It was her mother’s ring.  She looked up with a dumb inquiry.

“My love, did you think I did not love you?—­you always, and only you?”

So saying, he opened his arms; she felt them close round her, just as in her dream.  Only they were warm, living arms; and it was this world, not the next.  All those seventeen bitter years seemed swept away, annihilated in a moment; she laid her head on his shoulder and wept out her happy heart there.

* * * * * *

The little world of St. Andrews was very much astonished when it learned that Mr. Roy was going to marry, not one of the pretty Miss Moseleys, but their friend and former governess, a lady, not by any means young, and remarkable for nothing except great sweetness and good sense, which made every body respect and like her; though nobody was much excited concerning her.  Now people had been excited about Mr. Roy, and some were rather sorry for him; thought perhaps he had been taken in, till some story got wind of its having been an “old attachment,” which interested them of course; still, the good folks were half angry with him.  To go and marry an old maid when he might have had his choice of half a dozen young ones! when, with his fortune and character, he might, as people say—­as they had said of that other good man, Mr. Moseley—­“have married any body!”

They forgot that Mr. Roy happened to be one of those men who have no particular desire to marry “any body;” to whom the woman, whether found early or late—­alas! in this case found early and won late—­is the one woman in the world forever.  Poor Fortune—­rich Fortune! she need not be afraid of her fading cheek, her silvering hair; he would never see either.  The things he loved her for were quite apart from any thing that youth could either give or take away.  As he said one, when she lamented hers, “Never mind, let it go.  You will always be yourself—­and mine.”

This was enough.  He loved her.  He had always loved her:  she had no fear but that he would love her faithfully to the end.

Theirs was a very quiet wedding, and a speedy one.  “Why should they wait? they had waited too long already,” he said, with some bitterness.  But she felt none.  With her all was peace.

Mr. Roy did another very foolish thing which I can not conscientiously recommend to any middle-aged bachelor.  Besides marrying his wife, he married her whole family.  There was no other way out of the difficulty, and neither of them was inclined to be content with happiness, leaving duty unfulfilled.  So he took the largest house in St. Andrews, and brought to it Janetta and Helen, till David Dalziel could claim them; likewise his own two orphan boys, until they went to Oxford; for he meant to send them there, and bring them up in every way like his own sons.

Meantime, it was rather a heterogeneous family; but the two heads of it bore their burden with great equanimity, nay, cheerfulness; saying sometimes, with a smile which had the faintest shadow of pathos in it, “that they liked to have young life about them.”