“I am not unhappy,” she said, earnestly.  “Why should I be?  My dear father keeps well still—­he enjoys a green old age.  And is not my son growing up every thing that a mother’s heart could desire?”

“I do believe it.  Cardross is a good boy—­a very good boy.  But the metal has never been tested—­as the soundest metal always requires to be—­and until this is done, you will never rest.  I had rather it were done during my lifetime than afterward.  Helen, I particularly wish the boy to go to college.”

The earl spoke so decidedly that Mrs. Bruce replied with only the brief question “Where?”

“To Edinburg; because there he would not be left quite alone.  His uncle Alick would keep an eye upon him, and he could be boarded with Mrs. Menteith, whose income would be none the worse for the addition I would make to it; for of course, Helen, if he goes, it must be—­not exactly as my declared heir, since you dislike that so much, but—­as my cousin and nearest of kin, which he is undeniably.”

Helen acquiesced in silence.

“I have a right to him, you see,” said Lord Cairnforth, smiling, “and really I am rather proud of my young fellow.  He may not be very clever —­the minister says he is not—­but he is what I call a man.  Like his mother, who never was clever, but yet was every inch a woman—­the best woman, in all relations of life, that I ever knew.”

Helen smiled too—­a little sadly, perhaps—­but soon her mind recurred from all other things to her one prominent thought.

“And what would you do with the boy himself?  He knows nothing of money —­has never had a pound-note in his pocket all his life.”

“Then it is high time he should have—­and a good many of them.  I shall pay Mrs. Menteith well for his board, but I shall make him a sufficient allowance besides.  He must stand on his own feet, without any one to support him.  It is the only way to make a boy into a man—­ a man that is worth anything.  Do you not see that yourself?”

“I see, Lord Cairnforth, that you think it would be best for my boy to be separated from his mother.”

She spoke in a hurt tone, and yet with a painful consciousness that what she said was not far off the truth, more especially as the earl did not absolutely deny the accusation.

“I think, my dear Helen, that it would be better if he were separated from us all for a time.  We are such quiet, old-fashioned folks at Cairnforth, he may come to weary of us, you know.  But my strongest motive is exactly what I stated—­that he should be left to himself, to feel his own strength and the strength of those principles which we have tried to give him—­that any special character he possesses may have free space to develop itself.  Up to a certain point we can take care of our children; beyond, we can not—­nay, we ought not; they must take care of themselves.  I believe—­do not be angry, Helen—­ but I believe there comes a time in every boy’s life when the wisest thing even his mother can do for him is—­to leave him alone.”