probable ; and if so, what then ? 
 
 Fortune looked out once, and saw that the little 
 group at the laurel bush were still talking; then 
 she slipped upstairs into her own room and bolted 
 the door. 
 
 The first thing she did was to go straight up 
 and look at her own face in the glass her poor 
 old face, which had never been beautiful, which 
 she had never wished beautiful, except that it 
 
168 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 might be pleasant in one man's eyes. Sweet it 
 was still, but the sweetness lay in its expression, 
 pure and placid, and innocent as a young girl's. 
 But she saw not that; she saw only its lost youth, 
 its faded bloom. She covered it over with both 
 her hands, as if she would fain bury it out of 
 sight; knelt down by her bedside, and prayed. 
 
 "Mr. Eoy is waiting below, ma'am has been 
 waiting some time ; but he says if you are busy 
 he will not disturb you ; he will come to-morrow 
 instead." 
 
 "Tell him I shall be very glad to see him to- 
 morrow." 
 
 She spoke through the locked door, too feeble 
 to rise and open it; and then lying down on her 
 bed and turning her face to the wall, from sheer 
 exhaustion fell fast asleep. 
 
 People dream strangely sometimes. The dream 
 she dreamed was so inexpressibly soothing and 
 peaceful, so entirely out of keeping with the reali- 
 ty of things, that it almost seemed to have been 
 what in ancient times would be called a vision. 
 
 First, she thought that she and Robert Roy were 
 little children mere girl and boy together, as they 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 169 
 
 might have been, from the few years' difference in 
 their ages running hand-in-hand about the sands 
 of St. Andrews ; and so fond of one another so 
 very fond I with that innocent love a big boy oft- 
 en has for a little girl, and a little girl returns with 
 the tenderest fidelity. So she did ; and she was 
 so happy they were both so happy. In the sec- 
 ond part of the dream she was happy still, but 
 somehow she knew she was dead had been dead 
 and in paradise for a long time, and was waiting 
 for him to come there. He was coming now ; she 
 felt him coming, and held out her hands, but he 
 took and clasped her in his arms ; and she heard a 
 voice saying those mysterious words : " In heaven 
 they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but 
 are as the angels of God." 
 
 It was very strange, all was very strange, but it 
 comforted her. She rose up, and in the twilight 
 of the soft spring evening she washed her face and 
 combed her hair, and went down, like King David 
 after his child was dead, to "eat bread." 
 
 Her young people were not there. They had 
 gone out again, she heard with Mr. Dalziel, not 
 Mr. Eoy, who had sat reading in the parlor alone 
 
170 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 for upward of an hour. They were supposed to be 
 golfing, but they staid out till long after it was pos- 
 sible to see balls or holes ; and Miss Williams was 
 beginning to be a little uneasy, when they all three 
 walked in, David and Janetta with a rather sheep- 
 ish air, and Helen beaming all over with mysteri- 
 ous delight. 
 
 How the young man had managed it to pro- 
 pose to two sisters at once at any rate to make 
 love to one sister while the other was by remain- 
 ed among the wonderful feats which David Dalziel, 
 who had not too small an opinion of himself, was 
 always ready for, and generally succeeded in ; and 
 if he did wear his heart somewhat " on his sleeve," 
 why, it was a very honest heart, and they must 
 have been ill - natured " daws " indeed who took 
 pleasure in " pecking at it." 
 
 "Wish me joy, auntie!" he cried, coming for- 
 ward, beaming all over, the instant the girls had 
 disappeared to take their hats off. "I've been and 
 gone and done it, and it's all right. I didn't in- 
 tend it just yet, but he drove me to it, for which 
 I'm rather obliged to him. He can't get her now. 
 Janetta's mine!" 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 171 
 
 There was a boyish triumph in his air; in fact, 
 his whole conduct was exceedingly juvenile, but so 
 simple, frank, and sincere as to be quite irresistible. 
 
