"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 would have sought him, as Evangeline sought Gabriel, half the world over.
And little did her two girls imagine, as they called 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 "pretty poetry," especially 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 line, how there was being transacted under 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 little family of which Miss Williams was the head went on in its innocent quiet way, always planning, yet never making a change, until at last fate drove them to it.
Neither Helen nor Janetta were very healthy girls, and at last a London doctor gave as his absolute fiat that they must cease to live in their warm inland village, and migrate, for some years at any rate, to a bracing sea-side place.
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 cut his nose off. And it was such a nice place too, so pretty, with such excellent 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 motive. His grandmother's cottage, which she had left him, the youngest and her pet always, was now unlet. He meant, perhaps, to go and live at it himself when—he was of age and could afford it; but in the mean time he was a poor solitary bachelor, and—and—
"And you would like me to keep your nest warm for you till you can claim it? You want us for your tenants, eh, Davie?"
"Just that. You've hit it. Couldn't wish better. In fact, I have already written to my trustees to drive the hardest bargain possible."