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 distinct 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, pursued 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 Robert Roy, though no one expects good looks in his sex; indeed, they are mostly rather objectionable.  Women do not usually care for a very handsome man; and men are prone to set him down as conceited.  No one could lay either charge to Mr. Roy.  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, Rob Roy Macgregor, as the boys sometimes called him behind his back—­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 impossible to be a school-master for ten years without 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 imply self-control; for some people can rule every body except themselves.  But Robert Roy’s clear, calm, rather sad eye, and a certain patient expression about the mouth, implied that he too 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,
   and as water unto wine.”

A truth which even Fortune’s tender heart did 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 temptation 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 reserved, silent, and—­except with children—­rather grave.