A week ago she had felt painfully that it was just possible that even she might be inconstant--that the Reverend Robert might some time glide into William’s place. She felt now that this was impossible; that her own rapid pace could never harmonize with that slightly ostentatious dignity of the Reverend Robert’s; that her impetuous mind must be chafed and irritated beyond measure, if it ever were yoke-fellow with his; yet the very discovery goaded her to go blindly on. In the bitterness of her pride she thought she could not reject the only man who thought her good enough to be his equal; and when she remembered how long a time it took before even he ceased to be ashamed of his incipient tenderness for the poor schoolmistress, the bitterness increased until it flooded her very heart. There was a gloom upon the world; the evil and misery over which she had spread the golden tissue of young hope began to appear darkly exaggerated to the opposite extreme. Those whom she would have remembered for ever, forgot her, and those who made her their choice, were ashamed of the power which compelled them so to do. Her deep melancholy fell upon Helen, as it had never fallen before; the coming of a new day did not dispel it. It was such a sorrow as she could not tell, and so she bore it proudly, bitterly, and in silence. At the mid-day interval the watchful Mrs Buchanan prevailed on her daughter to go out, to do some simple errands in the town. She generally managed all these matters herself; but the good mother was a skilled physician, and knew how something, trivial enough in itself, might clear the atmosphere in a moment and bring out the sunshine. Mrs Buchanan too was anxious and uneasy: when it seemed now sure that the Reverend Robert must succeed, she thought remorsefully of William, the son of her own training, to whom her house had been so long a second home. She remembered the confidence that there had been between them, and how old ties would have been made stronger and tenderer, had it been he who was the new son; and then she began to feel that Mr Insches, with all his good qualities, was a stranger; that he would introduce a new intruding element--that her sole child would be no more her own. So the mother sent Helen forth with quiet sighs, and Helen went about her errand sadly, the gloom in her heart obscuring the gentle skies of May. She walked slowly as her manner was in her times of depression, taking in the common sights and sounds around her into the mist in her own heart, where they remained to bring back in other moods remembrances of that dark hour. She had executed all her mother’s commissions, and concluded her business by a visit to Maxwell Dickson’s low dark shop, on her way home. She got such literature as he had from the librarian of Fendie, and it served now and then to enliven the long solitary evenings--the evenings which were not sufficiently solitary now.