She waited for him through all the long years of his Fellowship--sad years when fortune had left her and sorrow had baptized her--sad friendless years, growing older, and grayer, and sick with waiting. But the reward had come at last, and her tranquil face had regained its cheerfulness, and was 'no longer wan and dree.' It was a fitting crown to a scholarly life, this mellow, mature love--this gracious presence pervading the closing decades of his brilliant career. Rachel Rae had been mistress of St. Benedict's over twenty years when our story opens. She had presided over the graceful hospitalities of the Master's lodge in her kindly, gracious way for twenty years. She had no daughter to share this delightful duty with her--she had married too late in life--but a niece of the Master's had been an inmate of the lodge for fifteen years or more, and filled a daughter's place. Mary Rae was a daughter of a younger brother of Dr. Rae's, and had been educated above the station in which she had been born by her uncle's liberality. Anthony Rae in his prosperity had not neglected his humble kinsfolk. He had done as much for them as lay in his power. He had educated the younger branches, and provided for the declining years of the elders. He had kept his two maiden sisters, one an invalid, in comfort and affluence. He had paid the mortgage off the farm and passed it over unembarrassed by debt to his elder brother. He had taken that brother's grandson and given him an education at his own University, and in due time had arranged for him to be presented with a college living. It was not a rich living: it was the only one that fell vacant when Richard Rae most wanted it, and he had accepted it gladly. He had married upon it, and brought up a family, six children, of whom one only was now living, a girl child, with whom this story has to do. The old Master of St. Benedict's had aged perceptibly within the last few years. He was already in his second childhood. His strength had become enfeebled and his memory impaired. He could not walk down the long gallery of the lodge now or across the grass in the Fellows' garden without assistance; he could not remember the things of yesterday or of last week, but the crabbed characters of his old Semitic manuscripts were still as familiar to him as ever. He had lost a great deal since that stroke of paralysis five years ago, but he had not lost all. He remembered his old friends, and he could pore over his old books, but he was dependent upon his womankind for many things--for most things. Mary Rae opened his letters and conducted his correspondence. She had conducted it so long that she knew more about the college than the Master. She transacted all the college business that had to be transacted in the lodge, and when any public function required the Master's presence in the Senate House Mary Rae took him up to the door on her arm and brought him back. It was also rumoured that she instructed him how to vote.