 I fear Miss Williams was a very weak-minded 
 woman, or would be so considered by a great part 
 of the world the exceedingly wise and prudent 
 and worldly-minded "world." Here were two 
 young people, one twenty-two, the other eighteen, 
 with it could hardly be said "not a half-penny," 
 but still a very small quantity of half-pennies, be- 
 tween them and they had not only fallen in love, 
 but engaged themselves to be married! She ought 
 to have been horrified, to have severely reproached 
 them for their imprudence, used all her influence, 
 and if needs be her authority, to stop the whole 
 thing ; advising David not to bind himself to any 
 girl till he was much older, and his prospects se- 
 cured ; and reasoning with Janetta on the extreme 
 folly of a long engagement, and how very much 
 better it would be for her to pause, and make some 
 "good" marriage with a man of wealth and posi- 
 tion, who could keep her comfortably. 
 
 All this, no doubt, was what a prudent and far- 
 seeing mother or friend ought to have said and 
 8 
 
172 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 done. Miss Williams did no such thing, and said 
 not a single word. She only kissed her "chil- 
 dren " Helen, too, whose innocent delight was the 
 prettiest thing to behold then sat down and made 
 tea for them all, as if nothing had happened. 
 
 But such events do not happen without making 
 a slight stir in a family, especially such a quiet fam- 
 ily as that at the cottage. Besides, the lovers were 
 too childishly happy to be at all reticent over their 
 felicity. Before David was turned away that night 
 to the hotel, which he and Mr. Eoy both inhabited, 
 every body in the house knew quite well that Mr. 
 Dalziel and Miss Janetta were going to be married. 
 
 And every body had of course suspected it long 
 ago, and was not in the least surprised, so that the 
 mistress of the household herself was half ashamed 
 to confess how very much surprised she had been. 
 However, as every body seemed delighted for 
 most people have a "sneaking kindness" toward 
 young lovers she kept her own counsel ; smiled 
 blandly over her old cook's half-pathetic congrat- 
 ulations to the young couple, who were "like the 
 young bears, with all their troubles before them," 
 and laughed at the sympathetic forebodings of the 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOYE STORY. 173 
 
 girls' faithful maid, a rather elderly person, who 
 was supposed to have been once "disappointed," 
 and who "hoped Mr. Dalziel was not too young 
 to know his own mind." Still, in spite of all, the 
 family were very much delighted, and not a little 
 proud. 
 
 David walked in, master of the position now, di- 
 rectly after breakfast, and took the sisters out to 
 walk, both of them ; declaring he was as much en- 
 cumbered as if he were going to marry two young 
 ladies at once, but bearing his lot with great equa- 
 nimity. His love-making, indeed, was so extraor- 
 dinarily open and undisguised that it did not much 
 matter who was by. And Helen was of that sweet, 
 negative nature that seemed made for the express 
 purpose of playing "gooseberry." 
 
 Directly they had departed, Mr. Eoy came in. 
 
 He might have been a far less acute observer 
 than he was, not to detect at once that "something 
 had happened " in the little family. Miss Williams 
 kept him waiting several minutes, and when she 
 did come in, her manner was nervous and agitated. 
 They spoke about the weather and one or two 
 trivial things; but more than once Fortune felt 
 
174 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 him looking at her, with that keen, kindly observa- 
 tion, which had been sometimes, during all these 
 weeks, now running into months, of almost daily 
 meeting and of the closest intimacy, a very diffi- 
 cult thing to bear. 
 
 He was exceedingly kind to her always; there 
 was no question of that. Without making any 
 show of it, he seemed always to know where she 
 was and what she was doing. Nothing ever less- 
 ened his silent care of her. If ever she wanted 
 help, there he was to give it; and in all their ex- 
 cursions she had a quiet conviction that whoever 
 forgot her, or her comfort, he never would. But, 
 then, it was his way. Some men have eyes and 
 ears for only one woman, and that merely while 
 they happen to be in love with her ; whereas, Rob- 
 ert Roy was courteous and considerate to every 
 woman; even as he was kind to every weak or 
 helpless creature that crossed his path. 
 
 Evidently, he perceived that all was not right; 
 and though he said nothing, there was a tenderness 
 in his manner which went to her heart. 
 
