I suppose there are such things as broken or breaking hearts, even at St. Andrews, but it is certainly not a likely place for them.  They have little chance against the fresh, exhilarating air, strong as new wine; the wild sea waves, the soothing sands, giving with health of body wholesomeness of mind.  By-and-by the busy world recovered its old face to Fortune Williams—­not the world as she once dreamed of it, but the real world, as she had fought it through it all these years.

“I was ever a fighter, so one fight more!” as she read sometimes in the “pretty” poetry her girls were always asking for—­read steadily, even when she came to the last verse in that passionate “Prospice:” 

“Till, sudden, the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute’s at end: 
And the elements rage, the fiend voices that rave
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace, then a joy,
Then a light—­then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul!  I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!”

To that life to come, during all the burden and heat of the day (no, the afternoon, a time, faded, yet hot and busy still, which is often a very trying bit of woman’s life) she now began yearningly to look.  To meet him again, even in old age, or with death between, was her only desire.  Yet she did her duty still, and enjoyed all she could, knowing that one by one the years were hurrying onward, and the night coming, “in which no man can work.”

Faithful to his promise, about the middle of July David Dalziel appeared, in overflowing spirits, having done very well at college.  He was such a boy still, in character and behavior; though—­as he carefully informed the family—­now twenty-one and a man, expecting to be treated as such.  He was their landlord too, and drew up the agreement in his own name, meaning to be a lawyer, and having enough to live on—­something better than bread and salt—­“till I can earn a fortune, as I certainly mean to do some day.”

And he looked at Janetta, who looked down on the parlor carpet—­as young people will.  Alas!  I fear that the eyes of her anxious friend and governess were not half wide enough open to the fact that these young folk were no longer boy and girls, and that things might happen—­in fact, were almost certain to happen—­which had happened to herself in her youth—­making life not quite easy to her, as it seemed to be to these two bright girls.

Yet they were so bright, and their relations with David Dalziel were so frank and free—­in fact, the young fellow himself was such a thoroughly good fellow, so very difficult to shut her door against, even if she had thought of so doing.  But she did not.  She let him come and go, “miserable bachelor” as he proclaimed himself, with all his kith and kin across the seas, and cast not a thought to the future, or to the sad necessity which sometimes occurs to parents and guardians—­of shutting the stable door after the steed is stolen.