“Do you mean to tell him—­”

“I mean to tell him all my intentions concerning him.”

“What! now?”

“Yes, now.  It is the safest and most direct course, both for him, for you, and for me.  I have been thinking over the matter all day, and can come to no other conclusion.  Even for myself—­if I may speak of myself—­it is best.  I do not wish to encroach upon his mother’s rights—­it is not likely I should,” added the earl, with a somewhat sad smile; “still, it is hard that during the years, few or many, that I have to live, I, a childless man, should not enjoy a little of the comfort of a son.”

Helen sat silent with averted face.  It was all quite true, and yet—­

“I will tell you, to make all clear, the position I wish Cardross to hold with regard to me—­shall I?”

Mrs. Bruce assented.

“Into his mother’s place he can never step; I do not desire it.  You must still be, as you have always been, and I shall now publicly give out the fact, my immediate successor; and, except for a stated allowance, to be doubled when he marries, which I hope he will, and early, Cardross must still be dependent upon his mother during her lifetime.  Afterward he inherits all.  But there is one thing,” he continued, seeing that Helen did not speak, “I should like:  it would make me happy if, on his coming of age, he would change his name, or add mine to it—­be Alexander Cardross Bruce Montgomerie, or simply Alexander Cardross Montgomerie.  Which do you prefer?”

Helen meditated long.  Many a change came and went over the widow’s face —­widowed long enough for time to have softened down all things, and made her remember only the young days—­the days of a girl’s first love.  It might have been so, for she said at last, almost with a gasp,

“I wish my son to be Bruce-Montgomerie.”

“Be it so.”

After that Lord Cairnforth was long silent.

Helen resumed the conversation by asking if he did not think it dangerous, almost wrong, to tell the boy of this brilliant future immediately after his errors?

“No, not after errors confessed and forsaken.  Remember, it was over very rags that the prodigal’s father put upon him the purple robe.  But our boy is not a prodigal, Helen.  I know him well, and I have faith in him, and faith in human nature—­especially Cardross nature.”  And the earl smiled.  “Far deeper than any harshness will smite him the consciousness of being forgiven and trusted—­of being expected to carry out in his future life all that was a-missing in two not particularly happy lives, his mother’s—­and mine.”