 " You are not looking well to-day ; should you 
 not go out?" he said. " I met all your young peo- 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STOEY. 175 
 
 pie walking off to the sands : they seemed extraor- 
 dinarily happy." 
 
 Fortune was much perplexed. She did not like 
 not to tell him the news, he, who had so complete- 
 ly established himself as a friend of the family. 
 And yet to tell him was not exactly her place ; be- 
 sides, he might not care to hear. Old maid as she 
 was, or thought herself, Miss Williams knew enough 
 of men not to fall into the feminine error of fan- 
 cying they feel as we do ; that their world is our 
 world, and their interests our interests. To most 
 men, a leader in The Times, an article in The Quar- 
 terly^ or a fall in the money market, is of far more 
 importance than any love affair in the world, unless 
 it happens to be their own. 
 
 "Why should I tell him?" she thought, con- 
 vinced that he noticed the anxiety in her eyes, the 
 weariness at her heart. She had passed an almost 
 sleepless night, pondering over the affairs of these 
 young people, who never thought of any thing be- 
 yond their own new-born happiness. And she had 
 perplexed herself with wondering whether in con- 
 senting to this engagement she was really doing 
 her duty by her girls, who had no one but her, 
 
176 THE LAUEEL BUSH. 
 
 and whom she was so tender of, for their dead fa- 
 ther's sake. But what good was it to say any 
 thing? She must bear her own burden. And 
 yet 
 
 Robert Roy looked at her with his kind, half- 
 amused smile. 
 
 " You had better tell me all about it ; for, in- 
 deed, I know already." 
 
 "What! did you guess?" 
 
 "Perhaps. But Dalziel came to my room last 
 night and poured out every thing. He is a candid 
 youth. Well, and am I to congratulate?" 
 
 Greatly relieved, Fortune looked up. 
 
 "That's right," he said; "I like to see you 
 smile. A minute or two ago you seemed as if yon 
 had the cares of all the world on your shoulders. 
 Now, that is not exactly the truth. Always meet 
 the truth face to face, and don't be frightened at 
 it." 
 
 Ah no ! If she had had that strong heart to 
 lean on, that tender hand to help her through the 
 world, she never would have been " frightened " at 
 any thing. 
 
 " I know I am very foolish," she said ; " but there 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 177 
 
 are many things which these children of mine don't 
 see, and I can't help seeing." 
 
 "Certainly; they are young, and we are well, 
 never mind. Sit down here, and let you and me 
 talk the matter quietly over. On the whole, are 
 you glad or sorry?" 
 
 "Both, I think. David is able to take care of 
 himself; but poor little Janetta my Janetta what 
 if he should bring her to poverty ? He is a little 
 reckless about money, and has only a very small 
 certain income. Worse ; suppose, being so young, 
 he should by-and-by get tired of her and neglect 
 her, and break her heart ?" 
 
 " Or twenty other things which may happen or 
 may not, and of which they must take the chance, 
 like their neighbors. You do not believe very 
 much in men, I see, and perhaps you are right. 
 We are a bad lot a bad lot. But David Dalziel 
 is as good as most of us, that I can assure you." " 
 
 She could hardly tell whether he was in jest or 
 earnest; but this was certain he meant to cheer 
 and comfort her, and she took the comfort and was 
 thankful. 
 
 "Now to the point," continued Mr. Roy. "You 
 
178 THE LAUEEL BUSH. 
 
 feel that, in a worldly point of view, these two 
 have done a very foolish thing, and you have aid- 
 ed and abetted them in doing it?" 
 
 "Not so," she cried, laughing; "I had no idea 
 of such a thing till David told me yesterday morn- 
 ing of his intentions." 
 
 " Yes, and he explained to me why he told you, 
 and why he dared not wait any longer. He blurts 
 out every thing, the foolish boy ! But he has made 
 friends with me now. They do seem such chil- 
 dren, do they not? compared with old folks like 
 you and me." 
 
 What was it in the tone, or the words, which 
 made her feel not in the least vexed, nor once at- 
 tempt to rebut the charge of being " old ?" 
 
