“She’s a wonderful woman—­my mother,” said Cardross, with great admiration.  “She has the sense of a man, and the tact of a woman.  She is doing every thing about the estate almost as cleverly as you would do it yourself.”

“Is she?  It is good practice for her,” said the earl.  “She will need it soon.”

Cardross looked at him.  He had never till then noticed, what other people began to notice, how exceedingly old the earl now looked, his small, delicate features withering up almost like those of an elderly man, though he was not much past forty.

“You don’t, mean—­oh no, not that!  You must not be thinking of that.  My mother’s rule at Cairnforth is a long way off yet.”  And—­big fellow as he was—­the lad’s eyes filled with tears.

After that day he refused all holiday excursions in which Lord Cairnforth could not accompany him.  It was only by great persuasion that he agreed to go for a week to Edinburg, to revisit his old haunts there, to look on the ugly fields where he had sown his wild oats, and prove to even respectable and incredulous Uncle Alick that there was no fear of their ever sprouting up again.  Also, Lord Cairnforth took the opportunity to introduce his cousin into his own set of Edinburg friends, to familiarize the young man with the society in which he must shortly take his place, and to hear from them, what he so warmly believed himself, that Cardross was fitted to be heir to any property in all Scotland.

“What a pity,” some added, “that he could not be heir to the earldom also!” “No,” said others, “better that ‘the wee earl’ (as old-fashioned folk still sometimes called him) should be the last Earl of Cairnforth.”

With the exception of those two visits, during a whole twelvemonth the earl and his adopted son were scarcely parted for a single day.  Years afterward, Cardross loved to relate, first to his mother, and then to his children, sometimes with laughter, and again with scarcely repressed tears, may an anecdote of the life they two led together at St. Andrew’s —­a real student life, yet filled at times with the gayest amusements.  For the earl loved gayety—­actual mirth; sometimes he and Cardross were as full of jests and pranks as two children, and at other times they held long conversations upon all manner of grave and earnest topics, like equal friends.  It was the sort of companionship, free and tender, cheerful and bright, yet with all the influence of the elder over the younger, which, occurring to a young man of Cardross’s age and temperament, usually determines his character for life.

Thus, day by day, Helen’s son developed and matured, becoming more and more a thorough Cardross, sound to the core, and yet polished outside in a manner which had not been the lot of any of the earlier generation, save the minister.  Also, he had a certain winning way with him—­a power of suiting himself to every body, and pleasing every body—­ which even his mother, who only pleased those she loved or those that loved her, had never possessed.