“Mrs. Dalziel desired me to meet you and tell you that you might have a holiday today.  She has taken her boys with her to Elie.  I dare say you will not be sorry to gain an hour or two for yourself; though I am sorry you should have the trouble of the walk for nothing.”

“For nothing?”—­with the least shadow of a smile, not of annoyance, certainly.

“Indeed, I would have let you know if I could, but she decided at the very last minute; and if I had proposed that a messenger should have been sent to stop you, I am afraid—­it would not have been answered.”

“Of course not;” and they interchanged an amused look—­these fellow-victims to the well-known ways of the household—­which, however, neither grumbled at; it was merely an outside thing, this treatment of both as mere tutor and governess.  After all (as he sometimes said, when some special rudeness—­not himself, but to her—­vexed him), they were tutor and governess; but they were something else besides; something which, the instant their chains were lifted off, made them feel free and young and strong, and comforted them with comfort unspeakable.

“She bade me apologize.  No, I am afraid, if I tell the absolute truth, she did not bid me, but I do apologize.”

“What for, Miss Williams?”

“For your having been brought out all this way just to go back again.”

“I do not mind it, I assure you.”

“And as for the lost lesson—­”

“The boys will not mourn over it, I dare say.  In fact, their term with me is so soon coming to an end that it does not signify much.  They told me they are going back to England to school next week.  Do you go back too?”

“Not just yet—­not till next Christmas.  Mrs. Dalziel talks of wintering in London; but she is so vague in her plans that I am never sure from one week to another what she will do.”

“And what are your plans? You always know what you intend to do.”

“Yes, I think so,” answered Miss Williams, smiling.  “One of the few things I remember of my mother was hearing her say of me, that ’her little girl was a little girl who always knew her own mind.’  I think I do.  I may not be always able to carry it out, but I think I know it.”

“Of course,” said Mr. Roy, absently and somewhat vaguely, as he stood beside the laurel bush, pulling one of its shiny leaves to pieces, and looking right ahead, across the sunshiny Links, the long shore of yellow sands, where the mermaids might well delight to come and “take hands”—­to the smooth, dazzling, far-away sea.  No sea is more beautiful than that at St. Andrews.

Its sleepy glitter seemed to have lulled Robert Roy into a sudden meditation, of which no word of his companion came to rouse him.  In truth, she, never given much to talking, simply stood, as she often did, silently beside him, quite satisfied with the mere comfort of his presence.