 " I'll tell you what it is," said Eobert Eoy, with 
 one of his sage smiles, "you must not go and vex 
 yourself needlessly about trifles. "We should not 
 juflge other people by ourselves. Every body is 
 so different. Dalziel may make his way all the 
 better for having that pretty creature for a wife ; 
 not but what some other pretty creature might 
 soon have done just as well. Very few men have 
 tenacity of nature enough, if they can not get the 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 179 
 
 one woman they love, to do without any other to 
 the close of their days. But don't be distressing 
 yourself about your girl. David will make her a 
 very good husband. They will be happy enougb, 
 even though not very rich." 
 
 "Does that matter much?' 7 
 
 "I used to think so. I had so sore a lesson 
 of poverty in my youth, that it gave me an al- 
 most morbid terror of it, not for myself, but for 
 any woman I cared for. Once I would not have 
 done as Dalziel has for the world. Now I have 
 changed my mind. At any rate, David will not 
 have one misfortune to contend with. He has a 
 thoroughly good opinion of himself, poor fellow! 
 He will not suffer from that horrible self-distrust 
 which makes some men let themselves drift on and 
 on with the tide, instead of taking the rudder into 
 their own hands and steering straight on direct 
 for the haven where they would be. Oh that I 
 had done it!" 
 
 He spoke passionately, and then sat silent. At 
 last, muttering something about " begging her par- 
 don," and "taking a liberty," he changed the con- 
 versation into another channel, by asking whether 
 8* 
 
180 THE LAUEEL BUSH. 
 
 this marriage, when it happened which of course 
 could not be just immediately would make any 
 difference to her circumstances ? 
 
 Some difference, she explained, because the girls 
 would receive their little fortunes whenever they 
 came of age, or married, and the sisters would not 
 like to be parted; besides, Helen's money would 
 help the establishment. Probably, whenever Da- 
 vid married, he would take them both away; in- 
 deed he had said as much. 
 
 "And then shall you stay on here?" 
 
 " I may, for I have a small income of my own ; 
 besides, there are your two little boys, and I might 
 find two or three more. But I do not trouble my- 
 self much about the future. One thing is certain, 
 I need never work as hard as I have done all my 
 life." 
 
 "Have you worked so very hard, then, my 
 poor" 
 
 He left the sentence unfinished; his hand, half 
 extended, was drawn back, for the three young 
 people were seen coming down the garden, follow- 
 ed by the two boys, returning from their classes. 
 It was nearly dinner-time, and people must dine, 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 181 
 
 even though in love. And boys must be kept to 
 their school- work, and all the daily duties of life 
 must be done. Well, perhaps, for many of us that 
 such should be ! I think it was as well for poor 
 Fortune Williams. 
 
 The girls had come in wet through with one of 
 those sudden "haars" which are not uncommon at 
 St. Andrews in spring, and it seemed likely to last 
 all day. Mr. Koy looked out of the window at it 
 with a slightly dolorous air. 
 
 "I suppose I am rather de trop here; but, really, I 
 wish you would not turn me out. In weather like 
 this our hotel coffee-room is just a trifle dull, isn't 
 it, Dalziel ? And, Miss Williams, your parlor looks 
 so comfortable ! Will you let me stay ?" 
 
 He made the request with a simplicity quite pa- 
 thetic. One of the most lovable things about this 
 man is it not in all men ? was, that with all his 
 shrewdness and cleverness, and his having been 
 knocked up and down the world for so many years, 
 he still kept a directness and simpleness of char- 
 acter almost child-like. 
 
 To refuse would have been unkind, impossible ; 
 so Miss Williams told him he should certainly 
 
182 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 stay, if he could make himself comfortable. And 
 to that end she soon succeeded in turning off her 
 two turtle-doves into a room by themselves, for 
 the use of which they had already bargained, in or- 
 der to " read together, and improve their minds." 
 Meanwhile she and Helen tried to help the two lit- 
 tle boys to spend a dull holiday indoors, if they 
 were ever dull beside Uncle Kobert who had not 
 lost his old influence with boys, and to those boys 
 was already a father in all but the name. 
 
