of inevitable fate came over her. It was now nearly two years
since that letter from Mr. Roy of Shanghai, and no more tidings had
reached her. She began to think none ever would reach her now. She
ceased to hope or to fear, but let herself drift on, accepting the small
pale pleasures of every day, and never omitting one of its duties. One
only thought remained; which, contrasted with the darkness of all else,
often gleamed out as an actual joy.

If the lost letter really was Robert Roy's--and though she had no
positive proof, she had the strongest conviction, remembering the thick
fog of that Tuesday morning, how easily Archy might have dropped it out
of his hand, and how, during those days of soaking rain, it might have
lain, unobserved by any one, under the laurel branches, till the child
picked it up and hid it as he said--if Robert Roy lad written to her,
written in any way, he was at least not faithless. And he might have
loved her then. Afterward, he might have married, or died; she might
never find him again in this world, or if she found him, he might be
totally changed: still, whatever happened, he had loved her. The fact
remained. No power in earth or heaven could alter it.

And sometimes, even yet, a half-superstitious feeling came over her that
all this was not for nothing--the impulse which had impelled her to write
to Shanghai, the other impulse, or concatenation of circumstances, which
had floated her, after so many changes, back to the old place, the old
life. It looked like chance, but was it? Is any thing chance? Does not
our own will, soon or late, accomplish for us what we desire? That is,
when we try to reconcile it to the will of God.

She had accepted His will all these years, seeing no reason for it; often
feeling it very hard and cruel, but still accepting it. And now?

I am writing no sensational story. In it are no grand dramatic points;
no _Deus ex machina_ appears to make all smooth; every event--if it can
boast of aught so large as an event--follows the other in perfectly
natural succession. For I have always noticed that in life there are
rarely any startling "effects," but gradual evolutions. Nothing happens
by accident; and, the premises once granted, nothing happens but what was
quite sure to happen, following those premises. We novelists do not
"make up" our stories; they make themselves. Nor do human beings invent
their own lives; they do but use up the materials g