I have said she never spoke to David about Mr. Roy, nor did she; but
sometimes he spoke, and then she listened. It seemed to cheer her for
hours, only to hear that name. She grew stronger, gayer, younger. Every
body said how much good the sea was doing her, and so it was; but not
exactly in the way people thought. The spell of silence upon her life
had been broken, and though she knew all sensible persons would esteem
her in this, as in that other matter, a great "fool," still she could not
stifle a vague hope that some time or other her blank life might change.
Every little wave that swept in from the mysterious ocean, the ocean that
lay between them two, seemed to carry a whispering message and lay it at
her feet, "Wait and be patient, wait and be patient."

She did wait, and the message came at last.

One day David Dalziel called, on one of his favorite daily rides, and
threw a newspaper down at her door, where she was standing.

"An Indian paper my mother has just sent. There's something in it that
will interest you, and--"

His horse galloped off with the unfinished sentence; and supposing it was
something concerning his family, she put the paper in her pocket to read
at leisure while she sat on the beach. She had almost forgotten it, as
she watched the waves, full of that pleasant idleness and dreamy peace so
new in her life, and which the sound of the sea so often brings to
peaceful hearts, who have no dislike to its monotony, no dread of those
solemn thoughts of infinitude, time and eternity, God and death and love,
which it unconsciously gives, and which I think is the secret why some
people say they have "such a horror of the sea-side."

She had none; she loved it, for its sights and sounds were mixed up with
all the happiness of her young days. She could have sat all this
sunshiny morning on the beach doing absolutely nothing, had she not
remembered David's newspaper; which, just to please him, she must look
through. She did so, and in the corner, among the brief list of names in
the obituary, she saw that of "Roy." Not himself, as she soon found, as
soon as she could see to read, in the sudden blindness that came over
her. Not himself. Only his child.

"On Christmas-day, at Shanghai, aged three and a half years, Isabella,
the only and beloved daughter of Robert and Isabella Roy."

He was alive, then. That was her first thought, almost a joyful one,
showing how deep had been her secret dre