 Often had Fortune watched them, sitting upon 
 his chair, hanging about him as he walked, coming 
 to him for sympathy in every thing. Yes, every 
 body loved him, for there was such an amount of 
 love in him toward every mortal creature, except 
 
 She looked at him and his boys, then turned 
 away. What was to be, had been, and always 
 would be. That which we, fight against in our 
 youth as being human will, human error, in our 
 age we take humbly, knowing it to be the will of 
 God. 
 
 By-and-by in the little household the gas was 
 lighted, the curtains drawn, and the two lovers 
 fetched in for tea, to behave themselves as much as 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 183 
 
 they could like ordinary mortals, in general socie- 
 ty, for the rest of the evening. A very pleasant 
 evening it was, spite of this new element ; which 
 was got rid of as much as possible by means of the 
 window recess, where Janetta and David encamped 
 composedly, a little aloof from the rest. 
 
 "I hope they don't mind me," said Mr. Roy, 
 casting an amused glance in their direction, and 
 then adroitly manoeuvring with the back of his 
 chair so as to interfere as little as possible with the 
 young couple's felicity. 
 
 " Oh no, they don't mind you at all," answer- 
 ed Helen, always affectionate, if not always wise. 
 " Besides, I dare say you yourself were young once, 
 Mr. Roy." 
 
 Evidently Helen had no idea of the plans for her 
 future which were being talked about in St. An- 
 drews! Had he? No one could even speculate, 
 with such an exceedingly reserved person. He re- 
 tired behind his newspaper, and said not a single 
 word. 
 
 Nevertheless, there was no cloud in the atmos- 
 phere. Every body was used to Mr. Roy's silence 
 in company. And he never troubled any body, 
 
184: THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 not even the children, with either a gloomy look 
 or a harsh word. He was so comfortable to live 
 with, so unfailingly sweet and kind. 
 
 Altogether, there was a strange atmosphere of 
 peace in the cottage that evening, though nobody 
 seemed to do any thing or say very much. Now 
 and then Mr. Eoy read aloud bits out of his endless 
 newspapers: he had a truly masculine mania for 
 newspapers, and used to draw one after another out 
 of his pockets as endless as a conjurer's pocket- 
 handkerchiefs. And he liked to share their con- 
 tents with any body that would listen ; though I 
 am afraid nobody did listen much to-night except 
 Miss Williams, who sat beside him at her sewing, 
 in order to get the benefit of the same lamp. And 
 between his readings he often turned and looked 
 at her her bent head, her smooth, soft hair, her 
 busy hands. 
 
 Especially after one sentence, out of the "Varie- 
 ties " of some Fife newspaper. He had begun to 
 read it, then stopped suddenly, but finished it. It 
 consisted only of a few words: "'Young love is pas- 
 sionate, old love is faithful; but the very tenderest thing 
 in all this world is a love revived. 1 That is true." 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 185 
 
 He said only those three words, in a very low, 
 quiet voice, but Fortune heard. His look she did 
 not see, but she felt it even as a person long kept 
 in darkness might feel a sunbeam strike along the 
 wall, making it seem possible that there might be 
 somewhere in the earth such a thing as day. 
 
 About 9 P.M. the lovers in the window recess 
 discovered that the haar was all gone, and that it 
 was a most beautiful moonlight night; full moon 
 the very night they had planned to go in a body 
 to the top of St. Eegulus's Tower. 
 
 " I suppose they must," said Mr. Roy to Miss 
 Williams ; adding, " Let the young folks make the 
 most of their youth ; it never will corne again." 
 
 "No." 
 
 "And you and I must go too. It will be more 
 comme ilfaut, as people say." 
 
 So, with a half regretful look at the cozy fire, 
 Mr. Roy marshaled the lively party, Janetta and 
 David, Helen and the two boys; engaging to get 
 them the key of that silent garden of graves, over 
 which St. Regulus's Tower keeps stately watch. 
 How beautiful it looked, with the clear sky shining 
 through its open arch, and the brilliant moonlight, 
 
186 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 bright as day almost, but softer, flooding every al- 
 ley of that peaceful spot ! It quieted even the noi- 
 sy party who were bent on climbing the tower, to 
 catch a view, such as is rarely equaled, of the pict- 
 uresque old city and its beautiful bay. 
 
