He cherished in secret an admiration for the young men of Elgin, with their unappeasable energy and their indomitable optimism, but he could not translate it in any language of sympathy and but for Advena his soul would have gone uncomforted and alone.
Advena, as we know, was his companion.

Seeing herself just that, constantly content to be just that, she walked beside him closer than he knew.

She had her woman's prescience and trusted it.

Her own heart, all sweetly alive, counselled her to patience; her instincts laid her in bonds to concealment.

She knew, she was sure; so sure that she could play sometimes, smiling, with her living heart-- The nightingale was not yet heard For the rose was not yet blown, she could say of his; and what was that but play, and tender laughter, at the expense of her own?
And then, perhaps, looking up from the same book, she would whisper, alone in her room-- Oh, speed the day, thou dear, dear May, and gaze humbly through tears at her own face in the glass loving it on his behalf.