She had accepted His will all these years, seeing no reason for it; often feeling it very hard and cruel, but still accepting it.  And now?

I am writing no sensational story.  In it are no grand dramatic points; no Deus ex machina appears to make all smooth; every event—­if it can boast of aught so large as an event—­follows the other in perfectly natural succession.  For I have always noticed that in life there are rarely any startling “effects,” but gradual evolutions.  Nothing happens by accident; and, the premises once granted, nothing happens but what was quite sure to happen, following those premises.  We novelists do not “make up” our stories; they make themselves.  Nor do human beings invent their own lives; they do but use up the materials given to them—­some well, some ill; some wisely, some foolishly; but, in the main, the dictum of the Preacher is not far from the truth, “All things come alike to all.”

A whole winter had passed by, and the spring twilights were beginning to lengthen, tempting Miss Williams and her girls to linger another half hour before they lit the lamp for the evening.  They were doing so, cozily chatting over the fire, after the fashion of a purely feminine household, when there was a sudden announcement that a gentleman, with two little boys, wanted to see Miss Williams.  He declined to give his name, and said he would not detain her more than a few minutes.

“Let him come in here,” Fortune was just about to say, when she reflected that it might be some law business which concerned her girls, whom she had grown so tenderly anxious to save from any trouble and protect from every care.  “No, I will go and speak to him myself.”

She rose and walked quietly into the parlor, already shadowed into twilight:  a neat, compact little person, dressed in soft gray homespun, with a pale pink bow on her throat, and another in her cap—­a pretty little fabric of lace and cambric, which, being now the fashion, her girls had at last condescended to let her wear.  She had on a black silk apron, with pockets, into one of which she had hastily thrust her work, and her thimble was yet on her finger.  This was the figure on which the eyes of the gentleman rested as he turned around.

Miss Williams lifted her eyes inquiringly to his face—­a bearded face, thin and dark.

“I beg your pardon, I have not the pleasure of knowing you; I—­”

She suddenly stopped.  Something in the height, the turn of the head, the crisp dark hair, in which were not more than a few threads of gray, while hers had so many now, reminded her of—­someone, the bare thought of whom made her feel dizzy and blind.

“No,” he said, “I did not expect you would know me; and indeed, until I saw you, I was not sure you were the right Miss Williams.  Possibly you may remember my name—­Roy, Robert Roy.”

Faces alter, manners, gestures; but the one thing which never changes is a voice.  Had Fortune heard this one—­ay, at her last dying hour, when all worldly sounds were fading away—­she would have recognized it at once.