Stranger still that there had never occurred to her one possibility--that he "was not," that God had taken him. But this her heart absolutely refused to accept. So long as he was in it, the world would never be quite empty to her. Afterward--But, as I said, there are some things which can not be faced and this was one of them. All else she had faced long ago. She did not grieve now. As she walked with her children, listening to their endless talk with that patient sympathy which made all children love her, and which she often found was a better help to their education than dozens of lessons, there was on her face that peaceful expression which is the greatest preservative of youth, the greatest antidote to change. And so it was no wonder that a tall lad, passing and re-passing on the Esplanade with another youth, looked at her more than once with great curiosity, and advanced with hesitating politeness. "I beg your pardon, ma'am, if I mistake; but you are so like a lady I once knew, and am now looking for. Are you Miss Williams?" "My name is Williams, certainly; and you"--something in the curly light hair, the mischievous twinkle of the eye, struck her--"you can not be, it is scarcely possible--David Dalziel?" "But, I am, though," cried the lad, shaking her hand as if he would shake it off. "And I call myself very clever to have remembered you, though I was such a little fellow when you left us, and I have only seen your photograph since. But you are not a bit altered--not one bit. And as I knew by your last letter to Archy that you were at Brighton, I thought I'd risk it and speak. Hurra! How very jolly!" He had grown a handsome lad, the pretty wee Davie, an honest-looking lad too, apparently, and she was glad to see him. From the dignity of his eighteen years and five feet ten of height, he looked down upon the governess, and patronized her quite tenderly--dismissing his friend and walking home with her, telling her on the way all his affairs and that of his family with the volubility of little David Dalziel at St. Andrews. "No, I've not forgotten St. Andrews one bit, though I was so small. I remember poor old grannie, and her cottage, and the garden, and the Links, and the golfing, and Mr. Roy. By-the-by, what has become of Mr. Roy?" The suddenness of the question, nay, the very sound of a name totally silent for so many years, made Fortune's heart throb till its beating was actual pain. Then came a sudden desperate hope, as she answered: "I can not tell. I have never heard any thing of him. Have you?" "No--yet, let me see. I think Archy once got a letter from him, a year or so after he went away; but we lost it somehow, and never answered it. We have never heard any thing since."