 "A 'comfortable place to sleep in,' as some one 
 once said to me in a Melbourne church-yard. But 
 
 'east or west, home is best ' I think, Bob, I 
 
 shall leave it in my will that you are to bury me 
 at St. Andrews." 
 
 " Nonsense, Uncle Kobert. You are not to talk 
 of dying. And you are to come with us up to the 
 top of the tower. Miss Williams, will you come 
 too?" 
 
 "No, I think she had better not," said Uncle 
 Eobert, decisively. " She will stay here, and I will 
 keep her company." 
 
 So the young people all vanished up the tower, 
 and the two elders walked silently side by side, by 
 the quiet graves by the hearts which had ceased 
 beating, the hands which, however close they lay, 
 would never clasp one another any more. 
 
 "Yes, St. Andrews is a pleasant place," said 
 Robert Roy, at last. " I spoke in jest, but I meant 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 187 
 
 in earnest ; I have no wish to leave it again. And 
 you," he added, seeing that she answered nothing 
 "what plans have you? Shall you stay on at 
 the cottage till these young people are married ?" 
 
 "Most likely. We are all fond of the little 
 house." 
 
 11 No wonder. They say a wandering life after 
 a certain number of years unsettles a man forever ; 
 he rests nowhere, but goes on wandering to the 
 end; but I feel just the contrary. I think I shall 
 stay permanently at St. Andrews. You will let 
 me come about your cottage, 'like a tame cat,' as 
 that foolish fellow owned he had called me will 
 you not?" 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 But at the same time she felt there was a strain 
 beyond which she could not bear. To be so near, 
 yet so far ; so much to him, and yet so little. She 
 was conscious of a wild desire to run away some- 
 where run away and escape it all ; of a longing 
 to be dead and buried, deep in the sea, up away 
 among the stars. 
 
 " Will those young people be very long, do you 
 think?" 
 
188 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 At the sound of her voice he turned to look at 
 her, and saw that she was deadly pale, and shiver- 
 ing from head to foot. 
 
 "This will never do. You must 'come under 
 my plaidie,' as the children say, and I will take 
 you home at once. Boys!" he called out to the 
 figures now appearing like jackdaws at the top of 
 the tower, " we are going straight home. Follow 
 as soon as you like. Yes, it must be so," he an- 
 swered to the slight resistance she made. "They 
 must all take care of themselves. I mean to take 
 care of you." 
 
 Which he did, wrapping her well in the half of 
 his plaid, drawing her hand under his arm and 
 holding it there holding it close and warm at his 
 heart, all the way along the Scores and across the 
 Links, scarcely speaking a single word until they 
 reached the garden gate. Even there he held it 
 still. 
 
 " I see your girls coming, so I shall leave you. 
 You are warm now, are you not ?" 
 
 "Quite warm." 
 
 " Good-night, then. Stay. Tell me" he spoke 
 rapidly, and with much agitation. "Tell me just 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 189 
 
 one thing, and I will never trouble you again. 
 Why did you not answer a letter I wrote to you 
 seventeen years ago ?" 
 
 "I never got any letter. I never had one word 
 from you after the Sunday you bid me good-bye, 
 promising to write." 
 
 "And I did write," cried he, passionately. "I 
 posted it with my own hands. You should have 
 got it on the Tuesday morning." 
 
 She leaned against the laurel bush, that fatal 
 laurel bush, and in a few breathless words told him 
 what David had said about the hidden letter. 
 
 "It must have been my letter. Why did you 
 not tell me this before ?" 
 
 11 How could I? I never knew you had written. 
 You never said a word. In all these years you 
 have never said a single word." 
 
 Bitterly, bitterly he turned away. The groan 
 that escaped him a man's groan over his lost life 
 lost, not wholly through fate alone was such 
 as she, the woman whose portion had been sorrow, 
 passive sorrow only, never forgot in all her days. 
 
 "Don't mind it," she whispered, "don't mind it. 
 It is so long past now." 
 
