But she did not do it; not even when they 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 Robert Roy.  While he was unmarried, for her to marry would be impossible.

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, quietly and alone, in one of those excellent “Governesses’ 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 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 Robert Roy.

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 happiness 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 occasional notes she had promised to write to her poor forsaken girls, without saying a word of her illness; and when she grew better, though not strong enough to undertake a new situation, finding her money slipping away—­though, with her good salaries and small wants, she was not poor, and had already begun to lay up for a lonely old age—­she accepted this temporary home at Miss Maclachlan’s, at Brighton.  Was it—­so strange are the under-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 seaside?—­and she had never seen the sea since she left St. Andrews.

It was 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 over-coming the bitterness.