She was saved that and some few other things by being only a governess, instead of one of Fate’s cherished darlings, nestled in a family home.  She had no time to grieve, except in the dead of night, when “the rain was on the roof.”  It so happened that, after the haar, there set in a season of continuous, sullen, depressing rain.  But at night-time, and for the ten minutes between post hour and lesson 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.”

Robert Roy had once involuntarily called her so, when by accident one of her rough boys hurt her hand, and he himself bound it up, with the indescribable tenderness which the strong only know how to show or feel.  Well she remembered this; indeed, almost 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 single farewell word.

That he had cared for her, in some sort of way, she was certain; for he was one of those who never say a word too large—­nay, he usually said much less than he felt.  Whatever he had felt for her—­whether friendship, affection, love—­must have been true.  There was in his nature intense reserve, but no falseness, no insincerity, not an atom of pretense of any kind.

If he did not 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 human beings, the one human being who was necessary to her—­without whom her life might be busy, indeed, and useful, but never perfect, an endurance instead of joy—­was this young man, as solitary as herself, as poor, as hard-working; good, gentle, brave Robert Roy.

Oh why had they not come together, heart to heart—­just they two, so alone in the world—­and ever after belonged to one another, even though it had been years and years before they were married?

“If only he had love me, and told me so!” was her bitter cry.  “I could have waited 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—­”