190 THE LAUKEL BUSH. 
 
 He made no immediate answer, then said, "Have 
 you no idea what was in the letter?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "It was to ask you a question, which I had de- 
 termined not to ask just then, but I changed my 
 mind. The answer, I told you, I should wait for 
 in Edinburgh seven days ; after that, I should con- 
 clude you meant No, and sail. No answer came, 
 and I sailed." 
 
 He was silent. So was she. A sense of cruel fa- 
 tality came over her. Alas ! those lost years, that 
 might have been such happy years ! At length she 
 said, faintly, " Forget it. It was not your fault." 
 
 " It was my fault. If not mine, you were still 
 yourself I ought never to have let you go. I 
 ought to have asked again ; to have sought through 
 the whole world till I found you again. And now 
 that I have found you " 
 
 " Hush, the girls are here." 
 
 They came along laughing, that merry group 
 with whom life was at its spring who had lost 
 nothing, knew not what it was to lose ! 
 
 "Good-night," said Mr. Koy, hastily. "But to- 
 morrow morning?" 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 191 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " There never is night to which comes no morn," 
 says the proverb. Which is not always true, at 
 least as to this world ; but it is true sometimes. 
 
 That April morning Fortune Williams rose with 
 a sense of strange solemnity neither sorrow nor 
 joy. Both had gone by ; but they had left behind 
 them a deep peace. 
 
 After her young people had walked themselves 
 off, which they did immediately after breakfast, she 
 attended to all her household duties, neither few 
 nor small, and then sat down with her needle- work 
 beside the open window. It was a lovely day ; the 
 birds were singing, the leaves budding, a few early 
 flowers making all the air to smell like spring. 
 And she with her it was autumn now. She 
 knew it, but still she did not grieve. 
 
 Presently, walking down the garden walk, al- 
 most with the same firm step of years ago how 
 well she remembered it ! Eobert Eoy came ; but 
 it was still a few minutes before she could go into 
 the little parlor to meet him. At last she did, 
 entering softly, her hand extended as usual. He 
 took it, also as usual, and then looked down into 
 
192 THE LAUEEL BUSH. 
 
 her face, as he had done that Sunday. " Do you 
 remember this? I have kept it for seventeen 
 years." 
 
 It was her mother's ring. She looked up with 
 a dumb inquiry. 
 
 " My love, did you think I did not love you 
 you always, and only you ?" 
 
 So saying, he opened his arms; she felt them 
 close round her, just as in her dream. Only they 
 were warm, living arms ; and it was this world, not 
 the next. All those seventeen bitter years seem- 
 ed swept away, annihilated in a moment ; she laid 
 her head on his shoulder and wept out her happy 
 
 heart there. 
 
 ******* 
 
 The little world of St. Andrews was very much 
 astonished when it learned that Mr. Eoy was going 
 to marry, not one of the pretty Miss Moseleys, but 
 their friend and former governess, a lady not by 
 any means young, and remarkable for nothing ex- 
 cept great sweetness and good sense, which made 
 every body respect and like her; though nobody 
 was much excited concerning her. Now, people 
 had been excited about Mr. Koy, and some were 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 193 
 
 rather sorry for him ; thought, perhaps, he had 
 been taken in, till some story got wind of its hav- 
 ing been an "old attachment," which interested 
 them, of course ; still, the good folks were half an- 
 gry with him, to go and marry an old maid when 
 he might have had his choice of half a dozen 
 young ones ; when, with his fortune and character, 
 he might, as people say, as they had said of that 
 other good man, Mr. Moseley " have married any 
 body." 
 
 They forgot that Mr. Eoy happened to be one 
 of those men who have no particular desire to 
 marry " any body ;" to whom the woman, whether 
 found early or late, alas ! in this case found early 
 and won late, is the one woman in the world for- 
 ever. Poor Fortune rich Fortune ! she need not 
 be afraid of her fading cheek, her silvering hair ; 
 he would never see either. The things he loved 
 her for were quite apart from any thing that 
 youth could either give or take away. As he 
 said once when she lamented hers, "Never mind, 
 let it go. You will always be yourself and 
 mine." 
 
