ening, after fourteen years, the
family grave, where he was to be laid beside his wife the day after
to-morrow. His two daughters, sitting alone together in the melancholy
house, heard Miss Williams enter, and ran to meet her. With a feeling of
nearness and tenderness such as she had scarcely ever felt for any human
being, she clasped them close, and let them weep their hearts out in her
motherly arms.

Thus the current of her whole life was changed; for when Mr. Moseley's
will was opened, it was found that, besides leaving Miss Williams a
handsome legacy, carefully explained as being given "in gratitude for her
care of his children," he had chosen her as their guardian, until they
came of age or married, entreating her to reside with them, and desiring
them to pay her all the respect due to "a near and dear relative." The
tenderness with which he had arranged every thing, down to the minutest
points, for them and herself, even amidst all his bodily sufferings, and
in face of the supreme hour--which he had met, his daughters said, with a
marvelous calmness, even joy--touched Fortune as perhaps nothing had ever
touched her in all her life before. When she stood with her two poor
orphans beside their father's grave, and returned with them to the
desolate house, vowing within herself to be too them, all but in name,
the mother he had wished her to be, this sense of duty--the strange new
duty which had suddenly come to fill her empty life--was so strong, that
she forgot every thing else--even Robert Roy.

And for months afterward--months of anxious business, involving the
leaving of the Rectory, and the taking of a temporary house in the
village, until they could decide where finally to settle--Miss Williams
had scarcely a moment or a thought to spare for any beyond the vivid
present. Past and future faded away together, except so far as concerned
her girls.

"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might," were words
which had helped her through many a dark time. Now, with all her might,
she did her motherly duty to the orphan girls; and as she did so,
by-and-by she began strangely to enjoy it, and to find also not a little
of motherly pride and pleasure in them. She had not time to think of
herself at all, or of the great blow which had fallen, the great change
which had come, rendering it impossible for her to let herself feel as
she had used to feel, dream as she used to dream, for years and years
pa