The matter was soon settled, and the little party ushered into the bright warm parlor, glittering with all the appendages of that pleasant meal--essentially feminine--a "hungry" tea. Robert Roy put his hand over his eyes as if the light dazzled him, and then sat down in the arm-chair which Miss Williams brought forward, turning as he did so to look up at her--right in her face--with his grave, soft, earnest eyes. "Thank you. How like that was to your old ways! How very little you are changed!" This was the only reference he made, in the slightest degree, to former times. And she? She went out of the room, ostensibly to get a pot of guava jelly for the boys--found it after some search, and then sat down. Only in her store closet, with her house-keeping things all about her. But it was a quiet place, and the door was shut. There is, in one of those infinitely pathetic Old Testament stories, a sentence--"And he sought where to weep: and he entered into his chamber and wept there." She did not weep, this woman, not a young woman now: she only tried during her few minutes of solitude to gather up her thoughts, to realize what had happened to her, and who it was that sat in the next room--under her roof--at her very fireside. Then she clasped her hands with a sudden sob, wild as any of the emotions of her girlhood. "Oh, my love, my love, the love of all my life! Thank God!" The evening passed, not very merrily, but peacefully; the girls, who had heard a good deal of Mr. Roy from David Dalziel, doing their best to be courteous to him, and to amuse his shy little boys. He did not stay long, evidently having a morbid dread of "intruding," and his manner was exceedingly reserved, almost awkward sometimes, of which he seemed painfully conscious, apologizing for being "unaccustomed to civilization and to ladies' society," having during his life in the bush sometimes passed months at a time without ever seeing a woman's face. "And women are your only civilizers," said he. "That is why I wish my motherless lads to be taken into this household of yours, Miss Williams, which looks so--so comfortable," and he glanced round the pretty parlor with something very like a sigh. "I hope you will consider the matter, and let me know as soon as you have made up your mind." "Which I will do very soon," she answered. "Yes, I know you will. And your decision once made, you never change." "Very seldom. I am not one of those who are 'given to change.'" "Nor I."