 This was enough. He loved her. He had al- 
 
194 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 ways loved her: she had no fear but that he 
 would love her faithfully to the end. 
 
 Theirs was a very quiet wedding, and a speedy 
 one. " Why should they wait ? they had waited 
 too long already," he said, with some bitterness. 
 But she felt none. With her all was peace. 
 
 Mr. Roy did another very foolish thing, which I 
 can not conscientiously recommend to any middle- 
 aged bachelor. Besides marrying his wife, he mar- 
 ried her whole family. There was no other way 
 out of the difficulty, and neither of them was in- 
 clined to be content with happiness, leaving duty 
 unfulfilled. So he took the largest house in St 
 Andrews, and brought to it Janetta and Helen, till 
 David Dalziel could claim them ; likewise his own 
 two orphan boys, until they went to Oxford ; for 
 he meant to send them there, and bring them up 
 in every way like his own sons. 
 
 Meantime, it was a rather heterogeneous family, 
 but the two heads of it bore their burden with 
 great equanimity, nay, cheerfulness ; saying some- 
 times, with a smile which had the faintest shadow 
 of pathos in it, " that they liked to have young life 
 about them. 7 ' 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY. 195 
 
 And by degrees they grew younger themselves ; 
 less of the old bachelor and old maid, and more of 
 the happy middle-aged couple to whom Heaven 
 gave, in their decline, a St. Martin's summer almost 
 as sweet as spring. They were both too wise to 
 poison the present by regretting the past a past 
 which, if not wholly, was partly, at least, owing to 
 that strange fatality which governs so many lives, 
 only some have the will to conquer it, others not. 
 And there are two sides to every thing: Kobert 
 Roy, who alone knew how hard his own life had 
 been, sometimes felt a stern joy in thinking no one 
 had shared it. 
 
 Still, for a long time there lay at the bottom of 
 that strong, gentle heart of his a kind of remorse- 
 ful tenderness, which showed itself in heaping his 
 wife with every luxury that his wealth could 
 bring; better than all, in surrounding her with that 
 unceasing care which love alone teaches, never al- 
 lowing the wind to blow on her too roughly, his 
 " poor lamb," as he sometimes called her, who had 
 suffered so much. 
 
 They are sure, humanly speaking, to " live very- 
 happy to the end of their days." And I almost 
 
 9 
 
196 THE LAUREL BUSH. 
 
 fancy sometimes, if I were to go to St. Andrews, as 
 I hope to do many a time, for I am as fond of the 
 Aged City as they are, that I should see these two, 
 made one at last after all those cruel divided years, 
 wandering together along the sunshiny sands, or 
 standing to watch the gay golfing parties ; nay, F 
 am not sure that Robert Roy would not be visible 
 sometimes, in his red coat, club in hand, crossing 
 the Links, a victim to the universal insanity of St. 
 Andrews, yet enjoying himself, as golfers always 
 seem to do, with the enjoyment of a very boy. 
 
 She is not a girl, far from it; but there will be a 
 girlish sweetness in her faded face till its last smile. 
 And to see her sitting beside her husband on the 
 green slopes of the pretty garden knitting, perhaps, 
 while he reads his eternal newspapers, is a perfect 
 picture. They do not talk very much ; indeed, they 
 were neither of them ever great talkers. But each 
 knows the other is close at hand, ready for any 
 needful word, and always ready with that silent 
 sympathy which is so mysterious a thing, the rarest 
 thing to find in all human lives. These have found 
 it, and are satisfied. And day by day truer grows 
 the truth of that sentence, which Mrs. Roy once 
 
AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STOEY. 197 
 
 discovered in her husband's pocket-book, cut out 
 of a newspaper she read and replaced it without 
 a word, but with something between a smile and a 
 tear: "Young love is passionate, old love is faithful; 
 but the very tenderest thing in all this world is a love 
 revived." 
 
 THE END. 
 
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 FE 
 
 19748 
 
 
 SFCTJ OJ JAN 1 7 74 
 
 LD21-A30m-7,'73 
 (R2275S10)476 A-32 
 
 General Library 
 
 University of California 
 
 Berkeley