Yet still she waited, looking forward daily to that dreadful post hour; and when it had gone by, nerving herself to endure until tomorrow.  At last hope, slowly dying, was killed outright.

One day at tea-time the boys blurted out, with happy carelessness, their short-lived regrets for him being quite over, the news that Mr. Roy had sailed.

“Not for Calcutta, but Shanghai, a much longer voyage.  He can’t be heard of for a year at least, and it will be many years before he comes back.  I wonder if he will come back rich.  They say he will:  quite a nabob, perhaps, and take a place in the Highlands, and invite us all—­you too, Miss Williams.  I once asked him, 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 the 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 nor heard his voice, never known the blessing of his companionship, friendship, 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, 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.  Perhaps he was already bound to some other woman, and finding himself drifting into too pleasant intimacy 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 anything.  What he did would be done with a calm deliberate will, incapable 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, almost joyfully, though the tears were running down.  “What ever 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 always believe in him.  He is perfectly good, perfectly true.  And so it does not much matter about me.”