The room being full of shadow, no one could see any thing distinctly; and it was as well.

In another minute, she had risen, and held out her hand.

“I am very glad to see you, Mr. Roy.  How long have you been in England?  Are these your little boys?”

Without answering, he took her hand—­a quiet friendly grasp, just as it used to be.  And so, without another word, the gulf of fifteen—­seventeen years was overleaped, and Robert Roy and Fortune Williams had met once more.

If anybody had told her when she rose that morning what would happen before night, and happen so naturally, too, she would have said it was impossible.  That, after a very few minutes, she could have sat there, talking to him as to any ordinary acquaintance, seemed incredible, yet it was truly so.

“I was in great doubts whether the Miss Williams who, they told me, lived here was yourself or some other lady; but I thought I would take the chance.  Because, were it yourself, I thought, for the sake of old times, you might be willing to advise me concerning my two little boys, whom I have brought to St. Andrews for their education.”

“Your sons, are they?”

“No.  I am not married.”

There was a pause, and then he told the little fellows to go and look out of the window, while he talked with Miss Williams.  He spoke to them in a fatherly tone; there was nothing whatever of the young man left in him now.  His voice was sweet, his manner grave, his whole appearance unquestionably “middle-aged.”

“They are orphans.  Their name is Roy, though they are not my relatives, or so distant that it matters nothing.  But their father was a very good friend of mine, which matters a great deal.  He died suddenly, and his wife soon after, leaving their affairs in great confusion.  Hearing this, far up in the Australian bush, where I have been a sheep-farmer for some years, I came round by Shanghai, but too late to do more than take these younger boys and bring them home.  The rest of the family are disposed of.  These two will be henceforward mine.  That is all.”

A very little “all”, and wholly about other people; scarcely a word about himself.  Yet he seemed to think it sufficient, and as if she had no possible interest in hearing more.

Cursorily he mentioned having received her letter, which was “friendly and kind;” that it had followed him to Australia, and then back to Shanghai.  But his return home seemed to have been entirely without reference to it—­or to her.

So she let all pass, and accepted things as they were.  It was enough.  When a ship-wrecked man sees land—­ever so barren a land, ever so desolate a shore—­he does not argue within himself, “Is this my haven?” he simply puts into it, and lets himself be drifted ashore.

It took but a few minutes more to explain further what Mr. Roy wanted—­a home for his two “poor little fellows.”