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." And by degrees they grew younger themselves; less of the old bachelor and old maid, and more of the happy middle-aged couple to whom Heaven gave, in their decline, a St. Martin's summer almost as sweet as spring. They were both too wise to poison the present by regretting the past--a past which, if not wholly, was partly, at least, owing to that strange fatality which governs so many lives, only some have the will to conquer it, others not. And there are two sides to every thing: Robert Roy, who alone knew how hard his own life had been, sometimes felt a stern joy in thinking no one had shared it. Still, for a long time there lay at the bottom of that strong, gentle heart of his a kind of remorseful tenderness, which showed itself in heaping his wife with every luxury that his wealth could bring; better than all, in surrounding her with that unceasing care which love alone teaches, never allowing the wind to blow on her too roughly--his "poor lamb," as he sometime called her, who had suffered so much.