“I do not wish my boy to know the world.”

“But he must.  He ought.  Remember his life is likely to be a very different one from either yours or mine.”

“Do not let us think of that,” said Helen, uneasily.

“My friend, I have been thinking of it ever since he was born—­or, at least, ever since he came to Cairnforth.  That day seems almost like yesterday, and yet—­We are growing quite middle-aged folk, Helen, my dear.”

Helen sighed.  These peaceful, uneventful years, how fast they had slipped by!  She began to count them after the only fashion by which she cared to count any thing now.  “Yes, Cardross will be a man—­actually and legally a man—­in little more than two years.”

“That is just what I was considering.  By that time we must come to some decision on a subject which you will never let me speak of; but by-and by, Helen, you must.  Do you suppose that your son guesses, or that any body has ever told him, what his future position is to be?”

“I think not.  There was nobody to tell him, for nobody knew.  No,” continued Helen, speaking strongly and decidedly, “I am determined on one point—­nothing shall bind you as regards my son or me—­ nothing, except your own free will.  To talk of me as your successor is idle.  I am older than you are; and you must not be compromised as regards my son.  He is a good boy now, but temptation is strong, and,” with an irrepressible shudder, “appearances are deceitful sometimes.  Wait, as I have always said—­wait till you see what sort of man Cardross turns out to be.”

Lord Cairnforth made no reply, and once more the two friends sat watching the unconscious youth, who had been for so many years the one object of both their lives.

“Ignorance is not innocence,” said the earl at length, after along fit of musing.  “If you bind a creature mortally hand and foot, how can it ever learn to walk?  It would, as soon as you loosed the bonds, find itself not free, but paralyzed—­as helpless a creature as myself.”

Helen turned away from watching her boy, and laid her hand tenderly, in her customary caress, on the feeble hand, which yet had been the means of accomplishing so much.

“You should not speak so,” she said.  “Scarcely ever is there a more useful life than yours.”

“More useful, certainly, than any one once expected—­except you, Helen.  I have tried to make you not ashamed of me these thirty years.”  “Is it so many?  Thirty years since the day you first came to the Manse?”

“Yes; you know I was forty last birthday.  Who would have thought my life would have lasted so long?  But it can not last forever; and before I am ‘away’ as your dear old father would say, I should like to leave you quite settled and happy about that boy.”

“Who says I am not happy?” answered Mrs. Bruce, rather sharply.

“Nobody; but I see it myself sometimes—­when you get that restless, anxious look—­there it is now!  Helen, I must have it away.  I think it would trouble me in my grave if I left you unhappy,” added the earl, regarding her with that expression of yearning tenderness which she had been so used to all her days that she rarely noticed it until the days came when she saw it no more.