clasped her hands above her head. It did not matter; there was no
creature to see or hear that appeal--was it to man or God?--that wild,
broken sob, so contrary to her usual self-controlled and self-contained
nature. And then she learned her forehead against the gate, just where
Robert Roy had accidentally laid his hand in opening it, and wept
bitterly.




Chapter 2.

The "every day" on which Mr. Roy had reckoned for seeing his friend, or
whatsoever else he considered Miss Williams to be, proved a failure. Her
youngest pupil fell ill, and she was kept beside him, and away from the
school-room, until the doctor could decide whether the illness was
infectious or not. It turned out to be very trifling--a most trivial
thing altogether, yet weighted with a pain most difficult to bear, a
sense of fatality that almost overwhelmed one person at least. What the
other felt she did not know. He came daily as usual; she watched him
come and go, and sometimes he turned and they exchanged a greeting from
the window. But beyond that, she had to take all passively. What could
she, only a woman, do or say or plan? Nothing. Women's business is to
sit down and endure.

She had counted these days--Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
Saturday--as if they had been years. And now they were all gone, had
fled like minutes, fled emptily away. A few fragmentary facts she had
had to feed on, communicated by the boys in their rough talk.